Every teacher knows the value of summer. It’s a time when children build shelters on the beach, create grandiose castles, sell lemonade and, as they get older, gather golf clubs, sell ice cream, bus tables or direct summer traffic. All those months of sitting at a desk suddenly translate into hands-on activity, putting into practice abstract skills that have been learned. They learn math from checking their pay slips (and mistakes carry a very different penalty — they don’t give detention for work not done in the real world).

Each September the yellow school buses roll, and well-scrubbed, optimistic young children climb on board, carrying them with them the ambitions, hopes and fears of their families. For 13 years this process continues, and then suddenly, almost unexpectedly, school days are over. There is a song that I have often sung in Ireland, and known in Scotland, Wales and the Appalachians: “School Days Over, come on then John, time you were putting my pit boots on, on with your coat and your moleskin trousers you start at the pit today.

Language has power. In every culture the language the people developed described their world in ways that were recognizable to them, but do not always necessarily translate. Different things matter to different people, and how we choose to describe the world is how we tell all those who come after us what mattered — and what we were about.

For the Wampanoag people whose language, after 400 years of contact with the European settlers, had ceased to be spoken, exciting work is underway to revive the language, both written and spoken.

A long time ago, in another life, I recall how my stomach cringed when I heard a colleague saying, “Oh, I have all the Macs and the O’s. How is anyone supposed to teach them math?”