If educators, like doctors, had to take a Hippocratic Oath, and they had to take the oath in Latin, their first pledge should be this: Primum non taedium. For those that don’t speak Latin, that means, first, do not bore me. In fairness, this idea of doctors pledging to “first, do no harm” is apocryphal. The Hippocratic Oath doesn’t use this exact phrase, but it does promote the ethical standard that doctors should abstain from doing harm. As a sometime patient, that seems entirely reasonable, if incomplete. But start there. I sometimes express the same sentiment to my hairdresser. At least don’t make me look ugly. We can move up from there. So, to educators, who have so many tasks to perform, this foundational “ethical” standard should remain: first do not bore me. How to go about living that out is fodder for future posts.