Volumes of Opportunity

In the 1980s, the American Library Association (ALA), spurred on by the U.S. Department of Education, launched a campaign encouraging children to read. Its tagline was direct. “All the smartest kids need is a library card.”

From that same period, I can remember my own thin, plastic, green-and-white library card. Seeing my name stamped out by a typewriter made me feel very smart and very special indeed. Growing up, I made many visits to our local library, first tagging along with my father and then requesting trips of just about anyone who might drive me there. Making my way from the children’s room to the teen section to the adult stacks represented rites of passage for me. My jobs in high school, in fact, were at that same library branch and at our neighborhood pizza parlor.

The campaign may well have been effective. Even years later, early in my teaching career, I remember a colleague commenting on a precociously bright student: “All that kid needs is a library card,” she said.

The words landed with me much differently in that moment than they had years earlier. Was she really suggesting that he was that much smarter than his classmates? That he had nothing to gain either from them or from her? That school was a waste of his time?

In the decades since, I am fortunate to have known many such students. Knowledgeable, ingenious, resourceful, clever, witty, sharp—they have been “smart” by any definition of the word. Not a one of them, however, needed only a library card. Each learned from his peers. Every one of them benefitted from the adults in their lives who nurtured, supported, and challenged them. All of them gained a great deal from school.

Teachers shape students’ experiences, a great responsibility and an even greater privilege.

Part of the satisfaction for students and teachers alike, of course, is the shared experience. In her book, Teaching Literature, teacher and scholar Elaine Showalter describes what is, for me and many teachers, a familiar feeling. “All of us have had the experience of reading a book the night before class, just one breathless step ahead of the students, and discovering that our teaching suddenly seems electric and the students are lit up with excitement.” Professor Showalter was one of my professors in college. By that point in her career, she was most likely not reading the book the night before class, but her infectious energy with my classmates and me made it seem like she was discovering the texts right along with us. We were all in it together.

Even more important than collective engagement is individualized attention. The small class sizes at schools like US are foundational to all that we do; our intimacy is indispensable to “knowing and loving” the boys in our care. As I think back on teaching hundreds of students at US, I can certainly call to mind lessons to the whole class, whether structuring the tenthgrade research paper or appealing to your audience with your Sherman Prize Speaking Contest entry in junior year. Yet more memorable for me—and certainly more meaningful for students—were the one-onone conversations shared throughout the process of drafting, revising, and rehearsing.

Coursework is just the baseline, but it ensures the engagement necessary for enrichment. For example, students are sometimes startled when they realize that I do not have foregone conclusions in mind for our essay prompts. I wouldn’t be asking the questions, I point out, if I already had all the answers. I also ask them whether they recognize the difference between those essays that are interesting and uninteresting to write. “Of course,” they assure me almost instantaneously. I then assure them that an interesting essay for them to write is likelier the more interesting essay for their teacher, or anyone, to read.

For US faculty, jobs are not job descriptions.

Dr. Bill O’Neil, who retired from US in 2021 after more than 30 years as a teacher, coach, and administrator, exemplifies this expansive mindset. If a student was interested in reading beyond the curriculum, he would sit with him to explore all the complexities of James Joyce’s Ulysses or Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Beyond the curricular, if a boy’s extracurricular passion was for golf, he might help him explore course design by envisioning holes at the school’s Hunting Valley Campus using topographic maps. “I think one of the hallmarks of US is that the faculty volunteer to work with students in areas sparked by the students' interests,” Bill reflects.

Mr. Terry Kessler served US from 1981 to 2019 and held the Griswold Chair in Mathematics. Known to generations of US alumni for his rigor, like so many iconic US teachers, he also sought always to meet boys where they were and to take them as far as they could go. He felt strongly that all students deserved more. US alumni, whose interest in and skill at math varied significantly, by their own admission, cite Mr. Kessler as a positive influence on their lives. Whether they were navigating the most elegant of geometric proofs or strumming guitars together after school, Terry enriched students’ time at US by giving them his time.

Moreover, these relationships also prime US students to forge relationships with mentors beyond US—first with professors in college and then with managers and co-workers in life. Time and again, recent graduates report in school surveys their quick success in college, attributing their comfort and confidence in no small part to their ability to easily form relationships with adults. Their teachers’ willingness to go the extra mile for them encouraged them to go further, and they continue to take advantage of mentors who help to propel them forward in life and work.

At US, we have long been committed to identifying students’ interests and providing them the support to pursue those interests with vigor. Established programs like the Strnad and Davey Fellowships, as well as newer opportunities like the Anderson and Byrnes Scholar programs, recognize and formalize those pursuits. They are likely not the first or only ways students’ paths have veered from others’ in their time at US. What distinguishes these experiences, more than any other factor, is the focused, dedicated support of the US faculty and staff. They are role models. They help students to go above and beyond by going above and beyond themselves.

Influential as it might have been, the ALA tagline was at best incomplete. All kids need—and deserve—much more than a library card. Thankfully for US students, they go much further and have the dedicated support to do so.