Dear Reader, For 16 years now, our Summer Reading Contest has been inviting teenagers around the world to tell us about the recent Times pieces that have gotten their attention, and explain why. Students can submit either written comments or 90-second video responses For the second week of our 10-week challenge, we received 849 submissions, and chose as our winning essay a piece by Alvin Su, a student from New Orleans. Here is how he began his response to the recent Style article “Is It OK for Your Kids to ‘Rot’ All Summer?”: At six, I spent summer on a farm, chasing dragonflies and stacking bottle caps into kingdoms. No camps. No schedules. No countdowns. Just cicadas screaming into dusk and our bare feet pressed against hot cement. We called it summer, and it felt like freedom. Later, summer came with a price. I learned the word enrichment, and July became a checklist. Robotics camps. Leadership programs. STEM intensives. Calendars filled before spring had even ended. But I still remember one rare summer with no plans at all. Just the slow hum of an old fan …. Read the rest of Alvin’s response here. Week 4 of our contest ends Friday morning at 9 a.m. Eastern, and then Week 5 will begin. There is still plenty of time for teenagers to participate before summer ends! Sincerely, Like this email?
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