A beam of light streams through the window and spills across a gray Marley floor. Three ballet bars stand against the wall. A bird decal sticks to the glass window, wings stretched skyward. 

Kayden Murrell ’26 snaps a photo of the scene, a moment of peace in the usually bustling dance studio. Though the angle of the photo conceals the rising V former’s image in the wall of mirrors, the scene is a reflection of Murrell’s identity and most authentic sense of self. 

Murrell’s photo is one of 28 by the 2023-2024 IV Form students in Kate Cusick’s English classes as part of an inter-school project in which SAS students explored places on campus that feel like home to them through photography and poetry, and shared their work with school communities beyond St. Andrew’s for dialogue and feedback. 

The idea for the project took root in the summer of 2023, which Cusick spent with the Change Fellow Cohort at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. The fellowship tasked Cusick and her fellow educators with creating a project that brings communities together and bridges divides. Cusick collaborated with Rebecca Rose, a teacher at Mercersburg Academy in Mercersburg, Pa.; and Nora Britton, a teacher at the Academy of American Studies in Queens, N.Y., for the project. Although the trio was inspired by their shared classroom reads like Nested Interculturality, which centers on creativity and immersive cultural experiences, they didn’t know precisely what their project would become. They did know the pieces they wanted to incorporate: letter-writing, mapping, and creative expression. 

As they built out the details of how to bring these ideas into harmony, they developed the structure of the project: a cross-school exchange of photography, poetry, and reflection centered around “a sense of place”—the places in which the tenth-grade students at each school find comfort and belonging. 

“Who are our students?” the teachers wrote in their reflection of the project in the Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal. “How can we develop students’ sense of belonging to, and ownership over, their school/local community? What relationships can we forge with distant places, individuals, and communities?” 

The educators aimed to foster understanding between the students whose senses of place might be wildly different—from the rural settings of Middletown and Mercersburg to the urban cityscapes of Queens—with a dialogue about personal and shared experiences and identities. 

“We wanted to work through that channel of breaking the barrier of their understanding of us and us of them,” says Cusick. 

This project took place over four months of the school year, and it started with the St. Andrew’s and Mercersburg students trekking around their campuses and photographing the places that resonated with them, from the shining floor of the basketball court to a leaf-covered trail nestled by the woods.  

The students then virtually sent their photos to Queens. There, the Academy of American Studies students looked through the photos—which had no personal identifiers—and selected those photos that they wanted to ask questions about, and sent responses to the photographer.

“We gave them a frame of questions, of things to consider,” says Cusick. “[They asked questions and made comments like,] ‘I noticed in your picture you chose the pond or water,’ or ‘I’m curious, why did you choose this angle, this color?’”

The Academy of American Studies students also shared their own photos, capturing corner delis, rainy highways, quaint bookstores, and more with the same students with whom they corresponded previously.

“The first thing that struck me was that we were outside for my partner’s picture, I think it was a bridge and there was a body of water and there was the sunset,” says Murrell. “Compared to my picture, which was bright and indoors, their picture was dark and outside. Yet, I still felt that this is an important place to them … I thought that was really interesting to see how there’s two different spaces, but they invoke the same feelings.” 

Murrell also felt an odd sense of familiarity looking at the photo, recalling memories of visiting the city with family—as the New Jersey-native’s mom works in New York City. 

“They’re closer to home, to my home, than I am,” says Murrell. “It felt refreshing in a way, being grounded there again.”

After the initial feedback of their photos, the students wrote poems about their senses of place associated with their photos. After getting feedback from their peers at their school, they sent their poems to their inter-school partners. 

Though the Academy of American Studies student will never know the face or name behind Murrell’s poem, it touches on a deep sense of identity that has blossomed within the dancer and actor in the studio. 

In the following excerpt, Murrell explores the warmth of the spotlight: 

I wouldn’t go out of my way to garner attention

But,

There is something in that room splashed with sunlight,

Black birds surrounded by a halo of sky,

The far wall covered with advice from stage legends old and new,

A large mirror filled with performers, training to be on stage.

There is something that makes me want to try

Harnessing the sun.

I’m no Icarus.

I wouldn’t go out of my way to garner attention

But,

There is something in the spotlight that makes the attention worth it.

“I learned to take command of the spotlight [with performance], and it’s helped me lose my shyness,” says Murrell. “The story of Icarus is that he flew too close to the sun. So when I say ‘I’m no Icarus,’ I’m not going to just venture out to the spotlight, not normally, but because of my experience in that studio, I’m learning to step further into the spotlight. I’m learning to allow myself to shine.” 

Sending the poem off to Queens was even more scary than handing in an assignment to a teacher, Murrell says. Murrell didn’t know the student that would read the poem, nor how they would react to such a personal piece. But when Murrell received the feedback, the Queens student recounted her own memory of dance, and the shared connection eased Murrell’s fear.

Students opening themselves to an audience greater than their teacher and their classmates was just the point, says Cusick. 

“When we write just to a teacher, it’s so insular,” says Cusick. “[The project] is breaking the barriers of what it means to be a student.”

Breaking the boundaries of instruction was just one goal of the project, another was to make campus part of the curriculum. 

“When I think about Mary Oliver’s poetry, and I think about Robert Frost, and I think about even Mark Doty, who we’re learning in 11th grade right now, places are embedded in our memory and in our sense of identity,” says Cusick. “And this place is four years of these young people’s lives. It’s such a part of who they are. So [this project helps] them both use that as a tool to find their voice in their writing, and articulate who they are, but also embed that then into the work that they’re doing with the literature outside of them.” 

She says the project also aimed to bridge identities rooted in place to something larger than our campus, a goal which culminated in a creation of an interactive map which includes the students’ photography, poetry, and reflections. Students can explore the interactive map of all the participants’ work and physically see where each picture was taken in connection with the other photos. 

Cusick says that this project deepened her understanding of her students, as she discovered unknown passions for rowing or art or students who got up early just to watch the sun rise. It also helped Cusick connect to her personal mission and identity behind education. 

“Oftentimes [as teachers], we get stuck in this rote aspect [of teaching] assignments and grading and the literature,” says Cusick. “And we forget that at the center of everything we’re doing is the student. And this project placed our students at the center of everything we did … their exploration, their desire, their images, their choices.”

Murrell says that this was more than just an assignment. The assignment “elevated” the classroom experience by giving Murrell a taste of what it might be like to be a professional writer, getting feedback from other writers and providing it. Your work may be different from others’, but that’s nothing to be afraid of, Murrell says. 

“It’s a good different, it’s an eye-opening different, and I think that’s something people have to learn,” says Murrell. “You’re not all the same. You’re all different. … [but] you’re all different with the same goal, with the same feelings. I think this Sense of Place project really helped bring that similarity to light, because in different places, you have the same feeling of comfort, the same feeling of home away from home.”