In the recent months, Leander High School added ‘drop everything and read’ or DEAR time to Thursday pride times. According to English teacher, Dan Rucker, many students were controversial about the idea, but have now gotten used to it. However, a group of teachers have come up with an idea to make DEAR time more exciting for students by coming up with #LHSREADS.

“In response to Dr. Spicer’s call for an increased commitment to literacy, LHSreads was planned by myself, Coach Shelton, Ms. Mahoney and Ms. Mills,” english teacher Dan Rucker said. 

This group of teachers wanted to create a hashtag that would allow every student and teacher to join in the excitement of sharing a favorite book as well as finding new ones.

“Just as our Leander High School mission states, ‘Empowering all to a limitless future,’ I believe literacy skills are needed for our students to become productive 21st century citizens,” assistant principal Kyla Mills said. “My job is to encourage both students and teachers to reach their full potentials and to ensure opportunities exist to develop literacy skills and more.”

Students are getting involved promoting LHSreads. There will be a poster contest for a group of students, an organization or a gathering of friends and or classmates. To decide the winner of the contest, a group of judges will assess the posters.

“I think we all like to see a friendlier, kinder, more relaxed world,” Rucker said. “Practicing reading makes you aware of other experiences and more open-minded, while at the same time being well-informed enough to know whether you can trust what you read.”

According to Rucker, they will judge the posters based on attractiveness of design and effectiveness of the slogan.

“We hope to gain more involvement for our LHS Reads Fair on March 2,” Mills said. “We want students to join in our interactive portions such as slam poetry.”

The judges would like the groups to take a digital picture of themselves together, reading and print out the picture at 8 ½ “ X 11 “ to a piece of posterboard. The committee wants you to create a slogan to promote literacy. Afterwards, submit it to Coach Shelton, Ms. Mahoney, or Mr. Rucker. The winning group gets an after school pizza party.

“We hope to do a variety of LHSreads activities and events for years to come,” Rucker said. “Later this year, in March, we will have a literacy night celebration for parents and students. For many people, the first step to making the world a better place is picking up a book.”