Who They're Becoming

On Grandparents and Friends Day, in the lower level of the Alan Shepard Boat House, a student ran the metal lathe by himself for the first time after receiving instructions from Gordon Bassett ’96. As his two grandparents watched with interest and pride, he meticulously worked through each step, carefully adjusting the controls, before beginning to machine a piece of metal for his first class project of the term.

Similar scenes played out across campus during B block on Wednesday morning. In another classroom, students and guests tested each other's generational language in Kahoot, an online quiz game where everyone answers from a phone or laptop while the scores flash on a shared screen. Just down the hall, World History families listened attentively as their students, in dialogue with Cope Makechnie-Hardy ’27, analyzed historical cartoons about the Opium Wars projected on the screen. In Learning Skills, a student walked her grandparents through her work on a calculus problem marked up with her teacher’s feedback. For one morning in September, families got a window into their students' experience at Proctor.
 

Earlier that morning, at the Grandparents and Friends Day assembly in the Wilkins Meeting House, Director of Admissions Christin Lathrop had asked the five seniors on the student panel to name something they had done at Proctor that would most surprise their grandparents. Abby '27 picked a night from Lynne Bartlett's Conservation Ecology class last year, when students went out "at 10:00 PM after study hall to look for frogs and help them cross the road." Anyone driving by, Abby said, would have seen "a group of Proctor students with reflective vests." Sam ’27 recounted how he has taken metal sculpture twice and forged a full fireplace set, shovel and poker included. Miles ’27 helps lead a fishing club that takes trips to the Blackwater River and Elbow Pond on weekends. Taylor ’27 described Culture and Conflict, a college-level course where students earn both history and English credit, as worth getting up for at 8:15 on a Friday.  "We get to talk about things that people don't usually want to talk about because they're uncomfortable," she shared.
 

Each guest in the Meeting House knew their student long before they became a Proctor student, and Christin’s question also shed light on how each student’s identity has shifted and expanded since they arrived at Proctor, a process that is just beginning for new students. David Brooks describes that change in How to Know a Person. "You can be loved by a person, yet not be fully known by them," he writes. Longtime friends and family sometimes formed a picture of you years ago, he adds, and "never updated their models to see you now for who you really are." Grandparents and Friends Day gave every guest a chance to update that picture and get to know a little better who their student is becoming.
 

Sam offered exactly that kind of before-and-after. "When I first came here, I was pretty introverted. I didn't talk to that many people and I kind of felt like I was on my own," Sam said. Ocean Classroom helped change that. By senior year, Sam reflected that he had gotten "a lot better at reaching out when I need help." Eloise '27 had a before-and-after story of her own. "When I came to Proctor as a freshman, I had never played hockey in my life," she said. She had only skated for fun. Now girls' JV hockey is "probably one of my favorite things I've ever done here."
 

Sometimes that kind of change starts with signing up for something the people closest to you aren't sure about. Taylor remembered that when she first mentioned Mountain Classroom, her mom had her doubts, but they gave way to support. Taylor's grandparents have noticed how she has changed, too. Whenever Taylor sees them, they say some version of the same thing: "you look so happy" and "you seem so yourself." Looking out at the grandparents and friends filling the Meeting House, she reflected, "I would not be who I am or where I am right now if it was not for Proctor and if it wasn't for everyone that supported me along the way."

On Wednesday, our students got to see themselves through the eyes of the people who have known them longest. As Brooks writes, “In how you see me, I will learn to see myself.”

Read More about Community and Relationships at Proctor