Jamie

This is so bad! Ask a teacher about how current tech has made kids UNABLE to be uncomfortable. They get everything in an instant. They never wait. They never don’t know. They’re never bored. Etc etc so they’re unable to push or struggle through things, making learning and problem solving very hard.

Winter break part two could not have come at a better time for all the new teachers that were drowning under end of quarter grading. I hope they all enjoyed the time to catch up and are feeling refreshed when we go back next week.

(This is very genuine! I’m happy for them to catch a break.)

THERE ARE COMPETING TOP MODEL DOCUMENTARIES OMG this is about to be nuts

The most insignificant legacy of GWB is the fact that I still regularly say “I’m the decider” and sometimes “I dunno I’m not the decider” 20 years later.

I know we’re not allowed to say it because calling out bias in SLC is apparently worse than being biased, but all the Mormons and other Christians against the two Jewish women on RHOSLC has some serious….ugly tint to it.

I strongly suspect that those of us holding firm on not using it will be the ones who are grateful to not have to rework our classrooms and plans in a few months when everyone opens their eyes and it gets pushed out and banned.

(Months is my optimism speaking, I hope it’s only a few months.)

The monks are almost here and I’m not even in school to talk to the kids about it! I can’t wait to catch up with them whenever we see each other again.

“It is a selfish, fearful individualism that underpins the myth of the gun in America, a myth thoroughly alien to this moment of truly collective, spontaneous resistance. It is a moment that is not so much about individual heroism as standing together as a community in the face of terror.”

"Take a second and think about it. Would you rather really grow from an experience of actually doing some work and critically thinking about the things you're writing or talking about, or just taking nothing away from it and just use a robot?"

Listen to the students, not the tech companies.

Team paper and pencil! And much love to the student who used the word interactive to describe your lessons, because so many tech brained people don’t believe it’s possible for pencil and paper and physical books to be engaging, but they’re just plain wrong.

So everyone is cutting all the jobs because of ai, but they’ve also started literally begging people to use ai to do their jobs, meanwhile we’re finally starting to get evidence about how the ai is making everything *less* productive/efficient/accurate…

This will continue to go well for everyone.

This feels a lot more like the American use of the word scheme than the British one 😒

And what are you doing to stop ICE from building a detention center in Hagerstown?

Did I just reinvent buying a daily paper at Wawa? I dunno but they should do it.

I still don’t understand why no publication has caught on to my $.50-$1 for 24 hour access idea. Do they have any idea how much money they’d get from me? Oh you have one article I want to read random small town paper? Subscribe? Nah I have enough recurring subscriptions. One dollar one time? Done.

You break one bone falling on ice and no one will ever let you live it down. I promise, I’m being careful!

Are you in a position to offer a “why don’t we open with giving people a chance to voluntarily share good news” or something like that to the powers that be? Something that feels in the spirit of camaraderie but doesn’t require full participation might be an acceptable swap.

I usually go the distract my way out of it route. Slip out to the bathroom, or wait and go last so I can just riff off someone else’s answer. If they break us up into small groups sometimes I just go off task and find a way to make conversation until whoops we’re out of time!

Book cover, Happy People Don’t Live here by Amber Sparks

Read @ambersparks.bsky.social Happy People Don’t Live Here yesterday and cannot recommend it more. Gave me some Harriet the Spy vibes but with much bigger feelings and more ghosts.

Stop sharing an article you clearly haven’t read just because it has one quote you like challenge, education edition.

I do in fact find great meaning in my life, which I have dedicated to the education and in fact, sustenance of human life. Over the course of my career I have directly impacted roughly 2,000 children in my classroom. And then I go home and watch tv with my dog and feel frickin great about it, JD.

Kids don’t need historical figures to be perfect untouchable heroes. Why do adults?

One thing I’ve learned in years of teaching middle school social studies is that children are perfectly capable of understanding that we can learn about the significant contributions of people while also acknowledging and learning the truth about the harm they caused, their flaws, imperfections, etc

As a millennial woman, I know why I am being algorithmically targeted for this, but I don’t want it and I hate it.

I’m glad that people who need ozempic etc can get it. But there’s also something deeply disturbing about the alarming number of products being marketed to me that are weird protein and nutrient shots and drinks and candy for people who no longer eat food.

The pen on the right is the fantasy of children. It's the thing that you beg your mother for while getting your school supplies, but once you actually have it you find out that it's not that great, and all those colors aren't useful. It makes good clicky noises but that's not what pens are for.

Absolutely not. Nothing that has ever promised to cut teacher workload has done that. Every new piece of technology has added more work for us and made the job harder.

Sorry not sorry the Baltimore owl is the funniest one.

SAT practice tests? The life changing magical technology that I’m supposed to give up everything for is being reduced to something we already have a million of? Meanwhile hs teachers in my district are giving midterms on SCANTRON so kids don’t use AI to cheat…

I know this is really low on the list of problems we’re all facing right now but I’m wearing a new sweater dress at work today and I am sparking literally every time I touch something from the static electricity and it’s really stressful.