There are some things (and very few) that I really do dislike about teaching. Once of those things is teacher-speak. So many educational meeting, books, and journals are built on a series of words that used so often now have no meaning and more than that they simply get under my skin and irritate me. Some of those words are “rigor” “best practice” “differentiated instruction” etc. These words may have had some real meaning and purpose at one time, but now I find them to be dead words that really don’t come alive in the classroom. There is one of these “educational words” that I had long ago buried in my world and stamped dead. But that word came back to life for me today. Read more