Tomorrow is a planning day to turn in grades and get ready for the second semester. Sounds like a nice day, especially as my grades are actually done early for once. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But tomorrow morning we have an hour-long meeting to get trained on the school-wide PSAT\/SAT administration later in the month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the same meeting, we are also being updated on Florida’s book policy, which says not only that every book is suspect of being inappropriate and harmful to minors, but that we should now be predicting which books might be offensive to a parent. In other words, we are being asked to be clairvoyant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is the language from an email we received this week: “Recently all principals received a memo from FDOE regarding instructional material and library materials.\u00a0\u00a0Section (s.) 1006.28(2)(a)1., Florida Statutes (F.S.), is unambiguously clear: \u201cEach district school board is responsible for the content of all instructional materials and any other materials used in a classroom, made available in a school or classroom library, or included on a reading list, whether adopted and purchased from the state-adopted instructional materials list, adopted and purchased through a district instructional materials program under s. 1006.283, F.S., or otherwise purchased or made available.\u201d Both the Floridians that you serve and I demand and expect you to exercise that responsibility before a parent is required to intervene.\u00a0 Please be mindful about the literature you have in your classroom libraries.\u00a0 \u201cNo library material shall be used, distributed, or made available to students if it contains content that meets the requirements found in the \u2018harmful to minors\u2019 statute.\u201d It further directs districts to, \u201cerr on the side of caution\u201d with material that is potentially harmful to minors and in violation of s. 847.012, F.S. The statutory standard is established. The training is mandatory. Both must be applied.<\/em><\/strong>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has had a chilling effect in Florida. I know teachers in my own school, on my own hall have put away their classroom libraries. At my school, we are told to teach only novels specifically listed in the BEST standards. Many teachers no longer teach novels for fear of getting in trouble, but no one seems concerned about that<\/em>. Novels don’t necessarily raise test scores. There is a lot of confusion, purposeful confusion about whether having an “inappropriate” book in your classroom can get a teacher charged with a felony. Whether it can or not, the state has does nothing to dispell this idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They claim this is about parental rights. Saying we need to “exercise that responsibility” (to monitor books) “before a parent is required to intervene.” Listen, we had a system in place. Novels for use with whole classes were vetted by a committee and the media specialist. Parents were always informed about what would be read in class and could always opt out of particular books. Parents have always had the right to opt out of classroom libraries or the school library for their child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 35 years no parent has ever objected to my class library or to any text I have taught. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If they had, their student would have been given other options. Instead of the novel the class is reading, an alternate title chosen with the parent. Instead of my classroom library, a book brought from home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is actually about the rights of some parents to stifle the rights of other parents who want their almost-adults to read widely and freely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, some books are not age-appropriate, but we already had mechanisms in place to deal with those. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not about age-appropriateness. This is about some people wanting to restrict what other people are allowed to read or to allow other people’s children to read. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is censorship. It is against the first ammendment. It is un-American. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And I have to attend a meeting about it my auditorium tomorrow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tomorrow is a planning day to turn in grades and get ready for the second semester. Sounds like a nice day, especially as my grades are actually done early for once. But tomorrow morning we have an hour-long meeting to get trained on the school-wide PSAT\/SAT administration later in the month. During the same meeting, Read More >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[392,363,425],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1336,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions\/1336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}