AP & Summer Assignments

Salisbury School Summer Syllabus 2022

What is Salisbury’s summer reading requirement? 

The short answer: There is none. 

The long answer: After careful reflection and discussion with current students and faculty, it became clear that we needed to rethink the way we do summer reading. Students reported that it felt like a chore, done haphazardly at the last minute. Faculty are just as ready as students are to unplug over the summer. Once the school year got underway, whatever reading that was done was promptly forgotten.  

This summer, we’re aiming to do something different. There is a bold idea, captured in The Power of Giving Away Power by Matthew Barzun P ‘21 ‘24, that a group of students and faculty are inspired to bring back to campus in the coming school year. The idea is that our school structure (indeed, any community’s structure) can move away from a hierarchy or pyramid and towards a constellation – a group of individual lights that become something greater than themselves when they connect through their interdependence – and that when we share our individual power, our collective power grows. This idea has implications for how we do school and learning in the classroom, in the dorm, on teams, in advisory, and beyond.  

We are committed to engaging with this idea in the coming year in various ways. As tempted as we were to “assign” The Power of Giving Away Power as a summer read, we’re resisting that old habit and are choosing instead to provide a list of optional resources including, but not limited to, the text itself. There is also a podcast. There are also articles. Whether you prefer to listen or read or watch, have a lot of time or just a bit, there are several options and entry points. The emphasis, however, is on the word “optional”.  

If you and your family are interested in engaging with the text and/or its concepts over the summer, we hope you will check out the resources below. If you and your family are better served by engaging in meaningful summer experiences that do not include the resources on this list, we hope you will focus on that. There will be no test on the first day of school, no in-class essay. Instead, we will plan to infuse this text throughout the year and in innovative, authentic, inspiring and student-centered ways. 

Optional Resources to Explore This Summer  

 

Text: The Power of Giving Away Power 

Audiobook: The Power of Giving Away Power 

Video:  A Thinkin with Matthew Barzun  

Article: “We Need to Rethink Power.”  

Podcast episode: NAIS New View EDU: Giving Away Power for More Authentic Leadership 

Podcast episode: A Bit of Optimism: Thinking Differently with Matthew Barzun 

Interactive E-Book: (Stay tuned...coming to the Threadable app)