New tactic for (birthday) mail from folks who should know better: read it with a black marker in hand to redact all the places where they use the wrong name and such, while shaking my head about how silly they were to "forget." Definite mood improver. 10/10, can recommend.

Today, some of my students did a fabulous job teaching their classmates—students studying English, creative writing, and technical writing—how to use em dashes and en dashes correctly and effectively.

It sure is some sort of mind trip to go from thinking you're underpaid just because you're in an undervalued department (still true) to realizing that you're also significantly underpaid compared to folks hired after you in that same department. Tell me again how my department cares about DEIJ?

Hey, look: my university is hiring in TESOL/bilingual ed. But because this position is in the school of ed (not arts & sciences), you'd make more money and have significantly better resources than me. Fun times.

"Intentionally or not, Trump is adding weight to this burden that women are already carrying as family health managers." - my thoughts in this terrific piece from @bcrodriguez.bsky.social for @19thnews.org on the gendered burdens of attacks on Tylenol and vaccines. 19thnews.org/2025/09/chil...

📢Call for Proposals ITBE 2025 Virtual Fall Workshop 💠Theme: Evolving Voices in TESOL: Advocating for our Profession and our Learners 🗓 Date: October 18, 2025 📍 Location: Virtual (Zoom) ⏱ Submission deadline: Tuesday, September 2, 2025 👉 See more www.itbe.org/2025_fall_vi... #ILTESOL #ITBE

New pub alert: How do Russian language learning materials (textbooks and a digital app) for verbs of motion align (or not) with principles of second language acquisition? Showcasing the thesis work of my first MA student, Elena Petrova. Part of a special issue on teaching Russian verbs of motion.

Glad to live in Illinois today.

I have a new blog post that tries to lay out just what is at stake with Trump's attempted fascist takeover of higher education. Check it out and share widely! educationallinguist.wordpress.com/2025/05/13/t...

It's that time of year so porting a 🧵from the Bad Place Scaffold your teaching evaluations. Scaffold your teaching evaluations. Scaffold your teaching evaluations. 1/17

The best part about having my SLA students write annotated bibliographies on topics related to L2 learning is that I get to read some of the the cool articles they find... so much interesting work folks are doing!

i think people are missing the forest for the trees with this one. RFK Jr wants complete centralized knowledge of every American's health in order to exact control on what medications are allowed and in order to fabricate "evidence" for each and all of his nonsense theories.

Bring back *everyone* who was sent from the U.S. to CECOT in El Salvador. *No one* should be sent there. ALL their rights were violated. ALL of them should come home.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility! ✊ trans rights are human rights. full stop. #TDOV #tdov2025

I have often wished for these kinds of mentors, both when I was a doctoral student and now as an assistant prof. Now, I'm trying to balance protecting myself (sometimes from the very same folks who *should* be protecting me) and doing better by those coming up behind me.

Heading to #AAAL2025 later this week... Santoi Wagner and I will present preliminary CA work on mentor praise in post-observation meetings with novice teachers: "Beyond 'great': Expanded positive assessment sequences in post-observation meetings." Saturday, 10:10-10:40 in Tower Court B.

Mid-tenure review portfolio: submitted. If US higher education doesn't entirely implode in the next couple years, I think I've got a shot.

Today's unexpected #professorlife email: A county parole officer writing to confirm that someone had completed community service hours in a community ESL class I supervised last semester. Except, I've never heard of this person and my signature was clearly forged. Oof.

ISO Language teachers for gender justice Are you a language teacher who wants to learn more about gender justice & collaboratively make free resources to support the teaching and learning of nonbinary ways of doing languages other than English? Interest form: bit.ly/GenderJustPL... Please share!

I'm three days back to full-time professor life from medical leave and already feeling cynical, disrespected, and potently undervalued in my work... not just nationally, but locally, on my campus and in my department. It's hard to express how much I love this work and hate it at the same time.

ISO Trans/nonbinary people to hire as (non-English) language experts Are you trans and know a language other than English? I'm looking for people who are in-community and want to collaboratively develop free language learning materials. Interest form: bit.ly/TLangExpert Please share!

Eighteen years ago, between graduating from college and starting to teach English abroad, I learned that I carry a genetic mutation that greatly increases my lifetime risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer. Five days from now, I'm scheduled for a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy.

I've wanted to write something about academic accommodations for a while, and in the absence of other inspiration, I'm just going to put it here. I have a few points to make but first a bit of context about me. I'm profoundly deaf in my right ear. Basically can't hear anything in it. 1/

I didn't know how neurodivergent I was when I was writing my dissertation, and that made it so much harder. But what did help, even in the not-yet-knowing, was trying to be okay with what I could do and consider it "enough" (I just can't think/focus/write 8 hours a day, even if I'm on fellowship).

Just booked my flight and hotel for #AAAL 2025 in Denver. Trying to travel this year in ways that will be kind to a body two months out from a major surgery, but also looking forward to to hearing about all the cool projects folks are working on.

Course evaluations are problematic enough... but now that I've learned that ours aren't even set up to limit to one response per student... there's nothing even pretending to be valid about this data. Yikes.

Department admin sent out fall course eval results this afternoon. Somehow, my 7-student grad course ended up with 9 responses on the course evaluation... hoping it's just some sort of clerical error and not actually evidence that our department eval process is so poorly designed as to be invalid.

Grammar is not the “rules” you were taught in school. It’s what your brain does to make sense of the linguistic input it’s exposed to. The “rules” you were taught are a hidden curriculum designed to maintain a social hierarchy. Before you learned them, you were already an expert at your language.

I'm excited to finally be able to share this article, just published in TESOL Quarterly, where I explore the possibilities of inviting (student) teachers to create and collaboratively analyze memes as a way to reflect on their (practicum) teaching experiences and identity development.

I'm excited to finally be able to share this article, just published in TESOL Quarterly, where I explore the possibilities of inviting (student) teachers to create and collaboratively analyze memes as a way to reflect on their (practicum) teaching experiences and identity development.

To the production editors: No, I don't accept your correction of "memers" to "members". Different words, different concepts. (In other news, I'll soon be able to share an article I'm really excited about...)

As I dive into finals week grading, I'm glad for the change of pace (a few weeks off from prepping classes) and excited to see my students' culminating projects. It isn't quite break yet, but I like this time of the semester.