Ok, I give. Not that I have a vote anymore, but I concede that if we are going to continue teaching Shakespeare’s plays to high school kids, we need to provide them with modern English translations. Please understand, though, that this capitulation pierces my heart. I used to get a huge buzz whenever a high […]
That’s the question the second grader asked me. I paused, scratched my metaphorical head, and asked her to use it in a sentence. “You know,” she said. “Like, I woodna done that if youda said not to.” I of course seized the teachable moment and explained that woodna was really two words if you didn’t […]
As a beginning reader I was unable to hear the difference between the words “magician” and “musician.” Why, I wondered, with the apparently infinite combinations of letters and sounds, would we use the same collection to describe these two differing occupations? When I first approached the door of my first-grade classroom, trying to hide behind […]