Okay, #MAEdu, let's talk FY22 and the Student Opportunity Act: https://t.co/o1tgppGy4K

The problem that the ‘lets-shut-schools-for-a-couple-of-weeks-crowd’ ignore is that its much easier to shut schools than to open them. Therefore, the probability is that once schools are shut, they will be shut for months on end, just like last time.

In other words, they are engaging in wishful thinking. The probability is that schools will be shut for months on end whilst online teaching provision will likely be patchy/minimal/inadequate/non-existent like it was last time & educational inequalities will continue to widen.

We’ve learned nothing from the schools shutting for 6 months last yr. Once those schools are shut, they will be shut for months. Online learning will continue to be inadequate, meanwhile big-mouthed Twitter users with no skin in the game will continue to opine on the subject.

The average Twitter user is more likely to be parent to a cat than to a human child. No skin in the game & it shows, quite frankly. The online learning that is available for parents is inadequate & it will be left to parents to utilise their own resources, again.

Educational inequalities will widen into a chasm. It will be a disaster for children, especially primary school-aged children, & for what? Where is the evidence that school closures minimised the spread of C-19? But the average Twitter user need not worry, their cat will be fine

As you may know, asides sharing graduate school opportunities, I like to share practical insights and directional content that will give you a sense of what you are missing or not missing.

Serving you below:

HOW TO LEVERAGE "OPO" for grad school applications 👇

- A THREAD

2) OPO is an initialism coined from "Other People's Opportunities". This means you will be leveraging opportunities specific to others to your advantage. After this thread, you will stop asking:

"Can you share scholarships for Atmospheric Social Law"? 😂

(you get the drift).

3) PROCESS:

A) Once someone shares an opportunity. Say @olumuyiwaayo, @Jamaticulus or @AaronAkpuPhilip or myself shares an opportunity on our timeline, the first thing to do is to locate the name of the university and the country it is located.

4) (B) Type the name of the institution on Google and locate the website of your department. Often times, if there is a mass recruitment by the institution at the time you saw the ad, its likely there is something for prospective student looking to get into your department.

5) If otherwise, that is, if the ad you saw was particular to the advertised field, the leverage you have is that you are informed about the institution and you have the privilege to dig faculties.

(C) List the names of probable supervisors on the department's website.

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.”

The Google Doc where the San Francisco school board did it's research for deciding which historical figures to cancel is public, and it's hilariously bad

The best part is the "Notes" tab, where someone lays out why the stated reasons are complete BS.

Case in point: "Lowell High School must be renamed because the namesake was a racist."

Notes: "Yeeeah, no, it wasn't named after that guy at all."

(they voted to rename anyway)

Another example: "Paul Revere led the Penobscot Expedition, which led to the colonization of the Penobscot."

Notes: "What? No. The Penobscot expedition was fought against the British, in Penobscot Bay. The natives weren't involved."

(voted to rename anyway)

"Dianne Feinstein was responsible for evicting an entire Filipino neighborhood!"

Notes: "That happened in 1977. She wasn't mayor until a year later."

(voted to rename anyway)

"Abraham Lincoln executed 38 Dakota Indians!"

Notes: "The Minnesota governor was going to execute *300*. Lincoln intervened when he had no obligation to, and saved the vast majority of them."

(voted to rename anyway)

So, I know it's the weekend but if I don't say all this I may burst.

A thread for those who think school days should be extended and holidays shortened to make up for 'lost learning'.

The narrative of 'lost learning' is based on the myth that in-school learning is the be-all-and-end-all for all pupils at all times. It isn't. Not all pupils engage all day in school. Not all pupils complete every task set every day, in school or as part of home learning

Part of a teacher's job, and one that we do hourly, is to assess where pupils are along a progression of learning. When they reach a milestone we challenge and extend, where we think revision and consolidation of previous learning is needed we plan and deliver that.

What we don't do when there is revision and consolidation required is declare that any child's life chances are lost. We seek support in school, at home and when necessary from our colleagues in education and third-sector partners.

When a child misses schooling through illness, family circumstance, war, refugee status, any non-attendance, we don't write off their life chances, we don't make them work longer hours and shorten holidays. We take a holistic approach to the support needed and work to meet that.