And now I know what to call the thing that determined the whole shape of my teaching life. At college I had a difference of opinion with tutors from the Initial teaching Alphabet people, who were very convincing until we were required to write the story of Cinderella in ITA, and I got stuck on the name. Given that the premise of ITA was that each symbol represented a single definite sound (although that sound might vary from accent to accent), and there was no ambiguity, I couldn't get past representing the schwa as an e after the d, and an a after the l. So given a choice between an ITA school and a non-ITA school, I wasn't going where I would constantly have to monitor my spelling for disguised schwas. What would my life have been if the ITA had included a sign for it? Who can tell?