people on linkedin use a lot of words to say they’ve sold their souls

hey so we could actually have secondary classes where the lesson plans are all just “read your favorite book and then talk about why it’s awesome and then do a cool project every few books” and kids would learn a lot and work really hard in that class

the real cognitive dissonance I’m having with AI is that it will save incredible amounts of time, so we can reallocate to more fulfilling (personal) pursuits. but CEOs will never concede that people deserve to eat and live without sacrificing their entire week.

she compared herself to an English teacher, sooooooo

I’m tired of seeing feel good puff pieces about teachers volunteering their time over the summer to get things done at their school because nobody else will do it (or pay to have it done). You think they want to spend their time like that? Unpaid??? Write the story about how fed up they were.

Hypothetically, if voting for a wealth tax meant we would definitely have working class abundance, solve the crises in climate, health, housing, education, crime, poverty, and immigration, would you vote for a wealth tax? Or is that thought so abhorrent you couldn’t bring yourself to do it?

so we’re just gonna violate FERPA and violate student & family privacy rights because we have a fancy word calculator now?

I just said “alexa turn off the tv” except i’m in my classroom and was talking about the projector

I want to set up some kind of class blog for students to publish and share their writing next year with each other. I haven’t done this in a while, and don’t love the idea of managing things like substack accounts. Any class blog platform recs? Something clean, efficient, and (ideally) free.

once standardized tests move to AI grading—as I think they inevitably will—those same companies monetizing them should be compelled to offer free, real-time AI feedback throughout the entire school year on the same model that will score student responses on the high stakes exam

Imagine teaching research methods to 11th graders right after Jaylen Brown drops by your school for a surprise visit bc that’s what I’m doing rn

I bought a 2025 Honda CR-V in July 2024. I am sad about the fate of the republic but at least my car will actually increase in value by the time it’s paid off.

I teach AP Lang, and at its core the class is about the art of persuasion. I think I’m pretty good at persuasion. Something important about many of the protest signs from this weekend is that they are very, very funny. Humor is incredibly powerful against cowardice, and all bullies are cowards.

last recession I applied to TFA because there weren’t any other jobs & that worked out okay honestly

idk who needs to hear this but “attention grabbing” is a very important skill these days and maybe we can learn a lesson

discussing today’s prank fallout with the OG teacher chat

the “above and beyond” rhetoric around teachers is toxic and perpetuates burnout. celebrating sustainable systems that allow students to thrive in safe, predictable, affirming classrooms is more important than individualized after-school tutoring.

If we cared about kids learning instead of blaming teachers, standardized tests would be administered in the fall with an 8 week data turnaround to teachers as a year-long instructional tool. Imagine how quickly schools would collaborate and improve.

teacher appreciation week is May 5-9 this year and we should be in the streets

Saying federal money “only accounts” for 10% of school budgets is a national average. In rural, low-income, mostly red districts, that can be up to 25% of a small district’s budget. A death blow to one of the only critical community institutions & largest employer in many small towns.

start with the premise that if AI can do it, it’s not that important to begin with

just learned about @5calls.org today. if you’re like me & don’t know what it is, it’s an org that provides call scripts for progressive messaging to target the right representatives & elected officials. calling your reps is still the most powerful way to influence policy & people in a democracy.

Until you start funding progressive candidates for mid term elections, you’re still directly part of the problem. Yelling at dems to waste their time on legislation we all know will never pass is just meaningless clickbait and virtue signaling.

In 2015, a study showed that 1.6 million students attended schools that had a cop, but not a counselor. Schools are overly surveilled + overly policed. AI is an extension of this surveillance + policing. On that note, kids: do not ever say anything about your mental health to AI.

thinking of using facebook to behave like my pre-Elon twitter persona

I want to see spreadsheets of the most vulnerable GOP house members with phone numbers, issues they campaigned on, issue polling from their districts, and talking points. It should be updated weekly, with weighted scores for issues & color coded data viz. I do this in my classroom, why can’t dems?

What if the response to all this from teachers was a summer full of marches & public demonstrations of how great our schools and students are? What if we took our idealism outside the classroom and reminded everyone how fun & empowering our school communities are?

What if the response to all this from teachers was a summer full of marches & public demonstrations of how great our schools and students are? What if we took our idealism outside the classroom and reminded everyone how fun & empowering our school communities are?

if people start calling it the Musk Administration, I think it would be a surprisingly effective wrench in the gears

hey @caseynewton.bsky.social I submitted my 120th qualifying payment today to discharge about $8k in student loans under PSLF, but when I went to submit the paperwork they had disabled the portal to upload docs. Thought you might want to know.

We vote for representatives in Congress who pass laws that determine how our tax $ is spent. If Musk has power to halt this process at payment he can make laws meaningless. Which means that Congress is meaningless, our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship. snyder.substack.com/p/of-course-...

please forgive me but I have 2 more payments for PSLF and until that’s taken care of I’m keeping my goddamn mouth shut

ok now say things like “Congressional Republicans are enabling…” and “Congressional Republicans are complicit in…”

funny how the same people whining about congressional insider trading are also just Elon simps. they don’t care about corruption or selling out working people. it’s all flag waving fashy BS with no convictions whatsoever.

until you hear a politician start talking about tripling the public school teaching workforce & investing numbers that have Bs in them into public schools, they aren’t serious about democratic politics

somebody: [disagrees with me] me: [muttering under my breath] I can’t believe how rampant anti-intellectualism has become

every time he does something that kills people, like send shockwaves through federal agencies like the FAA with skilled experts who have important jobs, he will blame DEI. yes, it’s racist, but don’t waste time engaging in the premise. blame his incompetence for killing people.

I'm so tired at this point of hearing the suggestion that "teachers should play/experiment with something" (not just AI) when the VAST majority of our time is in front of students in the classroom. And to be very clear: they deserve better than teachers "playing/experimenting" in front of them.

if i’m being honest the vast majority of teachers just need to get over themselves. keurig coffee isn’t that bad.

to start class I often say “first things first” the amount of restraint it takes to not say “I’m the realest” is the most draining part of my day

The "he's not gonna listen to her" reactions are missing many points. Lots of other people are also hearing it. Lots of people can see him hearing it, then weigh what she's said with what he'll do. Lots of people can see her refusal to surrender these ancient teachings to the latest face of empire

EO: "the immutable biological reality of sex" Biological reality:

doing a unit on money in AP Lang & kicked off an essay on the cost of college with this 2023 article by Paul Tough (gift link for anyone interested). co-planner pointed out that my lesson slides were named “Tough Day 1,” and indeed it was. www.nytimes.com/2023/09/05/m...

I plan to get away as much as possible from surveillance capitalism platforms like Google and Meta & transitioning to what seem like better options (like here, Signal, and Proton). See this post from Proton’s CEO. proton.me/blog/sustain...

This will impact students, teachers, and schools in devastating ways. I hope any adult working to build a strong school community is able to take care of themselves & find the resources they need to address the inevitable normalization of bullying and cruelty from students that’s about to come.

yes it’s true that zuck is pouring gasoline on a society-destroying fire, but don’t forget that in his announcement he looked like a dork

lol right after @marcusluther.bsky.social talk about how AI has cursed us all I see in a student research paper on teacher salaries

me & period 5 just sniffling through our exam

In college I had a prof who had required final research presentations at the end of term. In the 80s he would ring a bell if the presentation was bad & students would exit stage left. They made him stop doing that. I asked how he felt about that and he said, “the bell still rings in my head.”

I know the internet thinks I’m a masochist because I’m a teacher & therefore keeps recommending I eat overnight oats, but it needs to stop. I don’t treat myself that badly. (sometimes I do)