you’ve been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress).

The point is so that it doesn't look like it's sweating, like that effort, you see? It must appear effortless! No matter what the style, it must have that. I mean, the seams can't show. —Toni Morrison, interviewed by Jane Bakerman for Black American Literature Forum’s Summer 1978 issue Consider first this over-arching thesis: the brilliance of educational work lies in the exact opposite task. Where most art forms do work, significant work, to make it look easy (see: the seamless novel, the floating ballerina, the effortless jazz player plucking a new melody from the ether), the teacher seeks to stop a moment in time. Did you catch that? See the mechanism? The split-second decision? Look closely. Don’t miss it. Taking the form, shaking it off the model, turning her technique inside out, pointing at the seams, the intestines, the world-making in each intrepid and intentional detail— did you miss it?— we find the task of the Teacher, an occupation I prayed with every Reasonable and self-p

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• Sofia Leigh