Category Archives: teaching

Beyond All Repair

politics, rhetoric, teaching Leave a comment

What Betsy DeVos got wrong about Detroit schools (Detroit Free Press)Education Secretary Betsy DeVos held in civil contempt for violating judge’s order on student loan collection (USA Today) I don’t read that many novels about war — I haven’t been reading many novels at all lately, since I’m chin-deep in research for my next non-fiction book — but I’ve read the same scene in more than a couple of novels, and it’s kind of stuck in my head since I realized how frequently I’ve seen…

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Pay Street

teaching, television Leave a comment

HBO Max locks down exclusive access to new Sesame Street episodes (The Verge) The first iPhone was released a little over twelve years ago. This means that students who entered college this year were about six years old when the iPhone came out, and although I certainly have memories of my life from before I turned six, I don’t have that many. If we aren’t yet at a point where new college students can’t remember a world without smartphones, we will be in the next…

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Big Bladder is Being Watched

politics, teaching Leave a comment

[The following blog contains mentions of child abuse.] “I was beginning to think Foucault’s writings on the ‘disciplinary society’ were becoming irrelevant …” (Tweet from Josh Seim)‘I think my bladder changed’: Former teacher describes years without bathroom breaks (Yahoo!) At one of my first adjunct teaching jobs after I got my graduate degree, there was another instructor who was often in the teachers’ lounge at the same time I was, and we did not get along with each other at all. I had a number…

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Write This Down

personal, teaching Leave a comment

The assignment books they sold at the abattoir of a “school” I went to were about as big as a pack of notebook paper. Given how much homework we were all assigned there, those assignment books were kind of a necessity, and I don’t like remembering how many late nights I had to spend crossing every item out of each daily column in those books one-by-one. I couldn’t find those assignment books when I went off to college, so I bought smaller ones that I…

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Missing Mixing

music, personal, teaching Leave a comment

After I got to Wisconsin last August, I only had eleven days between my arrival here and when I had to teach my first class. I’ve taught classes on short notice before, but I’ve almost always done so at places where I’ve already been teaching, so I have some idea about curriculum requirements and the like before I start planning things out. Trying to put together classes in less than two weeks when I’ve not only never taught at an institution before, but I’ve gone…

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