Today, students throughout Mukwonago, Wisconsin were specifically told that their School Board had banned all types of fiction books from being read and used in classrooms because they were not providing all the necessary skills for Language Arts and test scores had been slowly shrinking. The school board, at their last meeting had been discussing  that students were reading “little, if any” non-fiction at home and in classrooms. After listening to experts’ opinions and research, the board unanimously voted that all fiction books were to be removed from all classrooms and school libraries.

Mukwonago is traditionally a town where Language Arts is very important to the students. So you can imagine most of their reactions at first were like, “What?!”, then almost immediately turned to, “They just can’t do that to us!” As expected, the Language Arts teachers that heard this news were also not pleased one bit. Eruptions arose about how teachers cannot teach without fiction and multiple students stated that non-fiction was “boring” and they should start protest and petitions to overrule their school board’s decision.

Ms. Sholtes, an 8th grade Language Arts teacher was previously instructing her students how to write proper journalism and that most journalists wait for the perfect story. Oddly, without any hesitation, she said, “There you go. That’s your story.” The 8th grade students, furiously began writing down their thoughts about how the decision was so unfair to them and the teachers until one student piped up, “Wait, Ms. Sholtes, why did you send that email to yourself?” Murmurs from the desks began, discussing why their teacher would send an email to herself already sent to her. Another student chimed in, “This is all so fake. Look guys, ‘Mukwonago’ is spelled wrong. The school board would definately know how to spell the name of our town. Ms. Sholtes must’ve wrote this.”

Even though the “story” turned out to be false, the students still decided to run with it and should soon be publishing their stories. As for Ms. Sholtes’ class, they were excited that their teacher taught them some valuable lessons while keeping the environment enjoyable. For now, fiction plans to remain in their school, and yours, so enjoy fiction while it's still here!