Read for Twenty

Ever since elementary school, I have been taught to read for twenty minutes everyday. Now let’s be real, have I always done my reading? No, definitely not. As much as I enjoy reading, sometimes it just isn’t practical for me to read every single day for twenty minutes. Licking Valley Local School District enabled the policy many years ago, as I can not remember a time when the Elementary School did not enforce it. The Read for 20 campaign aims to have kids exposed to the world of reading at a young age and to hopefully create many lifelong readers.

According to an article about the Read for 20 program, “Starting in kindergarten, if a student reads 20 minutes a day at home, they will hear 1.8 million words per year. They will have read for 851 hours by 6th grade and on standardized tests, they will likely score better than 90% of their peers” (Scripps Media). If the facts are true, many schools should look at the results and realize that this program should be spread world wide, merely for the benefit of the students. Reading can open the eyes of not only children, but for adults too.

The Read for 20 program has attempted to spread to high schools, but unfortunately has not been very successful. High school students are not quite as prone to enjoy the benefits of reading. We often find ourselves loathing the inescapable class readings so much that even reading for fun becomes a chore. The next step for the Reading for 20 program, as they continue to enforce their goal, should be to broaden their horizons and extend the 20 minute reading challenge to not only elementary kids, but also to high schooler students and even our teachers.

Reading is a crucial part in a child’s learning and development and it is our job as adults to bring the light of reading into their eyes and open the many doors that reading can offer. It is the responsibility of teachers and parents alike to ensure that the children around them are able to grow to learn the stories that have traveled from one generation to the next in order to carry on the traditions of society and keep that sense of returning culture.