About the Program

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The New Commons is a program for high school students to deeply read core texts and experience re-enchanted, co-created learning through dialogue. 

The Founder & Tutor
What You Get from The Program
Research & Sources

Our Mission

At a time when reading practices are dramatically changing, and literacy is declining, our mission is to offer a space where students from all backgrounds and skill-levels become more fearless readers, collaborative learners, and empowered speakers through discussions on core literary texts. By using research-backed frameworks and a highly personalized approach, The New Commons helps students read full books and analyze them through play, exploration, and respectful group discussion.

Who We’re For

The New Commons was designed as a supportive extracurricular program for high school students to read core texts and practice structured, collaborative dialogue in tandem with their classwork.

During the school year, we hold small, short-term online cohorts on weekends and outside of exam season. In the summertime, online cohorts are held in three-week intensives. Each cohort is capped at six students. Learn more about our Program Structure!

Throughout the course of the program, we support every student in their intellectual, creative, and academic pursuits, from the very first mentorship meeting to the last group session. 

If you’re a 9th through 12th-grade student, or a newly graduated senior, who wants a personal, inclusive, and community-oriented space to read full texts and practice collaborative dialogue—

Welcome, this program is for you.

What You Get from The Program

1. Cohort Membership

Students apply to join small, short-term online cohorts, which will gather around core texts and commit to reading the whole book. As a member of the cohort, each student will bring their knowledge and experience of the text, attend each session, and engage in dialogue.

These cohorts are always capped at six students, so apply early!

Join a 2026 Cohort

2. Reading Accountability

Students will read a full text, not to write an essay or get quizzed on an exam, but for the sake of learning, dialogue, and discovery. Using our reading and discussion guides, students will be well-equipped to spend longer time periods in deep reading and thought, to show up to sessions to discuss that reading experience, rather than to have the “right”  answer.

Explore the Program Structure

3. Mentorship in Office Hours

Mentorship is at the heart of the program. We provide ongoing one-on-one support for each student's unique questions, challenges, and experiences. In 20-minute guided conversations, students check in with the founder, Lauren, on reading progress, develop strategies for participation, and explore themes and topics that have been important in their reading. 

Explore Office Hours

By completing the reading and participating in each session, students will receive a Certificate of Completion.

Founder & Tutor

The New Commons was founded in 2026 by Lauren Frey, a lifelong reader and an experienced facilitator, with a passion for dialogue and love for the humanities. 

Education

As an undergrad, I was a passionate journalism-turned-English major at a small liberal arts college in Los Angeles, where I was also a student in a discussion-based Great Books Program. During those four years, I read hundreds of books, wrote dozens of papers, and spent (literally) hundreds of hours in peer-to-peer dialogue. I also studied abroad at Oxford University for a semester, which gave me direct experience with the tutorial system. All of these experiences have deeply informed the vision and mission behind The New Commons.

After I graduated, I moved to Washington, D.C., where I received my M.A. in English with Distinction from Georgetown University in 2019 and was a Lannan Poetry Fellow. Long-form seminar discussions were always at the heart of this program, too, which I loved — and it solidified for me that well-facilitated dialogue around core texts was essential to my own teaching philosophy. 

Career

After receiving my master’s degree, I decided to leave academia. Instead, I found myself in an exciting but unexpected career: public health communications consulting. Over the next five years (and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic), I took on senior roles, working with Directors at the NIH to leaders in Medicaid and Behavioral Health in Oregon, managing teams and training fresh graduates, and doing incredible work with amazingly smart and talented people.

After six years in the corporate world, I knew I wanted to reinvent my career and return to my love for literature and the humanities. I just didn’t know what that would look like yet.

The Seed of an Idea

In June 2025, a month after I left my job in public health consulting, I was sitting on the bench outside a community garden in Portland, where I was meeting a friend for our first volunteer adventure together.

My phone buzzed with a notification. It was a headline from The New Yorker: “What’s Happening to Reading?” by Joshua Rothman. I opened it immediately, and by the time my friend pulled up her car, I’d read it in its entirety. 

As we were given the task to harvest sweet peas and tear down dead vines, the article’s main question was tugging at me: Why read when AI can do it for you? What happens when reading becomes more automated?

These were the Opening Questions (if you will) that led to the germination of an idea, followed by an eight-month journey of building The New Commons. I wanted to create an accessible, supportive program where high school students could get early exposure to low-pressure yet intentional spaces to practice reading rigorously and meet in long-form dialogue. A program that resists automated reading by equipping students to read, that complements the work they are already doing in their classrooms, and in preparation for exams, and that forms relationships through intentional shared reading experiences.

    • I was born and raised just outside of Portland, Oregon. I attended Clackamas High School, where I sang in the A-Choir and proudly played Factory Woman #3 in a production of Les Misérables. 

    • The book that first transformed my experience of reading and opened my eyes to the beauty of language and storytelling was Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston, which I read in my 11th-Grade AP Lit class. Now many years later, I am so excited to teach this book in The New Commons.

    • My favorite book of all-time is Circe by Madeline Miller, a feminist revision of the Greek myth.

    • In June 2025, I married my partner, a Massachusetts-native, along the Columbia River Gorge. We love our ties to both the East and West Coasts!

  • M.A. in English with Distinction, Georgetown University, 2019.

    • Thesis earned distinction and resulted in publication in an international journal, Textual Cultures.

    B.A. in English, Biola University, 2017, magna cum laude.

    • Member of Torrey Honors College, graduated with distinction.

    • Semester at Oxford University, studying British Literature, Philosophy of Science and Social Science.

Research & Sources

The New Commons is deeply indebted to so many authors, teachers, journalists, and organizations whose work has informed this program. The latest sources and research areas will be updated here frequently.