Love the sound of laughter in a classroom. The laughter of shared tension, shared attention, shared comprehension. The writing classroom at its best radiates the energy of effort, the edginess of challenge, the challenging edge of watchful eyes, heads cocked at slant angles.

And laughter. Especially the laughter of surprise, the startled recognition of newly constructed truth. Always the best laughter is the laughter of recognition. Shared worlds. Shared experience, whether the experience was shared or not. Recognition of self in other, other in self. What is more laughable than ourselves, the selves we hear in the writing, and the laughter, of others?