\nGrade 2: reading a story in class. We were taking turns reading sentences.\n<\/p>\n
\nJosephine and her dog were on the porch<\/em>, began on of my classmates.<\/p>\n \nAnyone paying half attention could tell the word on the page (we all had our readers opened to the same page) didn’t say porch<\/em>. It said patio<\/em>, but no-one knew that word. Porch<\/em> made sense, since it was the outdoor setting kids knew that starts with p.<\/p>\n The teacher asked several different kids what that word was: they each said porch<\/em>. In the rural Maritimes, back then, none of us had seen a patio. However, everyone knew a few houses that had porches.<\/p>\n This was 1978, long before ordinary people had access to the Internet. There wasn’t even a computer in the room – or even the school, so far as I knew.<\/p>\n The teacher tried to explain to us what a patio is, but of course she failed, since, with something like that, seeing is believing. We all learned to say patio<\/em>, just admitting to ourselves it didn’t exist but we were supposed to pretend.<\/p>\n \nOut west, patios were more common, even back then, from my understanding. Porches, inversely, were much rarer. Anyway, it would be about seven years before I would see a patio, for real, in Victoria, BC. I’ll admit, it was just as the teacher had described, even though it was impossible to believe in PEI in 1979.<\/p>\nJack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane,<\/a> Campbell River, BC.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor mentions an interesting story. Grade 2: reading a story in class. We were taking turns reading sentences. Josephine and her dog were on the porch, began on of my classmates. …<\/p>\n