As the Primer School Director, I am surrounded by families in the phase of life that just ended for me. Toddlers and babies, strollers and sippy cups, diapers and diaper rashes used to be the norm for me. I am in a new phase of life. My children can set alarms, dress themselves, make lunches. They need my practical help …

Our juniors are wandering the 17th century, drinking deeply from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. A couple of weeks ago, we were having a particularly good day. We had outlined the book’s tri-partite map on the whiteboard—Hell, Heaven, and Earth*—scrawled our theories about Milton’s vision of Satan, God, and Adam, and noted a few of his successes and failures, when one …