Educational tweeters and bloggers across the Internet are sharing this impassioned post from Sandra Stiles, a middle school English teacher. Dismayed by a new reading program implemented in her district, which limits the books students can read and marginalizes “pleasure reading” to an at-home activity, Sandra has taken a stand.
“I decided to become a teacher to teach students. Not to teach them to hate reading. I will do as usual. Against the district I will modify my program and teach them about good books and put good books in their hands and if they keep those books then I will go out and buy more. Until they fire me I refuse to fail my students.”
How have we come to this? A teacher must risk her career to put books in the hands of her students?