In preparation for the 2025-2026 school year, Mercersburg Academy has restructured the staffing of the evening help centers. Formerly known as the Language Media, Math and Science, and Writing Centers, the new “Help Center” has been reimagined as a hub where all students get assistance with their specific academic need.
Michele Poacelli, English Department Head and Director of the Writing Center explained, “We’re just calling it The Hub. So everybody goes there, and they hang out. It's kind of fun, and it's good energy in the room." She continued, "When kids come in to get help, they go to breakout spaces, and the breakout spaces are all along the third floor of Irvine. The rooms just become the breakout spaces where people go with the trained tutors to get the help that they need."
Poacelli also highlighted even more minute changes to the Help Center function. “Retakes are not happening in the health center anymore. They’re happening during study hall because study hall is fine.”
Associate Head of School Jen Craig downplayed the significance of these changes, stating, “There actually aren't any substantive changes for students; we've kept all help centers open for the same amount of time and the centers are still covered with adults and student assistants, but the way we run the adult supervision has changed.” She continued, “We are confident that students have multiple, effective avenues for academic support. At the same time, we recognize that the level of adult supervision in the centers far outpaced actual need, and we can create greater workload equity by adjusting how that supervision is assigned.”
Craig did, furthermore, elaborate on how these changes came about. “First, we want to acknowledge how impressed we are by the efficacy of our student tutors. Whenever I’ve filled in as a substitute, I’ve been struck by how talented, reliable, and committed they are—so continuing to lean on them was never in question,” she said. “Second, we revisited the practice of students receiving extra help from adults in the dorms. For several years, this was discouraged, but upon reflection, we found the original reasoning unconvincing. We believe that students should be able to seek help from the adults on duty, which meaningfully expands access to support across the school. In addition, the availability of appropriate online resources has only grown, and together these two factors ensure that all students have greater, more diverse ways to access help.”
Associate Head of School for School Life, Julia Maurer, did extensive work to justify the change. “I collected the data. We looked at the tap-in data on the students’ Blue Cards. Students frequent the [Lenfest] Library and the Burgin Center [for the Arts]. Then we looked at the numbers for the Writing Center [and for] the Language Media Center (LMC), which were lower than those for students using the Math and Science Center.”
Language Department Head Benjamin McNeil reinforced Maurer’s point, saying, “They restructured it because we didn't get a lot of traffic last year, so they combined all the centers so all the students go to one place to get help. I think it's actually better for language because some students had trouble just going to the LMC for language, but now it's like - ‘Oh, I can get math help here and after this I'll get some language help.’ This might create a little more traffic for languages.”
Craig continued, reinforcing the necessity of the changes and their benefits, stating, “To keep the help centers, Burgin, and library open for the same amount of time while providing greater workload equity across night-time supervision and to shift extra help to a more relational and flexible model for all extra help. It reinforces the purpose of study hall and promotes the academic relational work in the dorm; it's always good to try and improve practices that are inequitable; trying to build a healthier balance of care for the adults while providing high-level support for students.”
Jim Malone, physics teacher and math center faculty proctor, agreed, saying that the changes were made “to improve the efficiency of faculty duty assignments,” but also that “it’s too early to tell” what effects the restructuring will have on learning in these spaces.
Poacelli highlighted some of the struggles resulting from the reorganization. “There was a really specific community that happened on your night because you're coming with those four kids, and it was just sort of an intimate kind of space and you got to know each other really well and you had great conversations,” she said. “I think that maybe some of that small discipline-specific kinds of community that forms might be lost. I think that’s a shame, and I’m saddened by that.” The shift to operations has also demanded adjustments. “We used to have centers running on two floors. We’ve now consolidated them to run on one floor in Irvine Hall. The new location and spaces [have posed] a challenge,” said Maurer.
McNeil added, “I think the disadvantage is that it's a larger group [gathering in the Hub space] and it could be noisier and more confusing. People can get lost in the shuffle and maybe not feel as comfortable to go to a big, large group to ask for help.”
With these changes, the help centers have some goals planned for the year ahead. “We [wanted] to make sure that the student helpers are really committed to the role this year,” stated Maurer. “We were seeing [that] some students weren’t always attending on their nights last year. That [goal] would have been true even regardless of the changes.”
Malone added, “I think it's a little weird, a little hard to get used to. But it seems to me that the kids are getting help the way they need, which is what matters.”