In this article, the author relates an incident at the elementary school in Maryland where she was teaching 3rd grade at the time. After the author finally managed to get her students to read--and enjoy it--the principal insisted they watch TV instead. Odd as the accusation was, it was made even odder by the fact that her students were reading when the principal caught them not watching television. She had walked in, and there they were, sitting as silently as a group of 3rd graders can, every one of them absorbed in a book. What they were "supposed" to be doing was watching the school's morning news show. Because this was an inner-city school with abysmal test scores and a learning day far too short to cover the material necessary to help these students, the author hoarded every educational second. She devoted the time to silent reading and trained the kids to ignore the screen (no small feat with TV-addicted children). The author felt that the principal should have been one of the people most excited about this literary turn of events.