i had to write an in-class essay on my first day as an undergraduate. "describe a building on campus."

i used a builder's vocabulary, because i grew up around builders, loggers, carpenters, and the teacher circled each word in red and said none was in the dictionary.

i think of this moment when i hear analysis about 'accessibility'--the assumption that intricate thought exists only in universities, never that others might possess what scholars do not.

what if making a text 'accessible' means *widening* the vocabulary, insight and metaphor?

what if we recognize in classrooms that we often cannot access what our students intimately know?

that the issue is not 'inclusion' into a set system of given knowledge, but perhaps a humbling walk outward to those who hold the hammer and know the word for the surface it hits?