Jessica Zeller (she/her)

cc: educators

How to Protect Your Right to Culture The United States government’s coordinated repeal of the right to culture has grave consequences for the texture of our daily lives. But there are ways to fight back.

"The right to culture is fundamental, and its revocation has grave consequences for the texture of daily life." You should definitely read this, by @annakornbluh.bsky.social and @isanchezprado.bsky.social

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

We are at that golden moment in the semester when "thank you for your patience with my delayed reply" prefaces all of my emails.

It turns out that being a kind human being is a practice.

My employer New York Public Radio just announced that it is offering @onthemedia.bsky.social, @radiolab.bsky.social, and other programs to at-risk public radio stations for free! More info: current.org/2025/09/wnyc...

Arts education matters.

Screenshot of an announcement from SESAME WORKSHOP. The Sesame Street library is coming to YouTube! Beginning in January 2026, YouTube will have the largest digital library of Sesame Street content, with hundreds of full episodes coming to the Sesame Street channels. Join us as we help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder, one episode at a time.

Oh HELL yes

Thank you, Cate!

I nearly fell over.

Humanizing Ballet Pedagogies: Philosophies, Perspectives, and Praxis for Teaching Ballet Published in Journal of Dance Education (Ahead of Print, 2025)

...students are seen and heard as whole human beings, student agency and autonomy is fostered, and a commitment to developing community is valued."

Whew. Thank you, Sherrie Barr and the Journal of Dance Education. More here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

An astonishing book review of my Humanizing Ballet Pedagogies includes the following sentence, and I am gobsmacked: "Thus, rather than adhering to methods that might be more institutionally acceptable or familiar to readers, Zeller proposes a ballet pedagogy in which... +

Why should I write better when a machine can do it for me? Because actually no one can do it for you, because your voice is unique among all the people on earth. Siri never petted a horse's neck. Alexa has never been ghosted by the captain of the football team. But you have lived, your heart is beating, you have suffered, and you have something important to say. It's a human's job, to use words, and whatever job you give to a machine, that part of your brain goes dark. Maybe it's worth it when it comes to remembering phone numbers and directions, but when that part of your brain that uses words goes dark, that's a vast area that's very close to your soul. Don't let some internet platform convince you that what you have to say and create isn't worthwhile. Words are the echo of your soul. Honing that echo matters.

this iconic advertising copywriter named Kathy Hepinstall Parks died over the weekend and I wanted to share something from her website I thought Bluesky would like

Now updated with more links (thanks to everyone who suggested new material!) and with the years that each article was published. catherinedenial.org/blog/uncateg...

Opinion | A.I. Is Fueling a ‘Poverty of Imagination.’ Here’s How We Can Fix It.

This is such an important conversation.

#GiftLink #GiftArticle

Higher Ed Is Morally Injured (opinion) As higher ed confronts a crisis of values, we must name, witness and transcend moral injury, Mays Imad writes.

I am enormously grateful for the clear writing and ethical perspective offered by my friend Mays Imad, in this vital piece for @insidehighered.com today: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/view...

No more endless academic paper searches! Writing a research paper used to take weeks. With tlooto AI, you can go from a rough idea to a structure draft -- in just 3 minutes.

"With [some AI bullshit] you can go from a rough idea to a structured draft — in just 3 minutes"

We're so cooked.

"Funding for this program was made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by annual financial support from viewers like you" <---I bet you hear the exact cadence of your vintage

They're just saying it out loud that their project isn't viable without theft at an epic scale

Opinion | Students Want the Liberal Arts. Administrators, Not So Much.

“When students realize their own humanity is at stake in their education, they are deeply invested in it.”

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

Solid point.

I just wish the brilliant young women I work with could have half of this confidence.

When you've never thought critically about anything, everything looks like a revolutionary discovery

Holy shit this is good. It says it’s a 6-minute read but I recommend taking more time with it.

“There is no education in this future – certainly not as a practice of freedom, but not even as a hollowed-out practice of competence.”

Yeah this is the thing I'm told me and all my students need to uncritically embrace so they can get a job after college

now that i think of it, with claude, grok and chatgpt, they basically stopped making them woman-coded like siri as soon as they wanted them to act like topic based authorities

Thank you for seeing me. 🙌🏻

We are the worst.