To be clear: LA County has declared a state of emergency BECAUSE OF the federal government. The Feds, LA County is (correctly) saying, have CAUSED the emergency. This is a striking political moment of internal collapse. Local govts feeling compelled to protect their ppl from … their own govt.

In MA, folks enrolled in SNAP who have active EBT cards with at least a $1 balance will still be able to access fresh produce with their cards through the Healthy Incentives Program. That funding doesn't go away Nov. 1, when SNAP does. www.mass.gov/info-details...

One year ago

Update on life: October feels like it won’t ever end. I have so much to grade. Teaching a new prep is hard. I love my students and I love my school but every week there is some new expectation of me as a teacher. Also, home ownership kicked my ass with unexpected electrical repairs last week.

Chicago kids FTW Flyer: www.threads.com/@emily.gener...

The conversation between Klein and Coates showed me that a lot of people who screech about “infighting” on the left aren’t aware of the fact that marginalized people have been forced to learn how to regulate their emotions during conflict, and so, are better able to hear what’s actually being said.

If you know any teachers personally, ask them “when was the last mental health day you took during the work week? And did you spend it grading?”

Puerto Rico está bien cabrooooon ey, está bien cabrooooon

You know things are rough when the AAUP's advice on how to use social media is just "set all your accounts to private."

For my sound studies folx: Sounding Out! anthology is in the works! Pub date: August 2026! Screenshot from our FB page!

Week 5 of the school year. Week 5 of 39. I am already tired.

why must i be constantly reminded we live in the stupidest timeline why

"There has just never been a president in recent American history who has gone out of his way to free more criminals and accommodate more crimes than Donald Trump," says @chrislhayes.bsky.social.

Well. I was procrastinating on my lesson planning for next week’s lessons, and I went ahead and applied to be an AP Reader.

It’s only Day 7 / 183 and I am SO. TIRED. I forget how exhausting these first few weeks are…

I love everything about this. Shout out to second-career teachers!

"democrats are stopping us from passing flood legislation 😭😩" the first & (so far) only legislation TX republicans have sent to the house floor for a vote this session:

My job as a professor is not to create a serviceable worker. My job is to help foster thoughtful citizens or community members. If that sounds fanciful it’s bc corporate interests have spent decades framing how we talk about education so they don’t take the heat for immiserating labor conditions.

22 never-before-heard Woody Guthrie songs just dropped. Anti-fascist folk for a new generation of protest. 🎶 Woody At Home is a call to fight back.

The attack on higher education in the US, which is being largely done in the name of "fighting antisemitism," is inevitably going to lead to a lot of universities deciding that Judaic Studies programs need to be cut for budgetary purposes. Killing Judaic Studies to fight antisemitism.

The @washingtonpost tracked where Trump's forces are patrolling in Washington. Spoiler alert: They're not where the crime is.

Interacting With Books FTW

Tomorrow I’ll be talking exigence with my AP Lang students, starring a piece written by the late Anthony Bourdain. The district micromanagement gets to me, and sometimes I forget to just teach the way I want to teach because I can hear the admin in my head. AP Lang is bringing that desire back.

This year I am trying to make my morning routine a little easier to make space for my daily writing/journaling. So what I do is I leave everything ready the night before so I can make coffee as soon as I wake up. (In times like these I miss having a coffee maker would be handy.)

It’s been a while since I’ve taught AP Lang. But it was good to be back in the saddle!

Day 1 of the new school year: done. I spent so much energy WORRYING. I don’t say this to arouse pity. I spent a week of pre-school year “teacher PD” hearing about how I was going to be evaluated, and what I needed to do and what I was failing to do and deadlines deadlines deadlines…

"He’s become our global ambassador, spotlighting both our challenges and the richness of our culture. It’s a heavy burden for a 31-year-old who just wanted to make music." (Gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/o...

Anyway, I used to talk through my ideas online, in constant conversation with others, and I don’t do that anymore. Today I was missing that exchange. I feel like there’s something not yet in the essay, and I’m not sure what’s missing.

Working on a personal essay about the TX cellphone ban in classrooms, from the POV of a teacher. I am afraid I don’t bring a clear WE LOVE IT or WE HATE IT view, but instead questions and concerns. I’m still mulling over how I feel about it. I think the piece reads that way. Not sure if it should.

Off topic: can Marian in THE GILDED AGE get another plot line?

Was sitting in an English teacher workshop today, and the leader brought out Sherman Alexie’s “Superman and Me.” HS English teachers: suggestions for other personal essays at intersection of pop culture, literacy, family with also a creative nonfiction angle?

It's almost like students actually need to learn literacy and critical thinking which then is transferrable to lots of other tasks later on...hmm.....

I hate the argument that AI is being used in lots of jobs so students have to learn how to use it in school. AI is not that hard to use. Lots of jobs also use job-specific convoluted enterprise software and we don't teach them how to use those in school.

This is so depressing. Childhood should be about drawing and imagining and playing, not plugging shit into AI to make it "real"

I…have thoughts.

Please make him go through discovery.

This piece illustrates and explores one of my chief worries about LLM use in writing and thinking work: self-alienation. Automating the writing experience by substituting LLM outputs leads to a distancing from your own life, your own mind and a flattened experience. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/18/o...

I'll add that the legal drinking age is 18 in Puerto Rico. So a twenty year old trans person can go drink themselves to death but can't legally get hormones.

Puerto Rico has just banned gender affirming care for trans people up to age 21. It is now the ban with the highest age limit in the United States. www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-...

I've done three different teacher workshops this summer (in addition to helping revise the Sounding Out! manuscript) and I'm shifting gears to the last two weeks of summer before I report back to work. I had my first work dream, and I'm getting a little nervous thinking I haven't figured out+

I've been saying this. I've used AI for some tasks, I can't pretend I haven't. But as someone who writes regularly, edits other people's writing, talks to others about writing, I know when AI gets it wrong. I have the knowledge to know the difference. But my students need that knowledge first.

The #1 way to explain America working properly is by saying “comedians can make fun of he President on TV.” A good way to explain fascism is “the President forces companies to fire those comedians as a condition of allowing them to conduct business.”

CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery. America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons. Watch and share his message.

Thinking a lot lately about how we have for some time treated the reading of books as a means to an end in school rather than the books themselves as a worthwhile end. Lots of complicated thoughts on this but it's definitely something I've been wrestling with.

New at Sounding Out this week: Benjamin Tausig's In Memoriam for Jonathan Sterne: soundstudiesblog.com/2025/07/14/i...

Please take action to support funding the National Endowment for the Humanities. Contact your rep and senators via this @humanitiesall.bsky.social link: p2a.co/qyrPh2k