Welcome to Porter-Gaud

We are delighted you have found our web site. We thought you might like to learn a little about the principles which sustain the Porter-Gaud education. We hope our students leave this school believing that their lives and the lives of others matter. We want them to be courageous and good, as well as scholarly and analytical. We believe education accomplishes this purpose when students are taught to enjoy challenge and risk, to accept failure as a step on the way to success, and to respect the thoughts and feelings of others.

Along the way to this lofty goal, however, a school must ask itself some practical questions:

• How does a diverse community unite in a common purpose?
• How is moral behavior taught without usurping the parents’ role?
• How can children be taught to enjoy internal (spiritual) rewards in a world that seems to value only external (material) rewards?
• How can children be taught the necessity for careful thought when they see daily on television only speedy and facile answers?
• What are the special benefits that an Episcopal school can provide to prepare its students for the world?

We do not have absolute answers to these questions, but we know from experience that there are some actions a school must take in attempting to answer them, actions in which we're engaged:

We talk. Teachers, administrators and parents should always be engaged in discussion — with each other, with experts, with students — to define what is held in common and to articulate their goals.

We try to enlist parents in the school's endeavors because parents are the school's strongest allies.

We try to give students multiple opportunities to experience a sense of accomplishment and pride, whether in the classroom, the studio, the gym or the community.

We try always to honor the spiritual as well as the intellectual essence of our students. Our mission is to create an environment that nurtures and protects what we value most in our children: their faith, their curiosity, their talents, their integrity, their humanity and their dreams.

Ultimately, though, I believe the heart of the educational process is in the classroom and it is in this setting that our students will find the strength of Porter-Gaud. As you browse, I hope you will "meet" some girls and boys and teachers who will give you an idea of the excitement of learning which permeates these halls.

Dr. Chris Proctor
Head of School

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