Category: reading

Read aloud

I’ve already handed out the papers – forty words neatly divided into two columns with checkboxes next to each word; forty words we read aloud earlier this week as a group; forty words that should be easily accessible to high school students, although I am well aware that they will not be easy for the students in this room – and the students are calmly looking them over. Calmly, that is, until I say, “So, today’s challenge is to read these words out loud in your small groups.” As the words “out loud” leave my mouth, a hand shoots up.

“Um, I can’t read out loud because I’m dyslexic.”

I pause. In retrospect, I will be able to articulate some of the myriad thoughts that run through my mind before I speak, even though in the moment I respond immediately. Later, I will feel my hesitation, the laughter that wants to bubble up behind my shock, even the bit of the sadness that eventually seeps into my consciousness. Right then, however, I say casually, “Everyone in here is dyslexic. That’s why we’re here.”

Suddenly all eyes are on me. I stumble. “I mean, I guess you’re not all technically dyslexic, but every person in the room – including me, actually – has a reading disability. Literally. All of us. You’re here to get better at reading. If you were already good at it, you wouldn’t be here.”

As I finish speaking, I am briefly worried: am I being mean? But I know I’m not. I’m being honest. And I’m surprised. We’ve been together for almost a month. The class is called “Reading”. We’ve spent weeks working on basic phonics, practicing short vowel sounds, encoding phonemic word chains, and decoding three- and four-letter words. I can’t imagine even a casual observer who wouldn’t understand what we’re doing: Everyone is here to get better at reading.

In the classroom, students look around. I can’t catch all the various emotions, but I start to realize that they were not, in fact, all aware of the truth of the class. I remind them (again, I swear!) that we are here to support each other, that mistakes are normal and part of learning, that this is practice, that this is how we get better. I reassure them that they will not die from reading aloud. I promise that, as far as I know, there is no recorded history of students dying purely from reading – even reading aloud. They start to laugh. Soon enough, everyone is reading out loud, round-robin style, in their circle, and they are, as predicted, helping each other. Mistakes are made. Everyone survives. There are smiles and laughter and we are learning rather than worrying. By the end of class, people are willingly writing on the white board to practice encoding. When someone says, “I can’t really spell” someone else replies, “neither can most of us” and there are plenty of giggles. 

But after the students leave, I can’t shake the feeling that this moment needs my attention. What was happening when the student announced that they could not read out loud? Why were they still self-conscious in a room full of striving readers? At first, I think of how my co-teacher and I have worked to make this class respectful of the learners: students who are still striving to learn to read in high school are typically students who have not been well served by our system; they are not dumb, they simply haven’t received the instruction they need. The reasons behind that are as unique as our students, but it’s still true. We designed this class to honour them and treat them as the intelligent beings they are, so maybe we should take some comfort in the fact that they did not realize that they were all here for reading instruction. Still, as much as I like a good pat on the back, the moment continues to gnaw at me.

Long after school ends, I’m walking the dog when I suddenly realize what I witnessed: despite having a learning community of support and care, our students have been working so hard for so long to hide their reading struggles that they haven’t had time to notice that others are struggling, too. They spend much of their social and cognitive energy protecting their identity and sense of self, and as a result they cannot easily focus on others. I imagine spending my work day trying to cover up something that I see as a major deficit – as if all I did all day long was try to hide a giant stain on my clothing. I imagine being so busy covering that stain in creative ways that I don’t have time to see that others have stains, too. No, worse: I am so concentrated on hiding the stain that I don’t really look at others; I just assume they are wearing much better clothes than I am. I keep one hand on that spot and sometimes miss things going on around me because I’m worried. If I relax and my hand creeps away from the stain, I have to quickly put it back down, maybe glance around and make sure no one else saw it. By the end of the day, I am exhausted and not able to remember everything that happened.

All of this explains why, at the end of September, the students in our Reading class haven’t fully understood that they are in a class where everyone is learning to read better, a class where, ideally, they can relax a little. It may be a while before they believe that everybody else in the room is making mistakes, too. It may be even longer before they trust each other enough to get things wildly wrong, to make outrageous guesses, and to allow themselves to do the hard work of learning to read. I realize, too, that I have more work to do to make this a space of hope and freedom, to let reading class help students be more fully themselves.

I reflect for a while and consider ways to tweak the class for increased student agency and more time for relationship-building. Clearly, I decide, we need more laughter. Clearly, we need more talk. And yes, clearly we need more read alouds. I’m on it.

What does it mean to be American?

It’s been twenty years since I taught American Lit to 11th graders in a high school in Washington, DC. After I’d taught the course a few times, I used to start the class with the question students would answer on the final exam: What does it mean to be American? In September, students answered glibly: duh, you have to be born here. But even as they said that, they could feel that it wasn’t right, so they would hack away at the edges of the answer: you have to have an American parent, or maybe an American passport. But a cursory look showed that didn’t work, either. First, not all Americans have passports and second, does the passport make a person American? The rest of the school year just made things more complicated.

Were the Pilgrims (born in Europe) and other early settlers American? We read some of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation. Ok, the students said, the Pilgrims count as American (even though “America” didn’t exist at the time and obviously the original settlers weren’t born here); if you came to America for a better life, that counts. I complicated things: So, if people who fled their homeland in search of freedom count as American, what about people who do the same in modern times? We read short stories by Edwidge Danticat (American, born in Haiti) and Jhumpa Lahiri (American, born in England to Indian parents). Are their characters American? 

What about the people who already lived on the continent when the colonists arrived? What of the Native Americans? (Honestly, I’m a little relieved to realize that even 20+ years ago we read at least one speech by a Native American, though we should have done much more.) And what if you didn’t choose to come? What of people who were enslaved? Surely Jim in Huckleberry Finn was American. 

Maybe being American is about a set of values? We looked at Puritan leader (born in England) John Winthrop’s “City upon a Hill” (from his essay “A Model of Christian Charity”) and considered what he calls on fellow Puritans to try to create: a community of virtue, effort, and compassion. We read the beginning of the Declaration of Independence (written by Thomas Jefferson, born in the colony of Virginia) and excerpts of (French author) de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” Does he see in the mid-1800s what Winthrop dreams of two centuries earlier? Is that what Huck Finn seeks when he decides to “light out for the Territory”? Is it what Jay Gatsby is striving for as he reaches for the green light? What Janie longs for in Their Eyes Were Watching God?

Gatsby is definitely American – no question about it – but there is the pesky concern of the “foul dust [that] floated in the wake of his dreams.” Perhaps, students thought, Americans had strayed from important original values, as Jonathan Edwards (born in America) thundered in his famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Again, this gets complicated. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne’s (born in Europe) sin is the impetus for the whole novel, but in the end, (like Gatsby? unlike Gatsby?) she is the best of them all, except for maybe her daughter Pearl (born in America) – but Pearl takes her riches and moves to Europe. Hester stays in the New World. So who is American?

But, those are just characters, the students protested. True enough. But many real live Americans, good Americans, I insisted – Americans who shaped our nation – were sinners and criminals. Some students were doubtful – 20+ years ago was, I think, a more innocent time. Still, I said, Roger Williams (born in England) was banished from Massachusetts for advocating religious tolerance and the separation of church and state. We read Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience” and Martin Luther King, Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” We read Walt Whitman, Zora Neale Hurston, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, and more. One year we read My Antonia and made popcorn balls. Always we came back to our central question.

(How did I get them to read so much? I have no idea.)

By the end of the course, no matter what we read, we had a massive tangle. Americans, it seemed, could be born anywhere and live anywhere. They could be Americans by birth, by choice or by force. They could be saints and sinners, criminals and leaders. And then it was time for the exam. We ended where we started: “What does it mean to be an American?” The answers were always complicated.

****

Last week, on the 13-hour drive from South Carolina to Buffalo, my two sisters and I had plenty of time to talk. We usually see each other only once a year, and we never run out of conversation. This year, after a gas stop in West Virginia and a possible sighting of ICE agents, our talk turned to politics and family. 

I guess you could call our family “blended,” but mostly I think of it as chaos held together by love. Even if I just tell you about the children (my six various siblings) who go with my dad and stepmom, things get complicated. My step grandmother was born Dutch and became an American; my stepmom is Alabaman through and through. I was born in the US but am now a dual citizen. My children, born and raised in Canada, are dual citizens. My partner is pure Canadian, but his mother, my mother-in-law, is a dual citizen; my father-in-law is 100% American. One of my sisters was born in Panama on an Air Force Base, but she doesn’t remember it at all and does not speak Spanish. Her daughter, my niece, born in the US, does speak Spanish and is dating a young man whose family is Mexican (his dad was born there; I can’t remember about his mom); he is American. My sister-in-law is a naturalized American who was born and raised in Cuba. Her mother is living with them (very legally) but is not yet a citizen. My brother, her husband, is pretty much a good ol’ boy (in the best of ways), but his kids have olive skin and dark hair and speak both Spanish and English. Except for my sister-in-law’s mother, I would say all these people are American. Even she may be a future American.

Adding in my mom’s side – she has four siblings – doesn’t make things any more clear. My uncle married a Filipina woman who is now American. One of their two sons, my cousins, just got out of the Marines, so definitely American, right? But when he was on tour, children in Saudi Arabia made the “slant eye” face at him, annoying him to no end. My mother’s sister married a Brit, and they live in the Cayman Islands; their child, my cousin, is American-British-Caymanian. He went to college in the US and worked in NYC before meeting an American woman and moving back to Cayman. Their children were born in Cayman. All except my uncle have American passports. 

As a family, we are Lutheran, Catholic, Presbyterian, Jewish, atheist. We are white, Asian and Latino. We speak English, Spanish, Tagalog, and French. We are gay, straight and bi. We are addicts and we abstain.  We have committed crimes and been arrested for them or gotten away with it. We have done good things and been recognized for them or overlooked. We have high school diplomas, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, MDs or PhDs. We are business owners, doctors, teachers, CPAs, hourly employees, unemployed, researchers and more. We were born in six countries, and we currently live in three countries; we have lived in many, many more. We voted for Harris or for Trump or not at all. We are all American.

In the car, my sister worried about a friend who is married to a US permanent resident who was born in El Salvador. His parents brought him here when he was a toddler. As a young teen, he got involved with a gang and committed “a bad crime” (yes, it is bad). He was arrested and went to jail. He served his time, got out, got a job and got married. Now in his mid-40s, he has never committed another crime. As we drove north, he was on his way south to his annual check-in with immigration, and they were terrified. The family has money and a lawyer, and a no-deportation order. But they had no idea if, after he followed the law and went to the courthouse, he would come back out or be disappeared. “We talk about ICE deporting ‘criminals,’” my sister said, “and everyone seems to think that is ok; but he’s a good person who did an awful thing. He’s here legally. Should we deport him because of something he did when he was 15? Why can’t we talk about the human cost? When did we stop thinking of immigrants as fully human?”

As we drove through the mountains of West Virginia, I mused, “What does it mean, then, to be an American?” I still don’t know, exactly, but I am sure the definition should be rooted more in love than in hatred. If there’s one virtue that my loving, chaotic family and all those texts I used to teach have in common, it is compassion. 

Well, maybe not “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” but really, that one is kind of over the top.

I bought you a book

She had grade 9 English with me and, though it’s hard for me to believe, she’s in grade 12 now which means we’ve been smiling at each other and saying hello in the hallways for three years. In seven weeks, she’ll graduate, yet it was only a few days ago that I realized I’d never told her the story.

Oddly, I’ve told a lot of other people the story: how we were both new to the school; how she was quiet but eager; how she finished reading a book then asked me shyly if I had any books about Asia. She didn’t even ask for something set in Bangladesh – her home country – just anywhere in Southeast Asia. Oh, how I wanted to say yes! I scoured my bookshelves – my classroom library suddenly seemed so paltry – but I could only come up with one, and it didn’t really fit: it was really about a girl living in the US who was dealing with issues of sexuality. The 14-year-old in front of me wasn’t ready for that book; she wanted something that reminded her of home.

I was sad to have to tell her that I didn’t have anything, really. We found another good book, and she continued to read, but I couldn’t shake my disappointment. I looked online to find books about Bangladesh. I checked out Samira Surfs from the public library – too young, too refugee-focused. I found books set in Pakistan, books by white authors, books for adults… 

As the school year continued, I had to confront a sad truth: my classroom library was designed for a different student population. At my new school, the books I had didn’t reflect the students in the room. I knew I needed to address the problem, but I also knew I needed money to do it. 

At this point, I applied for a classroom library grant from the Book Love Foundation (founded by Penny Kittle). I asked two senior students to write me a recommendation; they also helped me with my video. And then… I won a grant! Oh, the books I bought – books set in places around the world. Sports books and fantasy books and realistic fiction. Graphic novels and novels in verse and memoirs with main characters from places my students knew and I did not. And yes, a book set in Bangladesh.

By the time the books came in, she was in grade 10 and our paths rarely crossed, so I didn’t think to tell her what she had inspired. Last year, I barely saw her at all. This year, though, our schedules overlap, and I see her often. And this year, I finally realized that I’d never told her about the books. So, last week I told her. She was startled. She didn’t remember asking for a book and she was surprised that I remembered where she was from. She blushed a little and we went on our way.

Then, a few days later, there was a knock at the classroom door. Could she come in? Could she see the books? I showed her what I could find on the shelves, but I had to laugh: so many of the books that I would have offered her if only I’d had them then – Amina’s Voice, Amina’s Song, Amira and Hamza, The Last Mapmaker – weren’t there because they’re being read by current grade 9 students. Still, I showed her Saints and Misfits, and Love from A to Z, and The Patron Saints of Nothing – and listen, it’s not perfect, but oh how she smiled.

Three years later, her request and the Book Love grant have changed everything. 

(If you are interested in information about applying for the grant, feel free to reach out to me – though honestly the link has all the information; if you are interested in donating to the foundation, please don’t hesitate. All kids deserve to see themselves in good books!)

When an English teacher is ailing #SOLC25 22/31

This is not the post I had planned for today. The plan was to write early, comment liberally (catching up on the blogs I’ve missed this week – so many) and take a nice long walk. Then, I was going to grade papers, maybe craft a little and generally be productive. Instead, I’ve spent most of the day in bed, sleeping off and on and generally feeling miserable. Super frustrating.

Since I’ve taken to my bed and am feeling sorry for myself, I’ve been thinking of Jane Austen – as one does. Have I caught a violent cold? I have not been coughing, so I don’t think so. Do I have a putrid tendency? I’m not 100% sure what that is, but I doubt that’s my primary ailment Rather, I find I have feverish symptoms and my head aches acutely. Oh! And I’m definitely languishing a bit, but my sleep brings me rest, not delirium, so no need to send for the apothecary… yet. Finally, while I am discontented at the moment, I do not fancy myself nervous, which is good because darling Jane has little patience with people’s nerves. Luckily, I am no fanciful, troublesome creature!

I will acknowledge that I am nowhere near as sick as Marianne Dashwood after the horrid Willoughby uses her so poorly, but I may be nearly as sick as Jane Bennet after she walked to Netherfield in the rain. Either way, I am missing a devoted sister to nurse me back to health. I shall have to send my sisters a letter to let them know that they have failed in their duty to attend to me in my time of need. Luckily for them, Andre has returned from his afternoon outing, and he is coddling me (a little), though no possets as of yet. Perhaps he is courting me. As a result, I suspect I will recover – though perhaps I will consult a physician to see if he might prescribe a trip to Bath. No doubt that would restore my good health.

Until then, I’ll settle for reading a good book in my own bath.

A good day #SOLC25 19/31

Today was a good teaching day, the kind that makes me keep grinning off and on right through the evening. At first, I was going to write something else, but then I wanted to capture this.

First period:
In grade 12, we’ve just started Hamlet. I am always torn about teaching Shakespeare, but I really love teaching this play. And today was amazing. We finished up yesterday’s rhetorical analysis of Claudius’s first speech and students cited lines from the play without being prompted. In my head, I was jumping for joy, but on the outside I played it cool, like, “yeah, my classes always just naturally use lines from Shakespeare to back up their points. Nothing to see here.” My super-cool teacher persona just took notes on the board and nodded her head.

Then we moved on to Hamlet’s first soliloquy. I’d planned a soliloquy buster (which I clearly got from somewhere at some time, but I no longer remember where or when), and even though we’ve only been together for six weeks, and even though it wasn’t quite 10am, and even though it’s Shakespearean language, the students happily moved their desks and sat in a circle and read aloud. Then, the real miracle occurred: no one protested (I mean, I heard a groan or two, but that’s just normal) when I dragged the class into the school lobby to “walk” the soliloquy. I stood on the risers and read the lines loudly while students held their copy of it and walked, turning 180 degrees every time there was a punctuation mark. By the end, we were breathless. When I asked how they thought Hamlet was feeling as he gave this soliloquy, students knew immediately: agitated, frantic, upset.

The energy in the room was high when the bell rang; I could almost *feel* the learning. They were jazzed. 

Second period: Planning. And I actually got things done. I even sent a suggestion to the principal: what if we invite the public library to set up a table during parent-teacher conferences and help people get library cards? (He said yes!)

Third period:
Literacy support. Another teacher actually invited me into their classroom to support students. I used AI to almost instantly convert the assignment (which is a *great* assignment but which has a LOT of words) into a checklist. I photocopied that and handed it out within minutes AND managed to sneakily support two students who really needed support. HOORAY!

Fourth period:
My, ahem, energetic grade 9 class started Long Way Down today. Their reactions to seeing the books piled on desks were decidedly mixed: “Are we going to read that?” can be said in many ways. But Jason Reynold’s novel has a magic that has never failed me – not since the first moment students unboxed brand-new copies of the book a few years ago d, and started to read. Today, Reynolds’ voice filled the room, our hearts beat as we heard that Will’s brother Shawn was shot, and we waited the horrible millisecond while we turned the page and read the words “and killed”. Someone gasped.

The kids let me pause to ask a few questions here and there, but mostly they begged to keep reading, so we read right to the bell. As they piled the books back on the desk (we have to share books with other classes), several of them said, “That’s a really good book, Miss.” I just nodded and said, “I know. I know.”

Then one darling child stayed after and whispered the story of the book she finished over March Break, the one she really wanted to tell me about, even if it might spoil it if I decide to read it. (Reader, I will not; it is “romantasy” – virtually all she reads – and sounds extremely silly, though just right for her.) I nodded and oohed and aahed until she realized her bus was coming and ran out the door.

For just a minute, I sat in the quiet classroom, completely satisfied with a day when learning felt almost tangible, when almost everyone was engaged almost all the time. I don’t always write about these days, but they happen – they really do – and I wanted to capture today. It was wonderful.

Literacy on vacation #SOLC25 10/31

Last night, after a long day of travel that culminated in beach and pool time, I crawled into bed, exhausted, and read a few pages of my new book (The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store). This morning, I woke to a long meandering chat with my aunt over tea and coffee. At some point, as I caught her up on my life, I talked about literacy. If you talk to me long enough, I pretty much always do.

She has recently gone through her books and had set aside some for me to look through, in case I want any. Would I contemplate taking books from an island back to Ottawa? Yes, yes I would. I am constantly looking for ways to get books into my students’ hands, and books cost a lot, so I am well-known for my – ahem – willingness to accept books. As a matter of fact, I brought books as gifts for my cousin-nephews, so I’ll have space to take more back if any of these look enticing. Now, out on the veranda, as I sit down to write, books and reading are on my mind, as they often are. 

I know the 2024 NAEP Reading Scores have just been released, and I know they’re not great. I teach in Canada, but I have little evidence to suggest we’re doing a lot better. Oh, I know our PISA scores are better than most, but only if you consider having 50% of Canadian students reading at level 2 or below “fine”. I do not.

I’ve just spent a frankly silly amount of time looking at the statistics I linked to in the previous paragraph. I was reading because I wanted to be sure that what I wrote was true, and now I’m stuck for what to say. Thinking about literacy is a huge part of my life, but is this little blog, mostly anecdotes, really the place to write about this? Is today, sitting by the ocean, really the day? And what will I say that others haven’t said? My family is waiting for me (only half true: the teens are still asleep), and hey, I’m on vacation: I should be relaxing. But I am almost never not thinking about literacy.

Even here, on vacation, reading and writing are firmly part of my life, and I find myself wondering if what I want for students is realistic. Do I want everyone to travel with books? Do I think we all need to be “readers” (whatever that means)? I don’t think that’s what I’m after. I do want all students to have reading as a back pocket possibility. I want them to develop the empathy and the knowledge and the critical thinking that come from reading. Literacy is a pathway to many kinds of success, and I know that very few people who have achieved only functional literacy are able to follow that pathway with any ease.

Now I’ve gotten lost in the weeds of this post: I’ve been typing and erasing for too long and I feel silly for starting my vacation thinking about this, but I can’t stop. Do I write about what I’m doing in my classroom? Do I link to more information? Do I share my hopes and dreams for my students? Maybe not today. For now, I’ll go back inside and go through that bag of books to find ones that students might read, then I’ll snuggle in with my cousin-nephew and see if I can tempt him into the world of Dragon Masters, one of my own children’s favourite book series when they were his age. I’ll have to pull him away from the iPad, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

And I’ll write more about literacy later – because heaven knows I’ll be thinking about it.

Lost plot

A poem written upon learning that many of my grade 9 students are not 100% sure what “plot” means and most have never seen a plot graph or heard many basic narrative terms. They did have some great guesses for the meanings of various words; it’s just that they were mostly, well, off.

Lost Plot

They’ve lost the plot.
They’re not sure what they’re planning
or where they are landing
or planning to land.

They’re certain that plot 
is a place or a person
who’s pretty important and 
they’ve got this in hand.

They say not to worry –
they’ll figure out the story.
They’re already exposing
and plotting, they think.

Then rising and falling
with a giggle in the offing because
– gasp  –
there’s a climax and they know what that means.

They’ve got resolution –
it’s like revolution and quite near the middle –
or that’s what they thought.
It’s when things come together 
for the person (or whatever)
and no one’s left out, so the story’s complete.

Never mind definitions,
they’re now on a mission
to finish this worksheet and get out the door.

So here I am plotting
to break down the story, incite some new learning,
maybe teach some new words.
Not antagonistic, I’m being realistic,
But honest to goodness they all should know plot.

It’s the books

Of our eight bags – four carry-ons and four “personal items” – mine was the only one flagged for further inspection. The security guy smiled ruefully at me as he swung my bag onto the metal table. After asking permission, he unzipped the main compartment and said, “it’s the books.” I must have looked perplexed because he followed up, “The screener showed a large block of biological material. It’s the books.” He rifled haphazardly through the rest of my bag, but he already knew he wouldn’t find anything else: it was the books.

I could almost feel my teens – who, for the record, did NOT have any books in their bags – roll their eyes. My partner shook his head disbelievingly, “You got flagged for books?” Me? I quickly calculated how many books I had packed: only two… in that bag.

All told, I took three books, one journal and one agenda on vacation. Three books is a reasonable amount for a week, if you ask me: one I was finishing, one I planned to read while I was there, and one I’ve been nibbling on, in case the other one didn’t work out. The journal is self-explanatory, right? And the agenda, to be fair, was an oversight: I’m used to having it with me, and forgot to take it out. 

For the record, I finished both the first and the second books and was back to nibbling at the third by the time we were on our way home. Of course, I had also received two more books and a blank journal as gifts. If you’re keeping count, that means I was headed home with five books, two journals an agenda… and a teeny sudoku puzzle book that I forgot to count on the way out because really, it barely qualifies. Wary, I tried to split my “large block of biological material” between my two bags.

My efforts were for naught: I got flagged by security. This time, I started the conversation.

“It’s the books.”

The TSA agent eyed me up and down. I can only imagine what he saw. He turned to my backpack and peered into its depths. “Yup, it’s the books.” 

“I read a lot,” I tried to sound apologetic, but I suspect I failed.

“What I want to know,” he mused, “is will you really read all of these on this trip?”

I started to explain about the one to finish and the one to read and the one just in case and the gifts, but I suddenly knew how that would sound to him. I almost explained that I am an English teacher and that I love to read. I wanted to tell him about the one I’d just finished and…instead, I said lamely, “Well, you never know.”

I reclaimed my bag, checked the zipper, and headed over to my family.

“Same thing?” asked my partner.

“Yup,” I smiled, “It’s the books.”

And I read happily all the way home.

Once an English teacher…

The first hint was on page 194. Blue ink.

I was a little startled. I mean, this is a trashy romance. The main characters murmur and gaze longingly. I was enjoying the story, but I wasn’t exactly on the lookout for grammar errors; in fact, I’d consciously decided to overlook some of them. And yet…

“As if”? I nearly laughed. This is my fellow reader’s quibble? I mentally shrugged, then moved on. Until it happened again. And again. And again. Someone had taken her blue pen to the novel and fixed “like” – and only “like” – a dozen times throughout the novel.

Wait. I lie. Once, she fixed a typo. Indeed.

I imagine her reading along, overlooking the missed subjunctive, ignoring the diction (minx!), letting the anachronisms lie… and then she hits her limit… “like.” She shudders. She thinks of the years she spent in the classroom, teaching students when to use “like” and when to use “as if.” She thinks of endless hours of grading essays, the constant battle against the demise of the English language. Her fingers tingle, and before she knows it, she has a pen – because of course she always has a pen nearby – in her hand, and she has made the correction.

Once she’s started, she cannot stop. The pen is uncapped, the errors egregious – at least in her eyes. Surreptitiously at first, then with greater and greater glee, she fixes the error each time it appears. As the novel climaxes in a crescendo of smouldering looks and husky moans, with one final flourish, she amends the typo in indeed and, triumphant, re-caps her pen. The world is now a little more orderly.

The next day, chastely, she returns the book to the library. Maybe she glances about as she slips the book into the returns slot; maybe she holds her head high, firm in the knowledge that she is right.

One way or another, I got double the pleasure out of book two of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series: trashy romance, and proof that English teachers never really leave the classroom.