I write farewell letters for my graduating seniors that I hand to them at some point before they walk the stage. It's one of those gestures to let them know that your time together was meaningful. Would recommend if for no other reason than to preserve the art of letter writing.

I think an underrated part of why Dems have struggled to get anything substantive off the ground in the Trump era is how they've misidentified the Obama years as a triumph. He had 60 senators and the mantle for change, but he retreated into neoliberal technocracy.

I'm glad I'm not the only one aggrieved by this! It's literally all the things that are intensely political, too!

Had our first class discussion on this on Wednesday, and MAN am I stoked for this book. One of my students told me she was talking to her tia about it. Had another kid who has been really reluctant to read all semester tell me he didn't realize the West Side had a history.

I handed out copies of this to my juniors today since we're going to start reading it this week. I mentioned that the two TikTok videos I made about it were my most viewed/liked/commented. tupress.org/978159534973...

*deep breath, swallows bug, clears throat violently* TEACHING IS CARE WORK

LMAO AP US Gov has ONE Black person's writing as a "foundational document" (surprise, it's MLK Jr., and surprise, the guided reading exercise CB makes for it excludes the "white moderate" section). They axed Roe v. Wade as a required case the second the SCOTUS overturned it in Dobbs (2022).

This rules. Being a teacher is so rad when you get to do it right.

Accomplishment unlocked, slow burn edition: was told by a friend of mine that my one-teen protest in 2002 against the school prayer group doing a 9/11 anniversary event at the flag pole was a radicalizing event for their younger sister.

Seven weeks into the school year and I feel like I'm having a mini-renaissance. 1. Year 2 of my school newspaper, got lots of kids who never signed up thrown in there. But they're working hard! We're getting everyone press badges this year, there's peer editing, more leadership from my returners...

FWIW I managed to get class sets of two books each this year that I selected for my TX *and* US Government classes. We do weekly class discussions and reflective writing. I teach in one of the poorest public ISDs in my state. We're still out here doing our thing where we can.

This reveals something important about the difference between the major parties and how they think about and do politics. GOP cleaves tight to their ideological goals,and doesn't feel beholden to public opinion or majoritarian consent in pursuit of those goals. Dems pursue reconciliation from jump.

Slept in a Soulja Boy shirt, woke up with my swag turned on.

Everyone who wants to make the world a freer, more just place needs to join an organization in their local areas and participate in meetings. Also, spend less time arguing with people who want you dead and more with discouraged people who want to help but don't know how.

I know I'm not the only one to draw this connection, but the type of men who were throwing sex toys at WNBA games recently and the men who become feds and do this are the same kind of men.

Hahaha I was just teaching my Journalism students (high school) about open-ended questions yesterday.

How do we make sense of professional learners and educators willingly creating this kind of thing? TL;dr — we also often don’t have the sense that god gave a frog in the middle of the highway.

Get them to USL1 nyyyyyow.

I sweater god if someone puts me in an airbrushy AI-lookin ass heaven portrait with me next to my racist former coworkers, I will haunt this stupid planet so hard.

Decided to try "waking up" and I'm still wracked with anxiety. I'm starting to seriously consider other lines of work at this point even though I love teaching high school. I'd love to try teaching community college even if it's a bit of a pay cut, but there aren't nearly the opportunities.

Really dreading this upcoming school year. I cannot tell you how much the TX Lege has done their very best to make being a teacher or parent of any kind of conscience just untenable.

I say this as both parent and teacher, but we gotta start confronting _those_ parents more. They want right-wing parents to have veto power in public schools. We shouldn't let them have it at all, let alone in advance.

Anecdote to drive this home: I learned not long ago that my cousin and her husband who's been at Goddard for years are moving to Portugal.

Ca. late 2000s I was an avid reader of a lot of Atlantic blogs and it's pretty clear that Sullivan cannot handle how Coates is better than him at anything that matters: morally, as a writer, as a thinker, his influence, his accomplishments. Crying, screaming, throwing up type behavior from him.

I'm ready to stop making out-of-towners pledge eternal gustatory loyalty to our fair city's humble culinary tendencies in order to be accepted here. It's okay when people keep their comfort foods.

I did TFA 14 years ago, an org with many institutional flaws. But this is a big one. For all their blather about education as a civil rights issue, their program is all about getting novice teachers to testmaxx and burn out kids in historically plundered communities to do better at meritocracy.

learn to code! learn to prompt! learn to buy into meritocracy bullshit instead of demanding dignity and a good life regardless of educational background and how wealthy you can make other people!

Guess who has sponsored an LGBTQ club at a public high school in Texas for the last 11 years? A: Me. Guess who is gonna keep doing it next year, ban or no ban? A: Still me. www.texastribune.org/2025/05/31/t...

This thought about sports and the loss of common, low-stakes conversations kept rattling around in my head, so I wrote about it:

As a teacher of Dual Credit and AP government classes -- as well as a proctor of online Dual Credit classes in other disciplines -- I agree with a ton of this thread! I have an M.A. in Political Science, so I try to structure my DC classes to mirror "the college experience" as much as I can, but...

Pretty tough to win games when you can describe your keeper's play as "Charlie Chaplain-esque."

AFAICT, Trump is driven by a belief in zero-sum transactions: there is always a winner and a loser. "Running the government like a business" means seeing $USD going abroad as a "loss", and the tariff is a way to claw back the opposing country's gains from trade (even though it doesn't do that).

You mean the guy with multiple sexual assault allegations who uses the n-word and threatens to fire anyone who tries to start a union...hates Popovich????? No kidding.

Love 2 be threatened with a good time, it's maybe my favorite thing.

My Occam's Razor hot take about the Intellectual Dork Web is that they are not that smart/insightful and are underpants gnoming their way through destroying the federal government in hopes they can speedrun their way to the Great Technofuturist Christofascist future of their dreams.

AP Gov teachers, I have some good news and bad news. The good news: U.S.v. Schenck is relevant again. The bad news: U.S.v. Schenck is relevant again.

Classic “centrism can never fail, it can only be failed” logic by the Dems right now, just incredibly out of touch with their own voters.

I know it can be waved off as corporate rainbow washing, but there are actualy stakes with this messaging now. So good on SSE for keeping this going (and likewise keeping Pride Night for SAFC this year, too.)

Pretty foul stuff from the SD supporters, especially in light of the fact that San Diego Loyal (RIP) very famously had the US' first openly gay player on their team as recently as 2023.

soy El Chapo Roan

Evolution of a joke I say in my brain: "You're telling me a [x] [y] this/these [z]?" 1. shrimp, fried, rice 2. crab, ran, goons 3. Alperen, Şen, gün #NBAAllStar

I know I post about this a lot BUT! Univ of Texas explicitly adopted standardized testing post-Brown v Board in order to keep the number of Black students they admitted as low as possible. They wrote about it so we know. The school admitted to it a few years back.

Fun fact: the only time where I personally feel the most masculine-coded "protector" vibes is as the decade-long sponsor of the LGBTQ+ club at the school where I teach.

Wife and I both came down with something respiratory (COVID tests negative). I have had so much trouble sleeping the last two nights. There is so much shit in my lungs, my throat has been shredded beyond recognition, my body aches from the coughing spasms. I want so badly for the meds to work nyow.

"here’s what I believe happened: In the process of accumulating enormous wealth, the tech-oligarchs created the conditions for their loss of social power and, when they realized this, they got a big dose of class consciousness and turned furiously reactionary."

At this point, my only question is which congressional Dems SHOULDN'T be primaried?

Macho Man Randy Nteka saves the day. #RayovsGirona #LaLiga