Teachers

My edition of  Roget's Thesaurus gives the word teacher two and one-half inches of alternate words.  One of the more interesting is moonshee, meaning a native interpreter or language instructor and which comes from a Hindu word, munshi.  We are going to be moonshees.  Is there a plural for that word?  If not, then we will have to be either instructors, tutors, dons, coaches, expositors, pedagogues or preceptors.

This started as an exercise in writing.  Could I write a convincing, literate letter to a college suggesting a course about the European Waterways?  I guess I can because the program coordinator for adult programs for our local community college emailed that she would like to talk to us about our idea.  Before we could change our minds and decide that neither one of us could teach a duck to swim, our course was approved for a 4 week period beginning late January 2010.  All we are waiting for is approval from the Board of Directors.  Elisabeth, the discerning, clear-sighted and intelligent program coordinator, even complimented me on my letter.

Now the challenge is to write convincing, succinct scripts for us to follow in our classes so that we don't bore our students.  We must keep moonshee in mind because isn't that what we will be doing, teaching the language of the waterways?  Of course, we will forgo any reference to the "avast there, matey" school of nautical talk and concentrate on uplocking versus downlocking and how to tell the left bank from the right bank.

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