Will remembers coming home from kindergarten sure his class had gone to a pepper alley, though the school event was almost certainly a pep rally. Oddly enough, pepper alley is a real old slang expression: in 19th-century boxing, to be in pepper...
Michelle from Tallahassee, Florida, says that when she was a kid, she decided on the first day of kindergarten that she would tell her teacher that she went by a different name, so that’s what everyone at school called her. Imagine her mother’s...
When is it okay to correct someone’s grammar? A listener from Madison, Wisconsin, says a friend went for a parent-teacher conference only to notice that a sign in the classroom read “Things your thankful for.” Should the teacher be called out? Is...
A Vermont kindergarten teacher discusses unusual vocabulary with his class. He’s trying to revive apricity, which means the warmth of the sun in the winter. This term comes from the Latin meaning “to bask in the sun.” This caller hopes people will...
boohoo breakfast n.— «“It’s the first realization that they will leave you at some point,” said Mary Morel, a mother of four, including 5-year-old twins who started kindergarten at Safety Harbor Elementary School on Wednesday. “It’s really sad. I...
boo-hoo breakfast n.— «It’s for that reason that for two years the Dove Elementary PTA has hosted a “Boo-Hoo Breakfast” to console parents—especially those of kindergarten students—on the first day of school for the last two years.» —“Grapevine...

