Matthew Caretti, who is entering his 13th year on the faculty at Mercersburg Academy, was the featured speaker at the school’s 2014-2015 Opening Convocation Sept. 7. Caretti grew up in Shoemakersville and graduated from Hamburg Area High School. He later earned a bachelor’s degree from Susquehanna University (where he played football) and a master’s degree from Shippensburg University.
Mercersburg Academy is located in Mercersburg, approximately 70 miles southwest of Harrisburg.
Caretti teaches English, serves as director of the school’s Writing Center, and works with Mercersburg Outdoor Education (MOE). His many duties at Mercersburg have included stints as assistant director of communications; as a dormitory dean; and as an assistant football coach. He has also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Africa and taught English at a university in South Korea. Caretti was the 2006 male winner of the Tour d’Afrique, a nearly 7,400-mile bicycle race from Egypt to South Africa.
Caretti’s brother, Erin (a fellow graduate of Hamburg Area High School), and his sister-in-law, Sydney, are also members of Mercersburg’s faculty. Erin Caretti teaches history and coaches volleyball and basketball, and Sydney Caretti teaches fine arts and coaches track & field at the school.
“Part of our shared mission, especially as the terms “school” and “learning” take on new scope and meaning in the 21st century, is to understand the difference between information, knowledge, and understanding,” Caretti said. “To have information and knowledge about life and the world and existence is not necessarily to understand it. Information and knowledge are often static in our minds; understanding by its very nature is dynamic. It operates in the realm of wonder, at the very source of creativity.”
Mercersburg, a boarding and day school for students representing grades 9-12, was founded in 1893. This year’s student body includes 437 students from 30 states and 40 countries.
For more information about the school, visit http://www.mercersburg.edu.
