Perhaps you’re excited for Sunday, February 21 this year because you’ve heard that it’s National Sticky Bun Day in the United States, and hey—we don’t blame you! Sticky buns are great! But there is another, much more significant day happening as well. A day on which we celebrate something so important that without it, sticky buns probably wouldn’t even exist…
Read MoreThere’s a scene in the movie The 5th Element where the villain, played by Gary Oldman, bloviates about how all the evil, destructive things he does are actually good, because they prompt the creation of industry and provide work for countless people. While we disagree strongly with the idea that the good that can come after evil things have happened somehow transmogrifies that evil into good, the fact remains that truly awful things—like a global pandemic, for example—can bring about some positive change…
Read MoreLanguage is not math, science, grammar, or even dancing… although it would be difficult to develop and grow in any of those fields without it, because language encompasses them all. It converses with them, with art—with every aspect of human experience—and this conversation affects what language becomes and (if it’s alive and in use) is perpetually becoming.
This means that when you translate a text from one language to another, you’re not just translating a static form of notation into another static form of notation… you’re translating a culture…
Read MoreChris Darby is quick to tell you that he had a privileged start to life, but the “privilege” he focuses on isn’t money or position, it’s education. Growing up in a Catholic context, he was taught by Jesuit priests, brothers, or affiliated laypeople, in an educational environment where he was encouraged to ask and think about difficult questions. Although he learned at school to ask difficult questions, it wasn’t until later in life that Chris found a faith that made sense to him.
Born in 1953 in Scotland to an Irish mother and an English father, it was probably inevitable that Chris would spend his early life feeling as though the earth was a little shaky under his feet…
Read MoreWhile “pandemic” may be the obvious choice for 2020’s “Word of the Year,” another great option would be “pivot.” So many people have had to pivot in so many ways.
One of the ways in which WE have pivoted this past year has been with our Begin With Books project in Mali…
Read MoreNo matter how long you spend studying another language—immersing yourself in its nuances and even (if you’re fortunate enough) in the culture of the country where it is most spoken—you will never quite grasp the delicate shades of meaning the way a person who has grown up speaking it will. Language is more than just a mathematical application of phonetics and orthography and all that, it’s also humor and culture and feeling. So the absolute best way to understand any language is to ask a native speaker…
Read More“Lion was king of all the animals. He was also the custodian of the animals’ food chamber. He gave the most food to the large animals and the least food to the small. But one day, Spider, the smallest animal in the kingdom, decided she was tired of always receiving the least. ...”
We all love stories. As Jonathan Gottschall explains in ‘The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human’ : “We are, as a species, addicted to story. Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”
Most forms of early education incorporate stories as part of the learning process. So why do we so rarely use this love for stories to help children learn—and even love (!)—math, and see the relevance of doing math…?
Read MoreAs an academic-driven organization, we can at times get caught up in the more technical side of language. But it's important to remember that for a lot of the people we serve—namely, children—language, books, and story are all about fun, play, and curiosity. And that's not something that has to go away when we get older!
Who can forget the immortal words of that otherwise-stodgy chap Lewis Carroll, who wrote…
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