Alex Shevrin Venet

I can't believe it's been a year/only been a year since the UnitedHealthcare CEO killing. That day & the surrounding discourse had such a huge impact on me personally in ways I'm still unraveling.

How do I make change when I'm just one teacher? A pay-what-you-can workshop with Alex

Next week! My last pay-what-you-can workshop of 2025. We'll be doing some of the activities from my book Becoming an Everyday Changemaker. Join us for some reflective time & brainstorming with community. #EduSky www.tickettailor.com/events/uncon...

Ooh nice! Will definitely post updates.

Starting to ponder what to put together for my summer PD offerings...considering some kind of small group cohort focused on education writing. Let me know if you'd be interested or what you'd want to see out of something like that...

Granted.

A color photo of a delicate and fluffy white medium-haired cat sitting on a window ledge. They are looking at the camera. What makes this photo extra special is that the cat is backlight by the sun coming through the window, the light illuminating their fluffy hair making them appear so luminous and angelic.

A favorite from my collection - this luminous little one from the 1960s.

One of the biggest impacts I’ve seen from the unproven idea that people are wrongfully using disability accommodations is that people stop trusting people with disabilities and in fact further restrict, remove, and demonize accommodations for people with disabilities in general

How do I make change when I'm just one teacher? A pay-what-you-can workshop with Alex

Next week! My last pay-what-you-can workshop of 2025. We'll be doing some of the activities from my book Becoming an Everyday Changemaker. Join us for some reflective time & brainstorming with community. #EduSky www.tickettailor.com/events/uncon...

Gofundme for the family's legal fees: gofund.me/fb6f207ad

I'm broken-hearted about the teachers who have to go in and teach their classes while someone on the roster is absent because ICE is holding them in some unknown place. These policies destroy families and communities. It's completely sickening.

Society: *treats disabled people like shit*
Also society: People just wanna be disabled so they can feel SPECIAL!

bullshit articles like this are actively perpetuating stigma. shame on everyone involved.

they had to fight for accommodations while faculty actively discouraged them from their legal protections. they faced incredible amounts of stigma. they felt shame and fear and struggled under the weight of documentation and red tape. all they wanted to do was succeed and become doctors.

wow that whole article was way worse than I expected. not surprised though.

a couple of years ago I did an in-depth set of interviews with (mostly) disabled students at a medical school. none of them were trying to game the system.

The surge itself is undeniable. Soon, some schools may have more students receiving accommodations than not, a scenario that would have seemed absurd just a decade ago. Already, at one law school, 45 percent of students receive academic accommodations. Paul Graham Fisher, a Stanford professor who served as co-chair of the university’s disability task force, told me, “I have had conversations with people in the Stanford administration. They’ve talked about at what point can we say no? What if it hits 50 or 60 percent? At what point do you just say ‘We can’t do this’?” This year, 38 percent of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability; in the fall quarter, 24 percent of undergraduates were receiving academic or housing accommodations.

hmmm...might history guide us about what happens when we ask "how many disabled people is TOO MANY?"

Lindstrom worries that the system encourages students to see themselves as less capable than they actually are. By attributing all of their difficulties to a disability, they are pathologizing normal challenges. “When it comes to a disorder like ADHD, we all have those symptoms sometimes,” Lindstrom told me. “But most of us aren’t impaired by them.”

this person is the director of a center for learning disorders.

Professors told me that the most common—and most contentious—accommodation is the granting of extra time on exams. For students with learning disabilities, the extra time may be necessary to complete the test. But unlike a wheelchair ramp, this kind of accommodation can be exploited. Research confirms what intuition suggests: Extra time can confer an advantage to students who don’t have a disability.

words fail me.

The types of accommodations vary widely. Some are uncontroversial, such as universities outfitting buildings with ramps and providing course materials in braille. These allow disabled students to access the same opportunities as their classmates. Some students get approved for housing accommodations, including single rooms and emotional-support animals.

this article keeps holding up wheelchair users as "real" disabled people whereas ADHD and anxiety accommodations are ruining intellectual rigor. first of all, false binary. secondly, *unintelligible screaming*

Schools began relaxing their requirements. A 2013 analysis of disability offices at 200 postsecondary institutions found that most “required little” from a student besides a doctor’s note in order to grant accommodations for ADHD. At the same time, getting such a note became easier. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association expanded the definition of ADHD. Previously, the threshold for diagnosis had been “clear evidence of clinically significant impairment.” After the release of the DSM‑5, the symptoms needed only to “interfere with, or reduce the quality” of, academic functioning.

oh goodie, we're already onto ADHD minimization and "it's too easy to get an ADHD diagnosis"

“You hear ‘students with disabilities’ and it’s not kids in wheelchairs,” one professor at a selective university, who requested anonymity because he doesn’t have tenure, told me. “It’s just not. It’s rich kids getting extra time on tests.” Even as poor students with disabilities still struggle to get necessary provisions, elite universities have entered an age of accommodation. Instead of leveling the playing field, the system has put the entire idea of fairness at risk.

I'm hatereading this Atlantic article on "too many college kids are getting accomodations." I have internet poisoning and I'm only on the fourth paragraph.

my town's school just shared that over the holiday, a 2nd grader and their mom were abducted by ICE. Second grade.

Predicability, flexibility, connection and empowerment help to reestablish safety. Days after break: reset routines/norms, provide choices for engagement, reestablish feeling of "I see you & care about you," and encourage students to self-assess needs/set goals for the weeks ahead.

I love French onion soup so much.

We went to a Syrian restaurant in Canada instead of doing Thanksgiving but Nate is making me a pecan pie today because that's the one thing I missed 😻 and I'm gonna make French onion soup tonight.

Watching people use ableism to express outrage at the president's ableist slur is.... something.

Ugh I'm so sorry. It's the literal worst.

One of my big goals for my book: people suffering from sciatica can more easily find art that validates their pain and not just self help book after self help book. As far as I can tell it would be the first memoir about the specific hell of sciatica.

Just need an agent who sees the vision.

First off, this couple is hilarious and I want to subscribe to their podcast and be friends with them.

Their legal Mass “BORT” license plate is getting rung up with EZPass tolls from people who have Simpsons novelty plates. www.instagram.com/reel/DRfod3l...

Today’s xkcd made me cry.

In a good way.

xkcd.com/3172/

Interesting. There's so much we don't know about COVID