Kids banned from field day if they owe lunch money. School says there’s a $55,000 tab (nj.com) Inside the old Walmart where 1,500 undocumented immigrant kids are being held (Vice News) Every class I teach, I make a point of trying to hold class outside at least once during the term. This tends to be easier in some terms that others (it’s almost impossible to hold a summer term class outside, due to the heat), and I’ve had my fair share of outside classes get…
Students required to smile at Pennsylvania school — or get sent to the office (New York Daily News) I was not in the target demographic for Bill Nye the Science Guy when it first started airing in 1993, and even if I had been, I still wasn’t in the mood to hear anything about science while I was in the middle of a string of science teachers who could most charitably be described as megalomaniacal assholes. More to the point, having grown up in that era of…
Colorado GOP threatens to throw teachers in jail for going on strike (shareblue.com) Want to Be a ‘Volunteer Adjunct’? Southern Illinois U. is Hiring (Chronicle of Higher Education) One of the most annoying and nonsensical arguments that some conservatives make is that left-wingers shouldn’t use anything that they’re opposed to in efforts to further their own ends. These bloviations usually go along the lines of, “Oh, you say you don’t like big corporations? Well, your smartphone was made by a corporation, dur hur hur. If you…
Two-Thirds Of Millennials Can’t Say What Auschwitz Is: Study (patch.com) A common trap that many teachers fall into is assuming that when their students get to them, those students will have learned the same things that they’d learned at that particular age or grade level. For some teachers, this is an honest mistake that they’re not even aware that they’re making; others, however, may not particularly care about all the factors involved in why their students aren’t aware of certain issues, because they view every…
Professors Are Targets In Online Culture Wars; Some Fight Back (wlrn.org) [This blog includes discussion of bullying and a suicide attempt.] Of all my interactions with the worst bully I ever had to deal with in my younger days — and believe me, I had to deal with a lot of bullies back then — two stick out the most. The first was an act of public embarrassment so mortifying that it led me to attempt suicide, right there on campus, after I was finally able to…