When you read, you use your brain. What you've read is your perception. Comment and write about what you read. No advice is required, only your imagination of what you percieve is needed to write an essay. The teachers want to hear what you think, not what someone else thinks.
I need to come up with my own ideas, rather than what my class had discussed...
I'm not saying to disregard the current topic, but you must speak of what you know. If you don't know, that's when study comes in, then you can speak, and even then, it is still, your perception.