By Emma Shuford ’22 NEWS Reporter
Each year, Mercersburg students must participate in a summer reading assignment, which was, until this year, followed by a mandated and often dreaded essay response written in class. The main purpose of the summer reading response was for students to show their understanding of the reading.
However, times have changed. This year students were offered various mediums through which they could react to the summer reading. For the first time, students could record podcasts, create an activist response focused on pushing for political or social action, write the in-class essay, or produce an “Inspired By. . .” piece, à la the Writing Center contests. This final option gave creative students the opportunity to demonstrate their artistic abilities within the academic forum.
Students could choose to choreograph a dance, do creative writing, paint, or use any other type of creative work to respond to their book. Those pursuing this path also had to write an accompanying “Artist’s Statement” that explained the project, their creative process, and the connection of their piece to the book they read. For many students, the “Inspired By. . .” option was an alternative to the tedium of having to write an essay under a time constraint. Megan List ‘20 chose to create a book of poems for her response to Far from the Tree. She said, “I do prefer the ‘Inspired By. . .’ option because it allowed me to bring out my creative side and really think deeply about Far from the Tree without being overlystressed about a grade.” Birdy McDonnell ‘20 said, “I prefer ‘Inspired By. . .’ because it offers me the freedom to work in mediums and expressions of poetry that I don’t have the space to do in class.”
Because of the extended time in which students could complete their pieces, they could allow themselves to be inspired and, therefore, create unique and thoughtful results. List said, “I have always been interested in people’s emotions, and psychology in general, so I took this interest and wrote a poem for a certain emotion that I saw each character exhibiting throughout the book.” The colors she used for the background of each page of her book reflected the emotion portrayed in the poem on that page. Within her poems, she highlighted the conflicts each character faced throughout the book, both inwardly and outwardly. List said, “I had never written poems before this and it was really fun to try out a new type of writing.”
McDonnell also wrote a poem based on the book Far from the Tree. She considered the queen bee in a hive and her effect on the worker bees. McDonnell painted a picture with her words, each word enriching the poem:
“She tells us we are her swarm,
Loyal servants to carry out
Her every word.
Each word like nectar
We drink it up,
Intoxicating us beyond repair.
We buzz about Blood slow beneath our skin,
Slow like a stream of honey.”
With these new options, Mercersburg endeavors to offer students as much freedom as possible while still providing the guidelines necessary to fulfill the reading and response requirement. By permitting students to express themselves and their understanding of a book creatively, the school is encouraging students to test themselves and to explore new mediums previously beyond them. Maddie Schermerhorn ‘22 said, “I think that people have different interests, so some people will like writing essays more and some people will like the ‘Inspired By. . .’ options more. In my opinion, you have more creativity with the ‘Inspired By. . .’ responses. However, it depends on the person.” All of this may make students more passionate about creating and about reading.