Author: Ava Berger

Halle O’Brien writes during after-school cursive club, held by teacher Sherisse Kenerson, at Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Va. Anna Rose Layden for NPR hide caption toggle caption Anna Rose Layden for NPR Twelve-year-old Sandi Chandee wants to be a doctor when she grows up. But that’s not why she memorized one of the longest medical terms in the English language: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. In Sherisse Kenerson’s after-school classroom, Sandi takes out a piece of paper and fills up a whole line to spell the word that describes a type of lung disease. The word allows her to practice cursive — her…