Pa. Education Secretary Mumin visits Pottstown’s Rupert Elementary for Drop Everything and Read day

POTTSTOWN — You might not know if from looking at him, but 6-foot-6-inch Khalid Mumin considers himself to be a real “couch potato.”

At least that’s what the Pennsylvania Secretary of Education told the students at Rupert Elementary School Friday where he visited for Drop Everything and Read day. The book he chose to read to two fourth-grade classes was, by no small coincidence, titled “Couch Potato” and Mumin’s animated reading of the story made clear that he started his career in education as an English teacher.

According to the American Library Association, Drop Everything and Read day, or D.E.A.R., is “a national celebration of reading designed to remind families to make reading a priority activity in their lives. This day is celebrated every year on April 12th for author Beverly Cleary’s birthday.”

Rupert Principal Matt Moyer, who was Pennsylvania’s Principal of the Year in 2020, attended Shippensburg University at the same time as Mumin and wrangled an invitation to give his students a treat.

All evidence suggests it was as much of a treat for Mumin as his audience.

The story Mumin is about a potato, everyone in the story is a potato, who spends all his time on the couch with devices that do everything for him, computers, phones, TVs and more until one too many devices get plugged into the outlet and the power goes out.

The hero of the story ends up going outside and re-discovering the natural world. With Mumin as the narrator, this came complete with bird calls and other animal noises, as well as discussions about watching the sunset and even some questions about haikus.

“I wonder how much of my life I’ve spent in front of screens?” the hero asks while Mumin pantomimed a person watching TV, texting and working on a laptop all at the same time for Ron Fredericks’ fourth-grade class; certainly a relevant message for today’s students.

In Lindsay Hogan’s fourth grade class, one talkative student asked him if he “helps with the PSSAs,” which elicited nervous laughter from the adults in the classroom.

But the question he got asked about most was his height; a question he is apparently used to fielding. He showed both classes pictures of him when he was born as a premature baby, through fourth grade and said he did not really start to grow toward his current height until ninth grade. The students were visibly impressed.

Mumin praised the students’ intellect and insightful questions. “The things you are learning here I never learned in school when I was your age,” he said. “You are very smart and don’t let anyone ever tell you that you aren’t. We are all counting on you to build a better future for all of us.”

His reading responsibilities fulfilled, Mumin told MediaNews Group “it was lovely to be back in the classroom. This is where it all happens, and this is where we see everything we’re trying to do in education take place and where I find the real-life examples I can take back to policy discussions.”

These days, many of those policy discussions focus on the upcoming budget. Mumin said he was very excited when he saw Gov. Josh Shapiro’s first and second state budgets. “I’ve never seen a budget that put education as front and center as his.”

He said “when I first met with Gov. Shapiro, he said ‘we’re going to do bold things.’”

A superintendent for seven years at the Reading School District, Pennsylvania’s most under-funded district, and then at Lower Merion, Mumin has seen both extremes of the school funding gap and he said in the wake of the court decision declaring the state’s funding system to be unconstitutional, “I’m very excited to see what the fair funding formula will be able to accomplish and to make is sustainable.”