Summer reading spice up
Providence Day has revamped the age-old tradition of summer reading in 2016 and is looking to repeat the new program's success indefinitely.
Before 2016, PDS followed a standard protocol for summer reading. Teachers were to chose three or four fiction and nonfiction books for the class and stay away from books that had been made into a movie made in recent years. On the first day of school following each summer, students would be asked to write about the book in some form. Teachers varied their approach to the writing assignments.
PDS wanted to stay away from evaluating summer reading with the new system. Current Head of PDS English Department Dr. Clint Crumley said teachers “didn't feel right about evaluating summer reading on the first day because it felt like [they] were not teaching it and were grading based on something [they] didn't teach”.
The modernized system stemmed from PDS English teacher Matt Spence, who approached Crumley at lunch one day with a revolutionary Idea. Spence wanted to create a huge list of texts by getting teachers and administrators from other departments in Upper School involved. Each teacher and administrator was to pick a book that he/she read before or something they have been interested in reading.
They also hoped for up to 40 different books with the thinking that surely someone could find something they liked.
Aside from that, Crumley also “wanted students to feel like they had at least a little bit of a connection with a teacher who they may not take a class with recognizing that it might just be a miniscule connection”.
With agreement of other teachers Spence’s idea became a reality in 2016. Crumley and the school as a whole felt that the program was overall more successful in both intellectually engaging students and creating a positive environment around summer reading.
Summer reading has always been a controversial topic at Providence Day. In fact, it was even removed from the curriculum when Crumley arrived 19 years ago. According to Crumley, “the administrators didn't like the idea of Summer Reading” and received statements from parents such as “my child is stressed out enough during the school year let them have a vacation during the summer from any kind of school work at all”.
When Crumley became department chair 13 years ago, he had a personal desire to restore Summer Reading. He felt “Providence Day needed to sort of catch up to what other schools were doing [to] keep pace”. In addition, he “believe[s] that [PDS] students need this on-going engagement with sentences and paragraphs” just as much as anyone else does. The second year Crumley was Department Chair, he decided to restore summer reading using the teacher assigned book approach PDS was familiar with until 2016.
Many students did not like this approach to Summer Reading at all. According to PDS student John Marenic “the list of books were uninteresting and made me not want to read”. The dissatisfaction with the book itself had a major impact on the student's compliance with the assignment. Crumley says that this left him with a “sense that under the old system(...) most students read [the book], but quite a lot of students did not”. This gave PDS teachers a slew of problems.
When students did not complete their reading, PDS teachers tried not to make it feel like they were punishing students. After several years of talking with students on the first day, the English Department felt like a lot of students were essentially lying on the first day of school, and teachers were putting them in a position to lie. According to Crumley, teachers would tell the class “write about your reading” and if students didn't read “they would pretend they did. Teachers had to think “do I tell my students I don't want you to lie or It's ok write about something else you read or just write about something”.
Crumley’s ultimate goal for summer the PDS Summer reading program is “for students to feel stimulated, feel intellectually engaged, to find something that's interesting to them, and to recognize that reading books can be really interesting and a way to get to know themselves and the world better.” Crumley wants “people to realize that the internet is not the only source of information and knowledge.”
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Crumley claims the new program is here to stay; he has already planned for next summer. He is getting students to choose a book in May and have a day during advisee to meet with groups before summer. In that meeting, groups will establish expectations for the Google Classroom. Dean of students Gordon Bynum already has the date reserved. PDS is prepared to repeat the system for years to come while making minor tweaks as the school deems necessary.
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With all the discomfort on the teacher's part, recognizing students were feeling pretty uncomfortable too, PDS decided to revamp the Summer Reading program.
Crumley and Spence also wanted to take away the assessment component to avoid the lying between students and teachers; this meant no paper on the first day of school.
Many students put off summer reading until the last weeks before school. Image courtesy of creative commons licence CC0. No attribution required.
By Adam Gerber
Teachers would then be assigned a group of students who would read that book and have an online discussion, utilizing Google Classroom, so the students wouldn't have to all be there at one time. The students would be expected to participate at least two times over summer.
Like many PDS classes, summer reading discussions were held in a Google Classroom. Image courtesy of A. Gerber.
John Marenic, like many PDS students, only enjoy reading books that are relevant to his interests. Image courtesy of A. Gerber.
PDS student Malachi Daniel, selecting his summer reading novel on Google Forms. Image courtesy of A. Gerber.
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The Charger, December 2017
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