Permit me to ask a disturbing question: Why are we teaching our children to read as though English is not their first language? I have been a world language teacher for more than a decade at one of the more prestigious public high schools in the nation. Oddly enough, teaching students a second language gives me an interesting window into their first; but allow me to start at the beginning of my teaching adventure. I was a mid-life career changer who completed a master’s degree at New York University. My plan was to parlay my fluency in French into a high school teaching gig. However, when I entered their degree program, NYU…