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

Thread 1/

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.

If you want to MIGRATE via Fully funded scholarships-

Follow this thread :

1. UTRECHT SCHOLARSHIP FOR HOLLAND

2. Danish State Scholarships at University of

3. University of Helsinki International Master’s Programme

4. University of Geneva Excellence Masters

Today is the International Day of Education, & an urgent question to ask is;
Are our universities becoming better?
Will technology disrupt their existence? And
Will they become obsolete very soon?

Here are some reasons why I believe they will, if we fail to redesign them.

>>>

1. Many universities are wasting the time of young people. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here & it is demand specific. The world needs specializations & universities aren't providing that which is why more companies like Google, IBM, Apple don't prioritize a college degree.

Why do we import foreign medicines & even vaccines produced by other countries when we have hundreds of universities? Why do over 70% of our microbiologists or biochemists never practice upon graduation but choose to become fashion designer, bankers or makeup artists ?

Why will a roadside mechanic be better at fixing a knocked engine than a mechanical engineering graduate? Why can't computer science graduates build apps or diagnose computer languages? This is because our education curriculum is outdated & irrelevant to today's world.

2. Vocational & technical workers can earn more from a non-degree education than a four-year degree.
With the fast growing economy which requires more “technicians, artisans & vocational professionals”. These professions should also be given equal respect and dignity.

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

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).

@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.’

!!

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.

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.

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.

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 #NGSS propose diff experiences 4 Ss n sci classrooms, a ‘practice turn’. Recognizing this, we (Hyunju Lee @LonghurstMax @tjscience Dan Coster @LisaLundgren21 ) sensed a need 4 a survey 4 Ss 2 report their experiencs. Here’s a thread👇abt it 1/n

So what’s a ‘practice turn’? Forman (2018) shared how the practice turn is a move toward emphasizing the professional activities that scientists undertake 2 refine & critique explanations about events that happen in the world #NGSS 2/n

We started from National Academies of Science’s Taking Sci 2 School (2007)/Ready Set Science (2008) 4 Strands of Sci Learning mapped 2 3-D learning in the Frameworks 4 K-12 Sci Ed 2 as features of science classroom experiences we wanted 2 ask Ss abt 3/n

These 4 strands of science learning include 1) Reflecting on Scientific Knowledge 2) Generating Scientific Evidence 3) Participating Productive n Science & 4) Understanding Scientific Explanations 4/n

Next we developed questions 4 our survey w several questions about the 4 strands of learning (see example of questions some of these strands) - trying 2 use language from NAS documents as possible/appropriat 5/n

It's been hot takes on LGBTQ. Let's get some Islamic edu on "gender nonconformity" i.e. "identifying as a gender different from what was assigned at birth."

There're 64 genders* today—not just male/female anymore. Anything of such & how's gender established in Islam?

THREAD

Is gender about anatomy (the genital you were born with) or personal decision?

That's summarily the question this thread seeks to illuminate as per Islamic perspective. It doesn't matter if you're a Muslim or not. So far you're a knowledge-seeker and here for that, be my guest.

Like you're probably confused about the LGBTQ arguments, some persons around are confused about their biological sex and gender. The exact reason they (the few real ones among them - not trans) appear noncomformist.

This problem is called gender dysphoria.

Gender dysphoria is the feeling of unease that occurs in people whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth or genitals (sex-related physical characteristics).

See attachments on gender identity, gender expression & sexual orientation. All.. different things.

Forward. Is there anything different from male/female known to Islam? Yes, there're gender-atypical persons.

1. The ambiguous khunthā (al-khunthā al-mushkil)
2. The congenital mukhannath (al-mukhannath al-khilqī)
3. The non-congenital mukhannath (al-mukhannath ghayr al-khilqī)

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.

Today, January 3, 2021, the portals for taking applications for a new crop of teachers will go live. That begins a new process to fill our schools with qualified and competent tutors who will teach our children in basic classes and senior secondary schools across Kwara State.

It is an enormous task that we do not take for granted. It a task for which our administration will be judged — coming after we painfully nullified a process that had thrown up some 2,414 teachers.

Without mincing words, no patriotic person should defend the nullified process. It was egregiously faulty. Political interests had a field day dictating which individual got a place in our classrooms with scanty regard for merit.

So bad was it that they overshot the legal approvals to engage just 1,100. I do not dispute that a few great hands survived the process. My heart bleeds that those ones were caught in our decision to start the process anew. However, such great hands were exceptions.

A vast majority got the jobs because they knew somebody who knew somebody that knew somebody on Ahmadu Bello Way. Those affected knew this to be true. We couldn’t in good conscience allow that to stand, particularly after we initially gave everyone a chance to prove their worth.