Children, in my experience, help us to see differently, even to see rightly. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer framed it when referring to our incapacity to view the world the right way up: “It’s our eyes that are at fault.” In my first year of full-time teaching, the resounding and constant lesson I have learned is how to really look at the world.

There’s no room for irony in a second-grade classroom.