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Terry is getting ready to leave the program. She is already off parole and trying to secure housing. Terry is transsexual, male to female. She’s beautiful in the most androgynous way, both delicate and handsome. I made it clear from the minute I met Terry that she was safe in my class. There would be no off-hand remarks, no sotto voce slanders from the other residents; there would be lots of freedom to “play school” as Terry called her time in class. Terry sometimes picked out vocabulary words for our class, flipping through the pages of the big red Webster’s, and I’ll miss this. Who could resist her flair for spelling lists that included: jaded, harlequin, fable, bottomless, astride, gadabout. Today, my supervisor told me I need to start teaching vocabulary that appears across the curriculum, words like dependent, challenge, and adjacent — boring!