With back-to-school season there is always a scramble as we stumble back into our routines, switching out our afternoons of Netflix and hanging out with friends for ones filled with homework and after school activities. Yet though the sweet bliss of summer has ended, many students may be haunted by their incomplete summer work. Universally, summer reading is something that most students have to complete, however whether it is really worth our time is up for debate. Some students argue for the merits of summer reading while others feel it holds none.
Kaitlyn Haas, junior, when asked if she completed her summer reading stated that she had. Haas felt that summer reading is a nice way to ease into a course, explaining that having summer reading was nice “instead of here’s the first week of school, read this book” and being thrown into the deep end of academic work. “I tend to do it last minute,” she conceded, speaking to the difficulties of summer reading. In her current course, AP Lang, Haas reflected that summer reading was beneficial as it allowed students to “first try out” the skills they would be learning in the class. She felt it has prepared her well for the year ahead.
Similarly, Joe Johnson, a junior, expressed, “Summer reading as a concept is a good idea.”
However, according to some students, summer assignments simply do not hold any worth. Shel Shee, a senior and self identified reader, expressed that, “Either students do it at the beginning of the summer and forget all about it or at the end of the summer and rush through it. There’s no point to it.” “Why are we rushing through it?” She asked. Reflecting on how summer reading has helped her with her English courses she lamented, “it didn’t really prepare me for anything, I’m sorry.”
Leah Rupp, senior, disagreed with Shee stating that summer reading “prepares you for the class.” Rupp continued by saying, “I would say it has an overall positive effect on the student, especially going into an AP class.”
Simah Osmani, senior, explained her reasoning against summer reading by stating, “most of the time there’s always going to be kids that don’t do their student work and then the teachers give them a week or two to do it in class or make it up.” She expressed the pointlessness of spending your free time completing an assignment when class time or extensions would be given already for those who did not complete the summer work.
This year many English classes have changed the way summer reading is assigned and graded. In the future it may be eliminated entirely or perhaps only adapted. We’ll just have to wait to read the next chapter on summer reading.
