A Nation of Prevarication

politics, rhetoric, teaching 2023.10.02 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Gaslighting Americans about public schools: The truth about ‘A Nation at Risk’ (Washington Post) If it wasn’t the most important book I read over my summer, Maia Szalavitz’s Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids was unquestionably the most emotionally difficult to get through. Not only is the book full of the horror stories of the “tough love” sadism of the eighties and nineties, including innocent children being swept up by them and some easily-preventable deaths, but it reminded…

The Night Before

personal, teaching 2023.09.04 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

One year ago at this moment, I was spending my last night in Richland Center, wondering how I’d managed to piece together the plan that would unfold the following day. I’d agreed to begin teaching at the Platteville campus months earlier, in the middle of my summer classes, but my initial efforts to find help with locating a new apartment, and moving all my stuff downstate, failed spectacularly. With a week to go before the planned move, I still wasn’t sure what would happen —…

Oh, Hell!

personal, teaching 2023.08.14 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

That was Hedder’s first reaction a little over five years ago, when I told her that I’d gotten the full-time teaching position in Richland Center, Wisconsin that I’d interviewed for about two weeks earlier. I’d woken up a few moments earlier, checked my email on my phone, then checked it again, then checked it a third time, just because I was in utter disbelief about the job offer. I’d applied for over two hundred positions since moving in with Hedder the previous December, literally from…

Not For Me

personal, television 2023.07.31 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

My social difficulties at school manifested from my very first day at Little Meadows Nursery School in Toledo, and both of the threads that created those difficulties stemmed from the television I watched in my earliest years. I devoured Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighbourhood every weekday, so my eagerness to come to school and learn even more things didn’t exactly endear me to my new classmates. In addition, because I was hooked on The Gong Show, my sense of humour was already spiraling out…

Too Many Twits

internet, personal, politics 2023.07.17 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Far-right Twitter influencers first on Elon Musk’s monetization scheme (The Washington Post via msn.com) During my short stay in Colorado a few years ago, one of my most harrowing experiences came when Hedder was driving us home to Colorado Springs from some business we had in Aurora. Hedder was as obedient a driver as I was back then, but unlike me, she liked to antagonize drivers who were going too fast, or not using their turn signals, or things of that nature. As we were…