While it left very little time for personal processing, I'm proud that our leadership team worked for hours last night to prepare guidance for staff today. These are a few of the points. (LPS educators, your building teams have shared/will be sharing more specifics!)

SCOOP: Seattle Public Schools tells teachers that the education system is guilty of “spirit murder” against black children and that white teachers must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance.”

Let's review the whistleblower documents.👇

The trainers begin by claiming that teachers are colonizers of Native American "ancestral lands" and that “the United States was built off the stolen labor of kidnapped and enslaved Black people’s work, which created the profits that created our nation.”

The participants identify themselves by both gender pronouns and race labels. While it has become commonplace in academia to use gender pronoun identifiers, this is perhaps the first example of an institution creating the expectation for explicit race-labeling in the workplace.

The trainers tell white teachers that they "must commit to the journey" of anti-whiteness, even if their "lizard-brain" makes them "afraid that [they] will have to talk about sensitive issues such as race, racism, classism, sexism, or any kind of ‘ism.’"

The central message is that white teachers must recognize that they “are assigned considerable power and privilege” because of their “possession of white skin.” To atone for this guilt, they must “bankrupt [their] privilege in acknowledgement of [their] thieved inheritance.”

What does it take to sustain screwiness in the way the world works? Mostly, it's just good people, trying their best to get us to a better place... within constraints which pretty much preclude us actually getting anywhere! A case in point with

These authors come across as hugely committed to something we might all agree upon: improving young people's experiences of physical education through better school-based-interventions. Sounds great? Agreed, & pretty much everything about their study models best practice 🥳

Sadly, established "best practice" involves further embedding the medicalisation of PE as if it should be about the potential contribution of physical activity to everything from quality of life, self-perception & cognition to the likelyhood of becoming healthy & active adults 🤯

We're reminded of the Chief Medical Officer's "recommended guidelines of 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day for healthy growth and development" 👇 This is a focus on what we can easily measure (generic) rather than on what we might value (individual).

We get recognition that PE "is not merely an opportunity for children to engage in PA" but that's linked to its role in "the development of knowledge & skills to foster their PA engagement throughout life" - so further focus on health outcomes. A long way from @meaningfulPE 🙄

So I woke up today to learn that the @A2SchoolsSuper has called a snow day. After a four-day weekend. And with tomorrow an "asynchronous" day (i.e., no real school again).

Which might sound reasonable after a storm, except -- there IS no in-person school in Ann Arbor.

In her email, @A2SchoolsSuper said that COVID-19 means "we have missed many of the simple joys that make our time together memorable."

Simple joys? You mean, like seeing friends? Actually learning in a classroom? Heck, like learning at all?

Or having your parents not be quivering messes because they haven't had their kids in school for nearly a year and are at the ends of their ropes? Or not waking up in the middle of the night worrying if the district is ALSO going to limit or suspend in-person school for the fall?

She writes: "Snow days are opportunities for children, young people, and adults to play in the snow, read books, take a break, and enjoy the winter season." You know what adults can't do that? Adults who work. And yes, this burden fall primarily on moms.

Also, we just had a four day weekend! My kids have played in the snow! They've read books! THEY'VE HAD A BREAK.

They don't need those things right now. They need school. We need school.