Only Nonfiction?
Students in Mukwonago are stunned today after viewing a recent School Board email that was recently sent out to all common arts classroom teachers. The email specifically stated, “Effective immediately, we will be asking all sixth through eighth grade students to read only nonfiction material in all comm. arts classes.
” Why? The Mukwonago Area School District School Board believes that students are reading too many books about dragons, romance, magic, and futuristic societies rather than real world events and how to solve real world problems. All of the students were furious at this email. The kids in Ms. Sholtes’s English class were also shook when they saw the email, all of them yelling out “What?!” numerous times. Coincidently, during this point in time, the class was also doing an investigative journalism unit.
Finally, Ms. Sholtes said, “Well, there’s your new story… Write about it!” All the students got right to work, their pencils erupting with anger. About halfway through the writing period, students began to question why the School Board would do such a cruel thing. The kids all stopped and looked at each other. After a long period of time, Ms.
Sholtes finally announced that the email was fake. That she had sent it to herself, trying to get the students to write a more detailed, passionate articles. Everyone look at Ms. Sholtes strangely, but eventually their facial expressions showed relief. This reporter was also in the room that day, feeling the same relief that everyone else had felt. After everyone had calmed down, Ms.
Sholtes said, “Yes, you all know that the email was fake. But, I still want you to finish the article as if you didn’t know it was fake yet.” All the students went back to joyfully writing, knowing that they had their beloved fiction books back. At the end of the day, every student in that classroom had written detailed, thought-out, passionate articles, that might later be published. Although, this situation was a terrible situation because a certain object that everyone loved was being stipped from them.
On the other hand, the students wrote twenty times better than what they usually do. Overall, this was a great way for students to learn to cope with their emotions by writing them out onto paper, and an amazing was for teachers to get children to write passionately.
