Four times a year, end of marking period grading season always manages to bring to mind the last line of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find": It's no real pleasure in life.

If you’re looking to support good politics, consider donating to @joel4jc.bsky.social. He’s a dad, a friend, a union organizer—and clearly qualified for the job he’s running for. Headed for a runoff in Jersey City. secure.actblue.com/donate/joel-...

So grateful and honored to have my story, “Wool,” nominated by @cincinnatireview.bsky.social review for Best of Net.

Third story of an NJ resident college student out of state not receiving/having processed mail in ballot. Three makes it a trend.

GOP-led states are blocking college students from registering to vote with campus addresses. In the context of broader attacks on vote-by-mail and early voting, these efforts will systematically disenfranchise young people across the US. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

In NJ, my own son in college out of state and that of a colleague sent in mail-in ballot requests with plenty of time—and the request was never received. They are each able to take a few hours trip to vote in person. But I wonder about other stories of college aged voter disenfranchisement in NJ.

More than 5 million people face an increased cancer risk because they live near a type of industrial plant that would have been subject to rules put forward by the Biden. The Trump administration is rolling them back By the inimitable @lisalsong.bsky.social www.propublica.org/article/epa-...

NJ race is dead heat. Let’s vote NJ, to keep health care, reproductive rights, top education system, pensions, vaccine access—all this could disappear: emersoncollegepolling.com/new-york-cit...

I have a handful of “struggling” students who seem (for now 🤞) to be thriving in ELA class in part because we have fun together. I love the way they think; they make each other laugh, while talking about texts; there is space in our room for that laughter. Will AI give students that feeling?

**In 2 short hours!** - Join #literacies at 5pm PST/8pm EST tonight for #Literacies Homecoming with Drs. Anna Smith and Emily Pendergrass!

Bike ride through Jersey City turned harrowing. Light turns green, I go straight in left side protected lane. Pickup truck driver sees me, then turns left; I brake hard, wheel goes up, near miss by inches. No amount of infrastructure can help drivers who can’t see over windshield. Ban light trucks.

🚨 Early voting in New Jersey starts TOMORROW! 🗳️ If you live in Hudson County, you can vote at any of these locations from Sat, 10/25 - Sun, 11/2. 🟢 Green sites = brand new voting locations! Check out the map and make your plan to vote early! ✅ www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/e...

Jersey City politics note: students tell me McGreevey people just put signs on the fences in front of their homes with plastic ties without asking and their parents had to clip them off.

In 2019, Dr. Nicole Mirra @nicole-mirra.bsky.social led a chat over socio-politically situated #literacies politics, research, and youth activism. This feels especially relevant in 2025, and we hope to hear your current takes at HOMECOMING (Tuesday Oct. 28th 5 pm PT; 7 pm CT; 8 pm ET)

Ciattarelli wants to spend $1.6 billion on school vouchers in NJ, for students already in private schools. He hasn't said how he'd pay for it www.njspotlightnews.org/2025/10/ciat...

Ciattarelli is pro vouchers and “parents rights”; Sherrill is pro high impact tutoring, trusting teachers to implement curriculum, and redoing funding formula to help underfunded districts. Choose wisely NJ. www.chalkbeat.org/newark/2025/...

Rankings are gamed, dependent on semi-subjective inputs, and mostly for marketing purposes, but I'll take this one: thedigestonline.com/new-jersey/m...

A haunted house but it's just a nation without public education.

Eighty percent of NYC’s solar power comes from school buildings. Great model for elswhere and anothe reason to fund school infrastructure fully: www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2025...

I asked my students how they wanted to be assessed for unit 1: test, paper, story, or group project (pamphlet explaining genres). Most said group, and their reasons are great: fun, reduced stress, learn from others/multiple perspectives, staying on task, sharing roles. Love how reflective they are.

A great political poem: "Government ought to be dull,/ reliable, like snow,/ or salaries. Table salt." @evergreenreview.bsky.social evergreenreview.com/read/at-the-...

What nooo? We’ve been waiting for a decade plus since Christie canceled. I think they are digging under Hudson rn. Does someone who knows more know if it’s just almost done anyway?

that girl who listened to madonna and mary j while writing english papers grew up to be that woman listening to beyonce and bieber while editing her dissertation. decades of butt in chair, fingers on keyboard, yearning to teach two classes a semester with benefits. dare to dream.

this week is 31 days long. thoughts from last week were years ago. i'm a century older than last thursday morning.

People have their pet theories for declining scores but there’s a huge body of research that shows income inequality leads to poor social outcomes. Our income inequality has soared over the time of these scores (since 2005). www.dispatch.com/story/news/e...

Schools need to resist AI creep. Otherwise, AI teaches students who use AI, everyone killing time until students become labor. My district has encouraged teachers to use Gemini. Make our jobs easier by giving us time to collaborate and plan, vs destroy them with AI creep: www.npr.org/2025/08/29/n...

We need “systems of care versus systems of control”; well put @equalityalec.bsky.social. I also learned income inequality predicts social ills more than police resources and that police have big PR budgets. It’s as if they need to persuade that they need $$$ because facts otherwise don’t support it.

NJ can we get moving on this? What happened to the rumored coalition?

Do you ever read something and get so excited about it/its implications that you have to step away and come back? I become a slower reader with very good prose and ideas because of this. I have to let the ideas ping around and let the connections calm for a bit before coming back to the next line.

Any basic curriculum/standards (like your kid has to know how to read) or oversight would be a positive change as NJ currently has none for home schooling, in contrast to nearby NY which requires some curriculum and check ins: www.nj.com/education/20...

The way I keep bluesky drafts now is to write something, take a screenshot, and then delete the post.

NJ, if you are concerned about electric bills, consider that this federal admin canceled our wind farms, to start

wrote 200 words in the last chapter of dissertation and telling myself i get to nap and read whatever i want for the rest of the day. this plan does fail to acknowledge i need to write 8,000 words by friday.

I have wondered about this with the surveillance tech my district uses to scan student docs for evidence of self-harm. From what I have heard parents don't have to sign off on it specifically. It is also AI now--which has made it wildly inaccurate, overreporting somehow. @lutzfernandez.bsky.social

Great story, full of surprises, not the typical teacher hagiography www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2025...

Looking for suggestions. I'm planning to do moral philosophy with 8th graders. Any good YA-geared texts or videos of classics? Or new thinkers? We'll use it to guide questions about character and author choices in fiction and memoirs (Poe, Douglass, Cisneros, Bradbury, LeGuin, Ted Chiang . . .).

all i want to do is read, write, run, and drink coffee until it's time to drink wine in a functional society that cares for all its members collectively. is that too much to ask?

I think I finished writing and revising my dissertation findings chapter. I usually enjoy the writing process, but that was an exhausting 7-week sprint—or rather, the last 2 weeks of revision were like the last 10k of the marathon, w/the first weeks the early miles where you feel deceptively great.

Can social media use support people in marginalized communities to assert agency and create a public sphere that includes them? Reva Jaffe-Walter and I looked at how Danish Muslim girls used social media to imagine new ways of being: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YAJAW...

A little ray of worker power hope achieved through 19 years of litigation www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/n...

Love this article that argues for a method for creating composite fictional characters in sociological research, to protect subjects. Combines several obsessions--"ethnographic novels," ethical research, postpositivism, journalism, and a bit of spycraft: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

“American Academy of Arts&Sciences reports 96.3% of humanities grads age 23-32 fully employed. Earnings in humanitiess comparable to social/life sciences, job satisfaction levels too. A serious mismatch bw actual employment for hum grads +general perception." www.mellon.org/voices/human...

Every. Single. Story. about women not using AI as much as men portray it as bad for their future career prospects (without a shred of evidence) and a result of women being fearful little ladies rather than looking at AI's output and saying "this sucks, it's not going to help me."

As a former reviewer, I don’t agree w/ Brody that any review is “the most inherently progressive mode of arts writing. When writing reviews, critics are in the position of the public”—at least the way he writes. Reviewers like teachers can meet the audience where they are, not where they should be.

“Univ. of Illinois report shows that a large humanities department like English produces substantial net profit; units like engineering and agriculture run at a loss. The widely respected Delaware Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity shows the same pattern.” /7 thi.ucsc.edu/the-humaniti...

So, if humanities produce good job outcomes, humanities have a secure ROI that bring in more than they cost, and STEM now has an even lower ROI due to grant cuts…. shouldn’t we invest more in humanities where less $$ goes a longer way? Apparently not. We should ask why not. /9

This is crazy because 1) I can barely get IRB approval for a survey about tech use and this somehow happened and 2) it’s actually often clear to people who work with kids when kids have experienced trauma without subjecting them to invasive human or AI guesswork; their behaviors tell the story.