There was a time in New York City’s history when five-year-olds were not legally required to attend school. We’re not talking about 1950. Kindergarten was not mandatory in New York until 2012. Two thousand twelve! It’s crazy.

As a first grade teacher pre-2012, thems was dark times. Half my kids had gone to Kindergarten and knew the drill. Half were brand new to having a schedule and lining up and, you know, sitting still for extended periods of time.

It was a mad house.

I was teaching up in East Harlem at the time and doing a whole lot of small group, differentiated instruction to meet the myriad needs in my classroom.

Word study was a particularly fun (can you hear the sarcasm?) subject to teach. With a huge array of needs there was absolutely no room for whole-group instruction in this subject area.

Word study is exactly what it sounds like. It includes things like rhyming, word families, pattern recognition, phonetic principles, English language norms (the rules and the rules for breaking those rules), etcetera. It’s considered one of the five necessary components of reading readiness: phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

I digress.

This was not meant to be a lecture on educational philosophy or a plug for my belief in whole language instruction or a history lesson on New York’s academic realities.

I just wanted to share a funny story.

It’s Saturday morning and I’m home with this giant teacher manual, planning out my groups and marking the pages I need to xerox when I come across what I am absolutely positive is a mistake.

“Honey, come here a sec,” I shout to my boyfriend who is preparing a modest breakfast of coffee and toast. Because we have spent every last bit of our combined income on this glorious one-bedroom in Queens.

“What’s up?” he asks.

“This is so weird. Say these three words for me.”

“Mary, merry and marry. Why?”

“Right,” I counter.

“Huh?”

“I just mean, yeah, you’re right. These words all sound exactly the same. Why would they all be in different categories?”

“What? I have no idea. Maybe it’s a mistake.”

“Must be,” I conclude. And so, I plan accordingly.

Monday rolls around and I’m checking in with my coteacher, explaining the work I’ve done and the curriculum I’ve laid out for my groups.

“Wait?! What is this?” she asks, looking fairly confused.

“Oh, there’s a mistake in the manual,” I explain. “It’s so weird. They put these three words in three different families. Why would they do that? They’re homophones. They should be in the same family.”

Danielle, my coteacher, is roaring with laughter.

“What. Is. So. Funny?” I ask, knowing I’m about to feel like a fool.

Now, Danielle is lovely. She’s an amazing teacher, she’s patient, kind, warm and brilliant. And, from Long Island.

“Those are not homophones, sweetie,” she says. Already I can feel my cheeks turning pink.

She proceeds to say each word aloud to me. I will do my best to convey their phonetic accuracy…

“May-ry, mah-ry, and merry. Subtle. But, totally different words. Like Kerry and Carrie,” she explains.

“What?! Those are different names? No. No!” I shout, exasperated and feeling very aware of my California-ness. “How long has this been going on?” I ask.

“Since forever, love.”

“Hmm. I don’t like it. Not one bit,” I say as I raise one eyebrow. “Just doesn’t feel right, ya know? I mean, this is just wrong. We can’t go around making all these tiny phonetic distinctions. It’s hard enough teaching this shit. Now we gotta convince these kids there are three marys? This is lunacy. I mean, I totally respect regional dialects and all. But, should we really be reinforcing this craziness?”