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Mistakes. So often in our teaching we have created a culture afraid of forming hypotheses. ‘Correctness Mongers’, my teacher in France calls us. Correct → cor + rect, “to bring in accordance with a standard or original, straight” (Etymonline). Why would I want anyone’s thinking, let alone my students’, to constantly align with my own?

“I have always struggled with and ”, I admit to my new student, a soft spoken fourteen year-old boy. He looks down still smiling and attempts to help his fellow dyslexic. “Well, the one with the is like something that happens to you. And the other is like what you do to someone…. I think.” He’s explaining parts of speech without realizing it.

My new fourth grader and I are meeting for the second time to study. She is new to me, but not new to difficulty. Not new to the constant attempt of making sense of something (the writing system) that often feels nonsensical. “Rules” that feel empty. Vacuous.

When the spring comes, with its new life and sunlight and warm breezes, I constantly find myself studying families having to do with wind.