SCHOOLS I HAVE APPLIED TO (Part A)

For those of you who think that we are lucky, let me show you all the schools I have either applied to or sent an email to in different countries as promised in this tweet: https://t.co/GbNs16ivm9.

Please tag all your friends to see.

I often say to grad students: a reasonable thing to aim for in grad school is ~2-3 essentially complete and posted papers, alongside your JMP. This often looks like your JMP, plus your 2nd-yr paper, a paper from RA'ing for a faculty, or from working with classmates

Of course, some people get top jobs with only one very, very good paper. This is very risky though - you don't know ex-ante whether your paper will be very good! Most schools care about productivity, so having a couple of completed papers helps

Even if the papers are not change-the-world papers. Also, it exercises your paper-writing muscle. Not everyone comes into grad school ready to write ECMA's!

One "mistake" I sometimes see is some students don't take the 2nd year paper seriously enough. That's basically your only big milestone other than your JMP, so if all the time you put into the 2nd year paper doesn't produce a draft, that's a pretty big time sink

Another mistake, ironically, is taking field class paper requirements too seriously. If you take 3 field classes a quarter, 3 quarters, that's 12 papers! There's no way you can write a different one for each class

SCOOP: San Diego Unified School District tells white teachers they are guilty of “spirit murdering” black children and should undergo “antiracist therapy for White educators.”

I've obtained explosive whistleblower documents from the training session. Let's dig in. 🧵

This summer, San Diego Unified hired critical race theorist Bettina Love for a district-wide training on "[challenging] the oppressive practices that live within ... school organizations." The district forbade recordings, but my whistleblower took screenshots and detailed notes.

According to the whistleblower notes, Love began by saying that "racism runs deep" in America and that blacks alone "know who America really is." Love claimed that public schools "don't see [blacks] as human," perpetuate “anti-Blackness,” and "spirit murder babies."

The concept of “spirit murder” is at the heart of Love’s teachings. Love writes that public schools are guilty of “the spirit murdering of Black and Brown children,” defines as “a death that is built on racism and intended to reduce, humiliate, and destroy people of color.”

During the presentation, Love argued that “Whiteness reproduces poverty, failing schools, high unemployment, school closings, and trauma for people of color.” She insisted that “white educators must take responsibility” because they uphold “white supremacy culture.”

You know what I don’t miss? Parent teacher conferences.

Most of Rocketkid’s teachers were lovely, but we had two that still stick out in my mind as sad/hilarious.

The first one, he was in elementary school. The teacher said it was ‘important’ for us to come in.

1/

So we worried about that for two days until the meeting. What could be wrong? It’s scary for parents to be left hanging like that.

So we meet his teacher, goatee and sunglasses...we live in the boonies and yet there’s something here like he’s trying to be a player.

2/

Not like a lady-player, like he’s got an image of himself in his head. We like teachers, but this guy’s manner is just weirdly kind of pushy a little bit.

Anyway, we sit does in the kid chairs, he’s behind his desk, again, weirdly focused on ‘power,’ somehow.

No idea why,

3/

We ask about our son, he acts as if he forgot that’s why we’re there, says some random stuff, all normal, nothing at all worthy of a conference. I mean, contact and communication is important, but thus just feels off-the cuff entirely.

4/

So then suddenly he gets really intense, but pretends being casual. Like it just occurred to him.

And he says to me, ‘So, I hear you’re a writer.’

What?

I tell him yes, I write comics and some animation and stuff.

He says. ‘I looked you up.’

5/