A legacy of teaching Senior Seminar at Oakton High School for more than a decade is that I make connections between things, even when they seem unlikely. The Advanced Placement interdisciplinary course I helped create was all about “connections”—literature to government, books to life, the present to the past, the past to the future.

So it is not surprising that a College Board workshop I just conducted for Baltimore County teachers gained significance from the book I was reading, “Alex and Me,” by Irene Pepperberg. Alex was the bird genius immortalized by three decades of scientific studies that forever put to rest the insult “birdbrain.” (Read the book or watch Alex on You Tube to be convinced.)