Do you remember the first time you watched The Wizard of Oz? Can you recall that feeling when you got to the end and realized that the whole movie was an allegory — that Dorothy hadn’t in fact traveled to Oz, but that the story her subconscious mind concocted was just the lesson she needed to appreciate the people and things closest to her? Sometimes I think teaching young children is one giant allegory. We are usually teaching something that is on the surface quite concrete, but it almost always has deeper lessons that can reverberate throughout a child’s lifetime.