Every year students set a time aside during their summer vacation to do their summer reading.

Except this year, it was summer listening.

The soundtrack to Hamilton was the summer reading assignment for all on-level English classes. “This has been a pretty successful summer reading for Watkins Mill,” English teacher Samuel Lee said.

“The general notion behind [Hamilton] was to give kids a taste of something else for a change. To get them involved in something that has a lot more engagement,” Lee added. 

“One of the main benefits that you have is that some people are just more inclined to understand things if it has to do with music [or] has to do with something audio,” Lee added. “The lyrics are what they have to [follow]. It’s like a thirty chapter story, basically. The chapters are just songs.”

The podcast Serial was also added to the curriculum last school year for sophomores. “Serial was current and interesting. I had listened to it the year before and I was completely hooked,” English teacher Sonya Shpilyuk said. “I thought that [students] would also enjoy the story and be invested in it because it is actually happening and is nearby to us.”

“Students were completing more work on time and the quality was definitely improved,” Shpilyuk added. “[Students] can listen anywhere, on their phones, at home, while doing other things. It’s a whole new experience.” A disadvantage though, is that “it is a whole new thing, so some student have trouble adjusting.”

“[Listeners] can hear the person’s tone of voice. I think that’s really good that you can get the person’s personality that way,” English teacher Dave Sampselle added. But “if all you have is the audio, you can’t possibly [write] down notes. If you need a quotation, it’s impossible to keep up with it.”

Serial “fit into the curriculum and Shpilyuk convinced [other English teachers] that it would be really good for the students,” Sampselle said. “It would be current events [so students] would be interested in it and for the most part, I think it was true.”