Mike Paul: Strategies, Tools, and Ideas for K

Actually, Slavery Was Very Bad

Family on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina, circa 1862. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and learnnc.org. [1] — Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and learnnc.org

Clint Smith, author of How the Word is Passed, takes on some recent thoughts about slavery’s legacy and whether or not museums are the last refuge of “woke.”

Trump’s Truth Social comment on slavery was unsettling for me not only because I am the descendant of enslaved people, and not only because I was born and raised in New Orleans, which was once the center of the domestic slave trade, but also because I am an American who believes that the only way to understand this country—the only way to love this country—is to tell the truth about it. Part of that truth is that chattel slavery, which lasted in the British American colonies and then the American nation for nearly 250 years, was indeed quite bad.

No matter how you decide to spin events, slavery was bad. Like, for real. Really bad. Always has been. Don’t forget that.

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On the Villainy of James Dobson

What a guy like James Dobson does, and what James Dobson did for his whole adult life, is offer people—white men primarily, but not exclusively—a rhetorical framework for doing evil and feeling good about it. Stand right here and look exactly there, he said, and psychology says it’s OK for you to beat your children, that when they cry for more than two minutes of the beating, it is because they are bad and not because you are hurting them; you should beat them harder for crying until they stop. Stand right here and look exactly there, and tradition says your wife should have no will of her own. Stand right here and look exactly there, and love of country says society should press its boot onto the poor and marginalized and crush them until they die. Didn’t you always hate them? Sure you did. Religion says right here that you are right to. He blew softly on a stupid and seething population’s resentments, its will to power, its lust to punish those who complicate their desires by having lives of their own, and watched those appetites stick up like the hairs on your arm, or glow like charcoal in a fire. It feels good. He tempts you with the promise that every cruel, fearful, punitive impulse you have aligns with The Way Things Are Supposed To Be, and that it is even your grim duty is to indulge them. In this respect, James Dobson was very much like Satan.

100% correct. James Dobson Is Dead, Was A Monster

Disturbing Stories, Violence, and Professional Liars

I see myself as a writer; I’m a professional liar.

– Harlan Ellison, 1976

Every now and then, we need a little reminder of our need to be antagonistic toward the establishment and really break things open that need to be broken.

In this interview from British television in 1976 (sorry, it won’t let me embed here), Harlan Ellison speaks about a bit of his life and his consistent efforts to be a thorn in the side of those in power.

The world might be a better place if we could stir up a little trouble as teachers and students by being a little more contrarian.

Interviewer: “I’ve read your stories and I was quite disturbed. There’s a lot of violence sometimes.

HE: “There’s a lot of violence in the world.”

Truth.

Interviewer: “I would call you a science fiction writer. Now, is that exactly what you are?”

HE: “No, that is exactly what I am not… I take contemporary events and look at them through the lens of fantasy and see what they really mean in mythic terms.”

Critiquing the world as it is through stories has been the primary mode of improving society since societies first formed.

On why he owns a gun (after describing taking out a sniper outside his home):

I own a gun because as much as I’d like to believe the world is a soft, pink & white bunny story, it isn’t. I deal with reality; I’m a pragmatist.

I still miss Harlan.

Everyday Objects Are Unrecognizable at Super Macro Scale

Posy takes us on a grand adventure into the world of the incredibly small and ridiculously close.

Prepare to sit in awe of everyday objects from an entirely new perspective.

Funny, we should probably try to look at the world from different perspectives more often…

We must build AI for people; not to be a person

My life’s mission has been to create safe and beneficial AI that will make the world a better place. Today at Microsoft AI we build AI to empower people, and I’m focused on making products like Copilot responsible technologies that enable people to achieve far more than they ever thought possible, be more creative, and feel more supported.

I want to create AI that makes us more human, that deepens our trust and understanding of one another, and that strengthens our connections to the real world. Copilot creates millions of positive, even life-changing, interactions every single day. This involves a lot of careful design choices to ensure it truly delivers an incredible experience. We won’t always get it right, but this humanist frame provides us with a clear north star to keep working towards.

Some thoughts from Mustafa Suleyman on building AI that doesn’t convince people that AI is a human, or needs rights. Or is a god.

Sadly, we’re already having those discussions.

What Trump Is Really Up to in Washington

white house — Photo by Aaron Kittredge on Pexels.com

You do not need the strongest powers of observation to see that crime is a pretext — and not the main reason — for the military occupation of Washington by federal agents and troops from the National Guard.

– Jamelle Bouie

You Might Be Trying to Replace the Wrong People with AI

I was at a leadership group and people were telling me “We think that with AI we can replace all of our junior people in our company.” I was like, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. They’re probably the least expensive employees you have, they’re the most leaned into your AI tools, and how’s that going to work when you go 10 years in the future and you have no one that has built up or learned anything?

So says Matt Garman, CEO of Amazon Web Services. A better question to ask: What do you mean, you don’t want to teach your high school students how to use AI to help them write code and solve problems more efficiently?

We live in weird times when people constantly retreat to what came before and avoid any intention of moving on.

Life is the future, not the past.

Black, Latino & Low-Income Kids Felt Better Doing Remote School During COVID

group of people taking photo — Photo by Rebecca Zaal on Pexels.com

The dominant story about COVID-era school closures has been simple: remote learning hurt kids’ mental health. And for many, that’s true. National data show American teens reported more loneliness and more suicidal thoughts between 2019 and 2023, with isolation during lockdown often cited as the culprit.

But a new study complicates that narrative. Researchers analyzed survey data from more than 6,000 middle schoolers during the 2020–21 school year and found a striking divide:

White and higher-income students were significantly happier and less stressed when attending school in person.
Black, Latino, and low-income students often reported the opposite—feeling less stressed and sometimes even happier when learning remotely.

In other words, remote school wasn’t universally worse. For some groups, it offered a reprieve from stressful in-person school environments, from health risks during the pandemic, or from inequities baked into the classroom experience.

The findings don’t suggest remote school is “better” overall. Academic setbacks during closures were real and disproportionately hurt the very students who sometimes felt mentally healthier at home. Instead, the study is a reminder that school isn’t a neutral space. How students experience it depends deeply on race, income, and environment.

As the researchers note, it’s not enough to flatten the pandemic into a single story of harm. Different groups of students experienced it differently—and will need different supports moving forward. If schools want to be places where all kids can thrive, they’ll need to reckon with why in-person learning left some students more stressed than staying home.

From Counting Blocks to Bias: Rethinking How We Teach Young Children Math

brown numbers cutout decors — Photo by Magda Ehlers on Pexels.com

Math is supposed to be the most “objective” subject in school. Two plus two equals four, no matter who you are, right? But research shows the way we teach early math is full of bias—and those inequities start shaping kids’ identities before they even reach third grade.

That’s the focus of the Racial Justice in Early Math project, a collaboration between the Erikson Institute and the University of Illinois Chicago. The team is developing resources—books, classroom activities, teacher trainings—to help educators confront racial bias in how young children experience math.

As project director Priscila Pereira points out, bias isn’t just an individual teacher problem; it’s baked into structures like scripted curricula, under-resourced schools, and practices like ability grouping. Danny Bernard Martin, a professor at UIC, highlights how stereotypes like “Asians are good at math” and deficit narratives about Black children filter into classrooms, shaping expectations in damaging ways. Even the smallest teacher choices—who gets called on, whose creative solutions are validated—can reinforce or disrupt those narratives.

The initiative is working to equip educators with not just strategies but reflective spaces: webinars, fellowships, and immersive experiences where teachers and researchers can rethink what it means to create racial justice in early math classrooms. As Pereira puts it, “We just have to keep doing the work, because we know what’s right.”

It’s a reminder that math isn’t just about numbers—it’s about identity, power, and whose ideas we choose to value.

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