The need to read and to trust teachers

A good classroom has a space where students can be alone with a book.

Maybe it’s a beanbag chair, an empty corner with a small rug or a rocking chair. The purpose is for kids to be able to read in a sometimes-crowded classroom.

I worked at a Florida school with a program called DEAR, for “drop everything and read.” Twenty minutes a day at a designated time, students and teachers read anything we wanted. Students brought a comic book, library book, newspaper article, bike manual — anything in print. Just read.

To walk on campus at DEAR time was to find a quiet school that was growing confident readers without judging content. A comic book had as much value to one student as “My Body, Myself ” had to another. Parents reminded kids to pack their DEAR book for school.

I wonder if a DEAR program would fly in today’s Florida. The governor’s labored acronym for HB 7, known as the Stop W.O.K.E. Act (Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) is not as specific in its meaning as that of DEAR.

For example, could a student bring “The Watsons Go to Birmingham” to DEAR time? It’s about an African-American family from Michigan who visits Grandma in 1963 Alabama, at a time of extreme racial violence. Its intended reader is 4 to 8 years old. Could a fellow classmate glance at a paragraph from the book and “feel bad?”

Kids have different reading abilities and interests at different ages. The best teachers understand and teach a classroom of individuals. To have a teacher confident in the ability to teach without fear of the state should be a goal of any parent with a child in school.

I trust that behind the doors of their classrooms, teachers are still growing the future without judgment, and I hope without fear. Nancy S. Cohen, Lighthouse Point Editor’s Note: A federal judge struck down the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act” in November as “positively dystopian.” The state is appealing the decision.