I’m having a hard time putting into words my feelings over the past couple of days. I work in education but I’m also a parent. I worry about the kids and teachers whom I work with but I also worry about sending my daughter to school.
Note: she just finished 4th grade, which has struck me right in the center of my being after the deaths of many 4th graders in Texas. They were the same age as my own daughter. Frightening, to say the least.
My biggest issue now is responding to those who believe we don’t need to do anything about gun control in the US. I’m tired of their “thoughts and prayers” that don’t do much.
What we know about the terrorist attack in Uvalde, TX on May 24, 2022:
At least 21 dead; 19 students and 2 adults
Uvalde is “the kind of place where ‘interconnections are thick’ and no one would have expected a mass shooting at the local school”
The suspect also allegedly shot his grandmother before going to Robb Elementary
The suspect (terrorist) purchased two assault-style rifles on his 18th birthday, though authorities have not confirmed whether these were the weapons used in the shooting
All victims were in the same fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School
The mass shooting in Texas that left 19 children and two adults dead is the latest mass shooting in the state.
More than 85 people have been killed in five of Texas' worst shootings since 2017, including worshippers at a church, shoppers and drivers.https://t.co/vc0n79GMFn
Ramos had hinted on social media that an attack could be coming, state Sen Roland Gutierrez, who was briefed by police, told reporters. “He suggested the kids should watch out,” the lawmaker said.
He shot his grandmother before driving to Robb Elementary just before midday on Tuesday
He “suffered from a fraught home life and lashed out violently against peers and strangers recently and over the years…”
The Texas Department of Public Safety said he was wearing body armor and armed with a rifle.
We need to do something. We know what we disagree on we need to focus on what we can and do it even if small. No more debate or thoughts and prayers. We need bipartisan action.
Columbine survivor here. My oldest son just finished his first year of college. This is America. There is no end in sight for the steady cadence of mass gun violence we seem unwilling to ever address. A reality my peers could not have imagined on our worst day in April 1999.
Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr got emotional talking about the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and called on senators to take action. Watch the moment here: https://t.co/FF2Py6QLDO
These are elementary school children who woke up this morning. Who ate their favorite cereal. Who tied their shoes in double knots. Who laughed with friends on the bus. Now more than a dozen are dead. This isn’t normal. It doesn’t have to be this way. It can’t keep being this way
I’m tired of reading these headlines. I’m tired of thinking about my own daughter not being safe in her school. I’m tired of thinking about the teachers and students I work with every day and them not being safe.
I’m tired of having to think about getting shot while in school when there are so many other things we should be focused on during our days but we can’t because we continue to allow guns like this to be sold.
I’m tired of bullying. I’m tired of not taking mental health seriously.
I’m tired. And I’m mad.
Hopefully, you are, too. And you’re ready to do something about it.
We will do something. Stay tuned. I need to make some calls.
While other Black climbers have previously climbed Mount Everest, this was the first summit by a team of Black climbers. The other Full Circle team members who summited were Thomas Moore, also of Colorado; and Manoah Ainuu, Rosemary Saal, Demond Mullins, James “KG” Kagami, and Evan Green. Phil Henderson, who lives in Cortez, Colorado, led the Full Circle team but did not climb.
“If you’re a black person or a Latino person and you Google ‘climbing,’ you’re going to still see lots of people who don’t look like you,” Taylor said. “That, I think, makes those sports … seem a little bit more unapproachable.”
First things first: I appreciate the need for peer review and understand why we have academic journals. I’m not the person you need to convince that any work any scientist or academic publishes needs to be scrutinized with as many eyeballs as possible.
My issues lie in how that work is disseminated to large audiences to be put into action and influence the world.
Thanks to the way most academic publishing works, it’s almost impossible for anyone other than another academic to read your work if it’s published.
Its complete bull💩💩💩💩 when you spend untold hours writing a paper and then you dont get access to actually read your damn paper on the publisher's website. I did all the work–they did nothing but format it! (looking at you Taylor & Francis and Emerald)
It’s hard to overstate what a scam academic and scientific publishing is. It’s run by an oligopoly of wildly profitable companies that coerce academics into working for free for them, and then sell the product of their labors back to the academics’ employers (often public institutions) for eye-popping sums.
As I begin my doctoral studies in the fall of 2022, I hope to have more experience with academic publishing myself. I mean, that’s part of the academic process.
Over the years, my articles, tweets, presentations, podcasts, etc., have been viewed or heard by multiple tens of thousands of people from all over the world. I’ve made that work freely available to others for a long time (thanks, Creative Commons) and seen many take advantage of what I’ve “published” in one form or another.
Sadly, any work I may produce and publish in the academic tradition may never see the light of day.
In K-12 education, we talk a lot about having students create work for an authentic audience; work that will be seen and critiqued by people outside of their school environment.
Shouldn’t we try and do the same with academic publications?
Universal truth: COVID-19 changed education forever. The pandemic affected every area of education. Weaknesses were exposed, kids were left unconnected for months, systems failed, administrators panicked, students felt abandoned, and teachers just had to do more and more every day.
As a result, teachers are leaving. And I mean leaving in a hurry.
For months on end, teachers have been in survival mode, doing their best to meet the same expectations that were in place pre-pandemic and dance the world’s most epic dance from virtual to in-person learning (multiple times for some).
Students still had to take tests and meet all graduation requirements while learning how to talk with each other behind masks and appreciate short outdoor mask breaks a few times per day.
And the teachers had to keep going. They’ve had to deal with administrators who pressured them to try new things (some necessary and some not so much) and adopt more technology in less time than at any other point in educational history.
Three minutes. That’s all the time Lanee Higgins, a Baltimore County Public Schools teacher, had to herself during a typical day of coronavirus-era remote learning. On her computer screen were middle-schoolers, scattered across the county, running through their lessons — while at home, Higgins, age 29, was trying to maintain her authority over her classroom and her life. Sometimes her potty-training toddler, refusing to nap, would wander into the frame when her entrepreneur husband wasn’t there to corral him. When she just couldn’t hold on anymore, Higgins would announce a three-minute break. She’d leave her students staring at the screen while she scurried off to use the bathroom or steal some time to just think.
Teacher shortages were already a reality pre-pandemic but now the shortages are reaching critical numbers. Stress was listed as the primary reason why teachers left the field before the pandemic and the pandemic only made it worse.
The pre-pandemic teacher turnover rate was 16% but by January 2021 nearly one-quarter of teachers were thinking about leaving their jobs by the end of the school year.
And now, as we near the end of the 2021-2022 school year, over half of all teachers are thinking of leaving.
Teachers are tired. They’re tired of changing mandates from state and local officials. They’re tired of dealing with politicians who have little to no respect for the work teachers do every day. They’re tired of misinformed parents who accuse teachers of indoctrinating their students.
Trust me, we’re not indoctrinating any students. If we were, they’d be much better at following directions for turning in their work by now.
We figure out how to support teachers. While a pay increase would be welcome, it’s certainly not all about the money. Even when you understand that from 1999 to 2021, teacher salaries decreased in 27 states, thanks to inflation.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Mike Paul, and include a link to pikemall.tech.
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Cory Doctorow’s work at Pluralistic inspired the layout, focus, and work displayed here. Hat tip to Cory for all his fine work.
As I’ve mentioned previously, this site in one form or another has existed since 2006. Through multiple platform changes and changes in focus, I’ve shared thoughts and insights here for the past decade and a half.
As we all know, change is the only constant. With my job responsibilities and beginning my doctoral work, I knew I needed to find a better way to share my thoughts and things I find of interest that you might enjoy.
So, here’s my plan:
On Mondays and Fridays, I will share posts with links to things I’ve found that you may also find useful.
Tuesday – Thursday, I’ll be sharing links with my own commentary and hopefully making some connections with other sources. I may even have multiple posts these days.
I’m doing my best to build an online database of connected topics and thoughts that, I hope, will help me better formulate my own thinking around different subjects I’m passionate about.
Sometimes it will be education, sometimes technology, sometimes life. Whatever I find interesting is game for this blog.
Who knows? Maybe I’ll build something you’ll enjoy.
The Eclectic Educator is a free resource for everyone passionate about education and creativity. If you enjoy the content and want to support the newsletter, consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps keep the insights and inspiration coming!
In one demo, a Google product manager tells someone wearing the glasses, “You should be seeing what I’m saying, just transcribed for you in real time — kind of like subtitles for the world.” Later, the video shows what you might see if you’re wearing the glasses: with the speaker in front of you, the translated language appears in real time in your line of sight.
I’m sure we all remember Google’s first foray into connected eyewear with a little fondness. They were ugly and didn’t work very well.
But we thought they were cool.
However, if this new model ever becomes a real product, how helpful could it be if you got real-time translation while someone was speaking with you in another language?
Or if you had hearing issues, you’d have subtitles to help.
The real question will be what Google does with the data they gather from all the eyeballs.
Oh, and then there’s the whole “why is that creeper continuing to stare at me with those weird glasses” issue that I’m sure will come up in a courtroom somewhere.
