I am a teacher in Florida who was forced to hide a book in her classroom.

• This year, a new Florida law mandated that all books in public schools be scrutinized for children.

• Don Folds, a high school social studies teacher, said he hid his book to comply with the law.

• He explained to Insider what it’s like to work as an educator in Florida now.

Insider’s Yelena Dzhanova spoke with Don Falls, a high school social studies teacher in Manatee County, Florida. The school district recently began enforcing a new Florida law that requires trained media her specialists to review all public school books. Many teachers, including Mr. Foles, have chosen to cover unreviewed books in the classroom rather than remove them.

Falls is Leading Plaintiff in Lawsuit Against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Over Stop WOKE Act Passed in 2022fight back against awakened brainwashing”Folds wants to block this law under the First Amendment.

The Stop WOKE Act is one of several recently passed laws aimed at restricting race and gender education in Florida.Earlier this month, DeSantis also I was blocked AP African American history education in the state.

Foles said the new law will make education more difficult and Florida could lose educators as a result.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

I am teaching Government and Economics this year. In her 38-year career, I have taught nearly every subject in social studies. I love teaching. And I love it every day.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis openly stated during his oath of office that this is a state where the Awakened Die. Our goal is to do everything we can to stop what we are aware of.

It’s all fake. If you know anything about education, you know that schools of any size don’t really exist, especially in Florida. That’s his base and he’s been pushing those things.

The latest change is a sweeping act of law requiring all public schools to go through a book review process. Books should be reviewed by an educated media specialist or librarian to ensure they are intended for children.

story continues

Last week, as an educator at Manatee High School in Bradenton, Florida, I received a note giving me three options. Whether it’s packing up all the books in the classroom, covering them, or going through a vetting process.

If you choose the last option, you’ll need to get approval to leave them on your classroom shelf.

We have a database named Destiny that marks books that have already been vetted and approved. Some of my books have gone through that process.

But if it happens to be a book that hasn’t been vetted or approved, I can’t give it to the kid. This is really unfortunate because the whole purpose of education is to embrace knowledge.It gives children knowledge, makes them read and think. And very, very sad.

I have hundreds of books in my room. To this day, former students say they loved coming to my classroom. Because I had bookcase after bookcase for great literature, history books, government books, and pretty much anything a child could want.

I have everything from presidential biographies to economics books. There is his 35-volume set that collects the complete works of Voltaire.I can already tell you that, with the exception of maybe candide, none of those books are in the system. Now, how often does your child want something? Not very often.

But the point is, it will probably take weeks to scrutinize all these books and put them into the system. So to me, this is just Big Brother looking over our shoulder and basically our First Amendment rights, free speech rights, student free speech amendments. Violate the rights of Article 1.

So I took the option of hiding them. I took a roll of chart paper and taped them together to hide the books on the shelf. cannot have them. We cannot pass them on to our children, nor let them read them. So I haven’t withdrawn my thesis. it’s still happening.

I would have been reprimanded if I had chosen not to follow the memo, but frankly I don’t really care. bottom. But I hope the state doesn’t really go that far.

I taped a small sign to the chart paper that said, “Closed by Order of the Governor.” It was a bit of an understatement, and it elicited laughter from some of my students. .

Attacks on education demoralize many teachers. I think the level of morale among teachers in the 38 years I’ve been doing this is probably the lowest I’ve ever seen. Because of this, it has been hit hard.

This process is an unnecessary distraction from what we should all be doing. Extra time teachers have to deal with things like this.

Chart paper is still up and may be removed next week. When my kids walk in my room and see this chart covering the bookshelves, I just think it’s funny. But they are also fed up. they just shake their heads. They cannot understand why someone would try to prevent them from accessing the book.

Ironically, this week was literacy week at this school. So we’re in Literacy Week the week we have to cover up the books.

I love teaching and I can’t imagine myself anywhere else.

I think you can consider working in a private school. But Manatee High School, I went here. My kids and my wife went here. I will teach you here. This is my community, and I’m not going to let the ideologues in the governor’s office stop doing what I love.

If I could meet DeSantis in person, I would ask him if he understood the ramifications of some of his actions. I want to ask him. I want him to think about the impact this will have on teachers, students, and classrooms. I hope you understand that I am discouraging you from choosing to do so.

A kid came to me on Wednesday and said he was interested in the president’s biography. We shouldn’t have, but we gave the kid some biographies.

So if a child comes to me and wants a book, I make sure the child gets the book.

Read the original article on Business Insider