The Pleasant Valley School District has always held education to a standard of excellence. Pleasant Valley has improved vastly over the years, becoming one of the best schools in Iowa. A large part of the improvements results from their strategy of setting goals for the district and later capitalizing on them. One of the most significant parts of this vast educational spectrum are improvements in literacy and English. This is evidenced by the 20 minutes students spend each day participating in silent sustained reading, better known as SSR.

Silent sustained reading happens in every school in the district for at least 20 minutes a day. All students and teachers are supposed to stop all activities and pick up books to read. However, it was not always this way. Darren Eriksen, associate principal, explained how SSR came to be. He said, “When I first got a job at Pleasant Valley, we did not have SSR. In every classroom, we had TVs that played a station called Channel 1. It played an education channel that the students would listen to and get their news from.” But around 2002 to 2003, new evidence came about that started steering schools around America in a new direction.

Stephen M. Gardiner, author and teacher at the University of Washington, explained the theory behind SSR. “The theory behind sustained silent reading is that if students read more and enjoy it more, they will become better readers, the same theory that drives the basketball player to stand at the free-throw line after practice each day and shoot 100 free throws,” he said. The research spread around the United States, and schools like Pleasant Valley soon committed to the new system.

Research was not the only thing that pushed Pleasant Valley to SSR. Eriksen commented, “In addition to all the positives that come with SSR, the district also noticed Channel 1 was not catching the attention of the students as much as it used to. Also, we wanted to set higher goals for our literary test scores.” Despite the positives of SSR, many students do not take advantage of or enjoy their time in SSR. Jordyn Haessler, senior, said, “It was nice when I was a freshman or sophomore to catch up on homework, but as a senior, I would just like the day to end 20 minutes earlier instead. We don’t read during that time anyway.”

Amidst the growing annoyance of SSR, Pleasant Valley Schools will stick with it and its helpful effects. Some solutions have been proposed to improve SSR, such as having more interesting reading materials available or just providing the opportunity to skip it if needed. Until any major argument against SSR is made, however, twenty minutes of reading will continue to be a recurring part of the lives of students at Pleasant Valley.