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andros_rex

@ andros_rex @lemmy.world

Posts
78
Comments
1230
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • How do you decide if you are living a “good life?”

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  • I saw my grandma a few weeks ago and gave her a small embroidery project. It felt a little silly and childish but she taught me to sew, and I guess I wanted her to see that it’s something I’ve kept up with.

    I’m probably not going to have kids, which I really hate, but I’ve taught lots of kids to sew, so maybe that’s close to this.

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    TIL: Suicide Rate in the United States Just Hit Highest Point in 75 Years

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  • The ones for children are even worse. Zero accountability. Adults with no reason to ever be supervising a child.

  • How do you decide if you are living a “good life?”

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  • Kierkegaard and Fred Clark have almost got me as far as Christianity. The infinite movement/the jump does seem like it could be the answer sometimes.

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    TIL: Suicide Rate in the United States Just Hit Highest Point in 75 Years

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  • Something critical to note is that help is not really out there. This is the kind of news article that usually gets people to post 988, but if you’ve called 988 you know how much of a joke it is. They will “triage” you, where you either get the cops called to take you to hell/inpatient or you spend half an hour plus on hold for someone to say “sorry that sucks :(“

    Inpatient institutionalize increase suicide rates after release. You get maybe fifteen minutes of actual “treatment” while the rest of it is being treated like a criminal. Good luck keeping your job after disappearing three days without being allowed to access your phone!

    It amazes me when I see TikToks and videos from patients in inpatient facilities in other countries. In the US, wanting to kill yourself means that you are a horrible criminal and you will be punished for it.

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    TIL: Suicide Rate in the United States Just Hit Highest Point in 75 Years

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  • The superintendent in Mustang Oklahoma suspended all of the kids who walked out.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • Even for students without disabilities, a calculator removes the cognitive demand of the arithmetic. If I am teaching algebra, I want most of their cognition to be taken up by the algebra, not the arithmetic.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • I disagree.

    I tutored a college student who had dysgraphia. They originally had a calculator accommodation, but this was removed at the request of the instructor.

    The student was in no way incapable of learning the material in the class - a remedial math course mostly on basic statistics and presenting data. But they were incapable of remembering most of the multiplication table.

    There’s no reason to force a person to do long division by hand. The student was perfectly capable of understanding the process of calculating an average, but actually doing the problem meant that they were counting out by threes on their hand to do 3x7.

    I’ve worked with dyslexic students on writing assignments - they are just as capable of intelligently responding to a writing prompt if you ask them verbally. Why should they be punished because they can’t spell (especially when we had like a decade of NOT TEACHING PHONICS)?

    I draw a hard line at generative AI, but as long as the thoughts are theirs, I’ve never been concerned too much with students using tools to help them.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • Sure, you can do that once. Then you are out the job. Talking about politics will get you in more trouble than raping a kid.

    I went into teaching because I care about making the world a better place. It cost me my marriage, it has sunk me into some of the deepest pits of despair that my mental health could take, it has meant physical and verbal abuse.

    Buying pencils for kids is the kind of thing that you don’t mind too much, because at least it is a problem you can fix.

    Once, I had a student ask me for a pencil. (He’d ask me everyday - usually in response to me asking why he wasn’t doing his work.) He looked me in the eye, snapped it in half, and asked for another.

    I gave it to him. Who cares. I couldn’t fix the sinks which didn’t work and stunk because kids shoved shit into them, but I could fix the fucking pencil.

    It’s a terrible job where you are expected to save the world and hated for everything you do. But, as a dog returns to his vomit... It’s part of my soul.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • Bingo.

    First week of the job: “hey, stop talking about your college experiences with the kids. These kids are never going to college, so none of it will ever connect with them.”

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • Canvas has a very neat “annotation” tool, where the teacher can upload a document and students can write on it and submit.

    I also see a lot of canvas assignments where the answer is in an auto graded quiz, but the teacher has the students take a picture and upload to show their scratch work. This can be added as a “question” to the assignment.

    There are good ways to use the tools for sure - I did really like that the auto graded quizzes on canvas could use randomized numbers. Eg, when I did speed/distance/time, I could write a word problem where it would randomize the quantities so each student got a unique quiz and couldn’t cheat.

    Tools like PHeT/CK12/other simulation programs are also a godsend. Even working with college chemistry, being able to show visual representations of acid/base dissociation or how to balance an equation makes things so much easier.

    The platforms are great - the work flow problems are more consequent to the way the school system is set up, especially in the Title 1 hell schools that are left to fall through the cracks.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • White flight and a state that hates education.

    The rest of the science department were “emergency certified” - eg, random bachelors degrees.

    I know for the fact the district has put teachers in without BACKGROUND CHECKS.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • Also spent several hundred just on vinegar and baking soda for labs.

    But yeah, I actually had to quit teaching after my divorce because I could no longer afford to do it!

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • The most I dealt with was around 36. I had around 28 chairs.

    However, the feeder middle school had class sizes of 60+. There were literal riots, with multiple teachers injured, that the district covered up.

    Stocks would absolutely not be allowed. I had a student that spent fifteen minutes screaming and cussing me out, straight to my face in front of a principle. When she said “I wish I wasn’t in your class” and I said “me too” - I got in trouble. (She was mad because I wrote her up for literally just walking into my classroom to sell snacks. She didn’t attend classes, she just did whatever she wanted.)

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • There are multiple such platforms - Canvas, ClassDojo, InfiniteCampus. Heck, you can even go with the free and open source Moodle. Most of these also integrate with useful online tools, like Desmos (graphing calculator) and PHeT (science simulations.)

    This can help with workload, because you can often set up things like multiple choice quizzes that grade themselves (but how often should that be your primary way of assessing students?)

    The problem is that some skills simply need to be learned with pen and paper. I have taught and tutored chemistry for years - balancing equations and stoichiometry are skills that you can’t really learn on a computer.

    There’s also evidence that computer based notetaking is less effective - that students remember less.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • Yeah. The system in the US works on exploiting, crushing, and discarding young teachers. Almost none of the other teachers I met while teaching are still in the profession. You are expected to martyr yourself for the job - I usually didn’t get to eat lunch, because I was busy. I stopped drinking water, because I ended up pissing myself one day when I couldn’t get to the restroom.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • They also have to be paying for the software that tracks how many prints you use. It’s fucking stupid, and it’s just one of a million little ways that they make sure to punish anyone stupid enough to teach.

    I ended up buying my own printer. Printing alone got me to the maximum $300 of classroom expenses I was allowed to write off on taxes.

  • Parents opt kids out of school laptops, ask for pen-and-paper

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  • My first year teaching I was encouraged to do everything on the chromebooks, because the district wanted to save on printing costs.

    If you have 100+ students, and are limited to 500 pages/month (I could print 500 more, but had to purchase my own paper…), you have to use the laptops.

    Also, when parents and students increasingly treat attendance as a suggestion, keeping up with paper assignments is hellish. There were days I showed up with 1/3 or more of my class missing - with online class work, I at least could say “the work is available online.”

    The technology is a problem, but it’s a problem that’s arisen because class sizes are out of control and admin has zero idea what is going on in the classroom. It’s a bandage that’s been left on so long the skin is starting to get infected around it.

  • Paxton calls Jett ‘Karen’ following Senate drinking allegations

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  • This bill is simply making it so Oklahoma state lawmakers cannot drink while on the job. Which apparently is a problem.

    (Our First Lady has crashed two state vehicles under the influence. No blood test, no loss of license. Governors son was drinking and caught with guns he wasn’t supposed to have. There were no consequences.)

  • Paxton calls Jett ‘Karen’ following Senate drinking allegations

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  • There was stuff stronger than 3.2, 3.2 was just the limit for grocery stores and gas stations. Anything else had to be from the liquor store, and couldn’t be cold. So you were out of luck if you wanted Dogfishhead or nicer brews that needed to be refrigerated.