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How many times in my thirty-four years of teaching did I set a child on the road to reading and all the world by beginning with the ABC's?

How many times did I challenge an angry adolescent with Emerson and Thoreau? Or introduce a dreamy-eyed poet to the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam?

How many times did I recite the six-times table? And explain the glory and the mystery of x and n?

These were the joys of a one-room schoolhouse.