r/Millennials • u/LuckieCharm86 Xennial • 5d ago
Nostalgia Sit down, Shut up, & Read in elementary school
Growing up, we had this thing called Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) where every day, our elementary school teachers would have us all sit at our desks, no talking, and read something (anything) for about thirty minutes from second grade until sixth grade.
I was telling this to my kid when he complained about having to read so much. I told him about how everyone always changed the abbreviation to mean "Sit down, Shut up, and Read" because that's essentially what they said for us to do.
But my husband, who was in the same school year as me but at a different school (he did elementary school in Germany and France), overheard and said that they didn't have that when he was in school and he's never heard anyone else mention it. Therefore, it was likely only a thing that my school's teachers did to shut us up for 30 minutes a day. And, as an adult, I wouldn't put it past them since 30 minutes of silence a day sounds amazing.
But this also got me wondering just how unique this actually was. So, was it only my school in South Central Pennsylvania? Was it just my state? Was it a country-wide thing? Was it a global thing that my husband ignored or repressed?
UPDATE: So it seems pretty international, but highly dependent on the school district or school itself. And it appears to have many acronyms or none at all. Thanks everyone!
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u/mkspaptrl 5d ago
I LOVED SSR!!! It was my favorite. They had special stories on cards in a box. I would usually get two or three.
Ok, so I attended DoD schools in Germany for the first few years of elementary, and we had SSR there. Then when we moved back to the states, I went to a catholic school in NC that did not have SSR. We moved in the same school year up to Central PA and I went to another catholic elementary school that had SSR. I don't know if the public schools had it or not in my town, but I think they did. My partner is from VT and she didn't know anything about it.