Cursive handwriting requirements will be heading back to the classrooms.
The Arizona State Board of Education voted to have students learn cursive handwriting by the third grade.
While many schools did away with teaching cursive, Sahuarita School District did not.
Haley Fox, a 3rd grade teacher in Sahuarita, says there are many benefits of students learning to write in cursive.
"They get more experience with the hand-eye coordination alone is a huge factor and if they can really identify and really separate each letter it's recognizable," said Fox.
Along with enhancing handwriting skills, student engagement in the classroom magnifies as they're intrigued by what their hands can do.
"Their focus and attention goes up," she said. "Their attention to detail goes up because they're really trying to learn something new."
Children can now be creative with a skill that everyone in the classroom can grasp and succeed at.
"One of the benefits for that since it is faster, it's a little bit more fluent they're now able to focus on the content of what they're writing," she explained. "Those letters come naturally and the speed just goes with it and they're not really thinking about it and now they can focus on what they are writing."
Fox says, once they learn to fluently write cursive, they will not only be able to read but understand historical documents written centuries ago in cursive.
Educators say this new implementation will help raise the bar for academic success for Arizona students.
