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The Gunnery believes that summer reading is an integral part of the curriculum and works to incorporate both student and faculty voices in selecting each year's themed reading. This year we have three selections. The outgoing seniors were surveyed and asked: If you could assign any book to the underclassmen, what would this book be? Two of the top texts that were chosen were, //Ishmael// by Daniel Quinn and //The Catcher in the Rye// by J.D. Salinger. //The Catcher in the Rye// will be addressed during the winter term, primarily through the residential life curriculum.

The outgoing seniors were also asked whether they believed connecting the Summer/All School Reading to another learning activity, like we did last year with the play, was worthwhile, and many students felt it was. Because of this, members of the All School Reading Task Force decided it would be worthwhile to assign Bill McKibben's most recent publication, //Eaarth,// to eleventh and twelfth grade students. Bill McKibben will be coming to The Gunnery in October as our Fall Term Distinguished Speaker.

Students in grades nine and ten are required to have read/be reading //Ishmael// by Daniel Quinn. Students in grades eleven and twelve are required to have read/be reading //Eaarth// by Bill McKibben.

We hope that faculty have chosen to read one, or both of these texts. Both books deal with tough environmental questions, and the following pages on this WIKI will help teachers incorporate either these texts, or the issues connected with them into their classroom lessons during the fall term. We are asking that all teachers find a way to incorporate some lesson about environmental issues into their syllabi the week of October 3-10, 2010.