If You Want a Voice in NYC Education, You Must Vote for Mayor in the Primaries - Deadline to Register for the Primaries is February 14.

https://t.co/VGqli10Owu

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The Next Mayor Will Determine the Fate of Public Education in NYC: The Mayor will determine whether the city cuts or protects education budgets and whether highly successful G&T Programs are abolished or made more accessible and expanded to every district in the city. 2/

He or she will determine whether 8th graders have access to Algebra, Arts and Regents level science classes and will determine whether NYC’s selective high schools stay selective or dole out seats via lottery. 3/

Mayor and other NYC Races Decided in the Primaries:

The election is not until Nov, but the vast majority of NYC elections are won by the winner of the Democratic primary. So most NYC elections are effectively decided in June. 4/

To Vote in a Party’s Primary, You Must Register to Vote as an Affiliate of that Party

To vote in the Democrat, Republican or any other party’s primary, you must submit a voter registration and check that you are registering with that party. 5/

Something you may not know is that professional Black women are hyper focused on qualification.

We are told young that there will be no leg-up for us, and that we MUST excel academically.

We work hard, compete & get into college.

For many of us, our whole family is counting

on us. We often carry the burden of inter-generational progress, where our success validates the expectations and sacrifice of those before us.

We are always aware that squandering the opportunity for an education would be disrespectful to those who never got that chance.

Then, if we get into graduate school, we see very few others like us, and feel instantly under scrutiny.

There is no hiding or blending in. All your professors are zeroed in on you, trying to ascertain if you can compete. When you produce the goods, they are delighted,

but the delight is often also telegraphing to us that the talent was not expected.

When we ascend into corporate environments, we are again closely scrutinized, not just for competence, but for “fit.”

Our bosses will test us again and again to make sure the “angry black

woman” doesn’t come out.

The onus is always on us to make those around us comfortable, never the other way around.

Once we put our colleagues at ease, things are fine.... until we start getting close to the power echelon.

Then things get dicey.

Free gyaan to law students on my timeline. Pl take it seriously - most lawyers will tell you the exact opposite. So take a call.

Most lawyers, specially when they come recruiting to campus talk about how inadequately prepared law students are for ‘real life’ as a lawyer. They will also say this ad naseam. They will also lecture academicians incessantly about how it’s a pain to teach students the ‘real law’

That the curriculum should be overhauled, as it’s not preparing students with real skills. IGNORE THEM.

What you will learn as students, the focus, the depth and width of your learning will never ever be replicated in your professional life. What you learn today will be your foundation - focus on the wrong thing i.e. ‘real law’ and your foundation will remain weak for a lifetime.

What lawyers call ‘real law’ varies from practice to practice and you literally have a lifetime to learn. Research will often be hurried, be on a very narrow point (sometimes literally a comma), and often that narrow research, though adding to your knowledge, be never used again.

with all good intentions, the result is not very useful: "Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize self-interest at the expense of scholarship and .. 1/

... are characterized by false or misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a lack of transparency, and/or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation practices.” 2/

one of mistakes I think the consensus model made is that it has too much circular bootstrapping. Something is predatory because what we do not find predatory is not. E.g. the point about transparency. Just check how "transparent" some major publishers are in @RetractionWatch. 3/

the "best editorial and publication practices" turns out to focus on same basic agreements, mostly among publishers, and not really about doing quality science. It's an administrative rule. 4/

"Aggressive, indiscriminate solicitation" is also a rule really hard to apply. Elsevier repeatedly breaks this rule, and other more traditional publishers do too, tho at a lower frequency. Do the authors want to claim Elsevier is a predatory publisher? 5/

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Supercharge your skills with effective learning⚡️

AVOID:
⛔️Wasting time with inefficient strategies ⏳
⛔️Spinning your wheels in tutorial hell ⚙️

A summary of the most effective learning strategies GUARANTEED to make you a better developer

🧵👇

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⚡️Deliberate practice

It's good to know the fundamentals well, but you will never improve by sticking to practicing only what you already know.

The alternative to this is deliberate practice...

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Deliberate practice means:
✅Practicing things you're weak at
✅Constantly pushing the boundaries of your knowledge and skills.

Before each learning session, ask yourself whether what you will learn adheres to the above.

If it doesn't, learn something that does instead

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⚡️Scoping the subject (credit to @AliAbdaal for this concept)

When new information can be 'docked' to an existing framework of knowledge, you can understand and retain the information better because you can relate it to what you already know and understand...

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Build a 'map' of the entire subject you're studying 🗺

Include all of the sub-headings that exist within that subject, make it a nested structure (I do this as a bullet point list in @NotionHQ)

You've then got a skeleton list to 'hang' your knowledge from as you go along 💀

The training years of children aged 4 to 6 are a crucial point of a child's development. This stage is when the value of a child is formed, as well as her moral and the basis of the child's character is beginning to be developed.

This stage is crucial because the child's brain compares with a sponge in which the child, who is too anxious to explore and discover the world, will absorb almost anything and everything that is exposed.

A thread: Dear virtual teachers, I am also a virtual teacher, teaching Gr12 from home while also supporting my child in his Gr2 distance learning class. I have some things to share, from the perspective of an overwhelmed parent. 1/14

We believe in public education and do not want to join the Minister of Education in undermining our public education system. But honestly, and I hear this from a lot of parents, we could easily homeschool our kid for 2 hrs each day and actually be able to do our own jobs. 2/14

So you need to make it as easy as possible for us to hang in there. Or we won’t. And parents will pull their kids from school and your system will be devastated. Here are some requests based on our current experience. 3/14

1. Connection is more important than curriculum right now. Please do whatever you can to provide our kids with connection to other kids. If they don’t get to interact with others, they’d might as well just do homeschooling. Connection is the #1 thing you have to offer us. 4/14

2. Please smile. Be kind. Let go a little bit. If kids ask for show and tell, leader of the day, theme days etc, please go along with it. They are desperate for these fun things. We aren’t seeing them in our class, even when kids ask. 5/14

These days, a lot of teachers is expected.

They have larger class sizes, the number of subjects is increasing, the curriculum for these subjects is increasing, and they have to deal with multi-level classes where students are at different levels of knowledge and capacity.

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!)

Name what happened. The events of January 6, 2021 were violent and unlawful. This is not an opportunity for exploring "both sides."

Follow your students' lead. They will tell you how much or how little they want to process. Always make allowance for individuals who differ from their peers; make space for those who aren't ready to talk or those who want to continue talking.

Acknowledge this was a traumatic event. We all react differently to trauma. Individuals process in different ways, and there is no one correct way to respond; therefore, it is important to acknowledge individual reactions and feelings.

Be aware of your own reactions to events. Children of all ages take their cues from the adults around them. Staff members should seek support for themselves to process events if needed.

Something I want to flag for #MAEdu this morning:

The Board of Ed meets next Tuesday; agenda is here:

You will note the second item on the agenda is "Proposed Amendments to Student Learning Time Regulations, 603 CMR 27.00 (Standards for Remote Learning and Hybrid Learning) — Discussion and Vote to Adopt Emergency Regulations"

You will also note there is no backup as yet:

In other words, the actual proposed emergency regulations that the Commissioner will be asking the Board to adopt on the spot next Tuesday are not actually publicly available as yet.

Note that the deadline to file to comment next Tuesday is today at 5 pm.

The Board passing regulations is roughly equivalent to school committees passing policy changes, something which generally goes through multiple readings at multiple meetings (or passes through subcommittees or both) because public process is super important.

Not so much, here.

Let me share the bit that I do know (there is, of course, nothing as yet in writing, because...see above).

I really hope that we can stop making the ridiculous argument that some Teachers shouldn't have to go back to work because they "aren't paid well enough". Let's examine this in detail.

1) The Teachers who truly are not paid well tend to be in red states w/o strong Unions. Those Teachers are doing an enormous service to their community, and many are truly doing it for low wages and benefits.

The Teachers who are mostly working remotely right now tend to be concentrated in areas where Unions have strong power. These are the highest paid Teachers in the country, both in wages, benefits, and protections.

You cannot simply look at base salary in a vacuum w/o examining the value of fringe benefits. This is no different from private sector employees. This is why we call it "total compensation".

This is the NYC UFT payscale. In addition to decent salaries, they receive full healthcare (paid), a defined benefit pension that allows them to retire @ 55, and post-retirement healthcare for life for their families.

If we do go back to Zoom teaching, a few little things that helped me with my 6th form classes. A thread…

If you can, have a little chat before the ‘proper learning’ takes place. Goes some way to keeping the good vibes that make teaching so enjoyable.

I tend to use PowerPoint and share slides. Usually, one slide of explanation followed by one slide of practice. Keep it short and simple. Short tasks keep the pace of the lesson and keep kids on their toes.

The big challenge with remote learning is checks for understanding. How do I know they’re focussed? How do I know what they know?

Obviously, you’ve got the chat box, which is particularly good for one-sentence answers or letter answers to multiple choice or true/false statements on your slides.

If you want to MIGRATE via Fully funded scholarships-

Follow this thread :

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@KaylaAncrum 1) This reminds me of junior high back in the Chicago suburbs when some classmates pretended my name was ‘too hard’ & relentlessly teased me as ‘Shoehead,’ ‘Shitvo,’ & ‘Shamu’ for almost 2 years until my social studies teacher Mr. C decided to absolutely GO OFF on them:

2) In class one day, to everyone’s utter astonishment, he stopped his lecture & said ‘I think some of you are having trouble pronouncing Shuvo’s name. It’s easy to say shoo-VOH, but your behaviour inspires me to give you new names now. Let’s point out a few examples.’

3) Mr. C turned to a red-haired jerk who often led the bullying and said ‘If you don’t shape up, you’ll be known as Carrot Head in my class, since you’re uglier than Carrot Top and you’re certainly bigheaded and arrogant.’

His face turned redder than his hair.

4) He then then turned to a classmate named Edie & said to her ‘I won’t call you Edie anymore, I’ll call you Dedie, as in DD, since that’s the grade you get in my class & it’s short for Dum-Dum, which is what you proved to be.’

I actually felt bad for her she was so mortified.

5) Then he turned to another kid whose last name was McCracken & said ‘You will be known as McChicken, since you’re a coward, & based on your performance it seems the most you can ever aspire to be is a fast food server, so wipe that smug grin off your face, cluck cluck.’

!!

WTT MEDIA CLASS

HATE LIKE THE PRESS 101

Welcome to class everyone. Today we will learn 2 different kinds of news story. Then we will ignore the good one and go for the one that (if done enough) will create a profitable moral panic against transgender people. (Long Thread)

1/25

A "This is" story (the type we tend to do on our podcast ALMOST exclusively) explains an issue or specific event from a "this is" angle and reports what the SUBJECT is. This analyzes the SUBJECT of the story from as many angles as possible with evidence (sources, data etc).

2/25

A "They said" stories are entirely on what a selected group or person has said. What is said about the subject does not have to be factually accurate. A "they said" story is making only one claim: that a specific person said it. This story is easy, cheap and profitable.

3/25

A "They said" story must have 5 things

1. A statement that someone has said

2. Proof that they said it

3. Other views BRIEFLY at the end (which most people will not get to)

4. Lies that are presented as equal to the (optional) truth

And

5. Few/No Trans quotes or names

4/25

With this you can pretty much do anything. You can twist it to any political ideology you like. You can put this out in a broadsheet, tabloid, TV news segment, web article, YouTube video, Tweet or podcast.

Almost every transphobic news report fits a "They said" model.

5/25

Improving Remote Education - A Thread.

Over the last couple of weeks, the discussion has been about what primary schools are offering to their communities and how we can improve on it.

I'm relistening to the sessions, so points may not be in order as I add them... 1/

1. Non-teaching SLT are not experts on remote learning, what can they base any judgement on?

2. Facilitating staff discussion and sharing is likely to be far more effective to develop practice within your school. /2

3. Increasing access to devices/internet is a step towards making offers more equitable, but it is only part of the process.

4. Entertainment and engagement are different things.

5. Pre-recording should not be perfection, perfection wastes time and energy.

6. It is scary being beamed into someone's home, but having your home on show is also stressful. (perhaps something for Ofsted to consider, we are guests in other people's homes)

7. Giving over staff meetings to staff discussion and sharing is probably a better use of the time than other stuff you have planned.

The new semester starts tomorrow so I thought I'd share some useful advice on how I made friends during remote learning from scratch - I just finished my first semester at a new university taught entirely online so I haven't met anybody in person nor have I set foot on campus

1) Send emails introducing yourself to ppl in your cohort. I emailed the other two PhD students starting with me after we attended our virtual induction and started a group chat. I also emailed another student whose work I knew of already and started a friendly chat using that

2) If your class doesn't involve breakout rooms, ask your lecturer to perhaps introduce them. I am taking German and 50% of the class takes place in breakout rooms. It's a place to vent, laugh, and make the small talk that normally happens before/after class

3) For classes that can't have breakout rooms: I asked a lecturer if they could put my email in the zoom chat during class if anyone is interested in starting a group chat. It worked, I hadn't spoken to anyone during class but we were all in the same boat and now the chat is lit

4) Ask your supervisor/lecturer to put you in touch with others in your department - particularly those who have similar research interests. Trust me when I say I get so excited if someone new emails me asking if they want to chat, and others probably feel the same

How we got here, a thread (1/25)

Before Christmas, owing to rising infection rates, Greenwich advised their schools to shut before the end of term – several councils later advised the same.

.@educationgovuk threatened these schools with legal action if they did, resulting in schools re-opening their doors for the last few days of term.

The General Secretary of the ASCL, @RealGeoffBarton, accused the @educationgovuk of using "bully boy tactics" to stick to a "robotic mantra to keep schools open whatever the cost" but added "the costs could be incredibly high."

During this time, @KevinStannard1 warned that we could be heading for another exams U-turn (*spoiler alert*: he was correct). (5/25)