By Kenzie Gamlin | HCCSC Communications Intern
Huntington North High School juniors had a special English class on Thursday, April 6, in honor of reading “The Great Gatsby” in class. “The Great Gatsby” follows multiple wealthy people in New York City, coming from opposing sides of the Long Island bay. The two sides were named, respectively, the East Egg and the West Egg.
While each side was known for its wealth, back in the 1920s when “The Great Gatsby” took place, the West Egg was known for holding “new” money, or wealth collected individually in recent years, while the East was known for its “old” money, or inherited money that has been in families for many generations.
Ruthann Rust has been teaching English at HNHS for six years and has taught, read and annotated “The Great Gatsby” numerous times. She found that the teaching of the book landed right around the Easter holiday every school year. This gave her the idea of combining an Easter egg hunt with the neighborhood eggs in “The Great Gatsby.”
The 11th grade English classes gathered in the library; teachers and peers came together to celebrate the Easter holiday and of course “The Great Gatsby.” Hundreds of eggs were hidden throughout the library with slips of paper held inside of them. On the papers, statements were written explaining someone’s living or financial situation. Students had to decide from these statements whether the writer was someone who lived in the East Egg, the West Egg or neither egg at all.
Each student was given a slip of paper to record their answers on and then they were released to search for six eggs. Students jumped out of their chairs to be the first one to find their eggs and give their correct answers to one of the many English teachers that held the library down.
After finding their eggs, students sat down with one another to collaborate and discuss which eggs were considered East and which were considered West. After only a few minutes of roaming the library and coming up with answers, Spencer Blackburn checked his answers with a teacher and became the champion of the fifth period 2023 EastOR Egg Hunt.
Blackburn received a special prize of a ring pop, while the rest of the participants received a smaller piece of candy for their phenomenal efforts. But the hunt did include one extra surprise: a single, blue egg that held a small plastic chicken provided by English teacher Carla Mobley. This egg was considered the best egg to find, for the winner, Joe Covey, earned an additional prize from Mobley’s “surprise drawer.”
After the hunt, students had the options to work on other school projects or complete Gatsby-themed word searches, coloring pages or participate in a Gatsby-themed photoshoot. The egg hunt went very well for the classes, so well that teachers and sophomores are looking forward to continuing this tradition next year.