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As always, Halloween leads to the Great Classroom Air Conditioner War between students dressed in giant furry onesie costumes and students dressed in single small scrap of fabric costumes

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Hey tumblr guess what, I am pregnant! I’ve been pukin about it for about 3 months and everyone who knows me in person sure is sick of me whining, so I guess it’s time to tell the internet!

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It sucks that there's only 20 minutes in each day. If there was more than that I would get more stuff done I'm sure

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If life is a never ending loop of dirty dishes and laundry then that means life is a never ending loop of home cooked meals and comfy clean clothes

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“You never reply to messages” I am just one person okay I am understaffed

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i am extremely well-adjusted and mentally healthy as long as nothing goes wrong ever at all even a little bit

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as a child I wondered why adults were so stupid (doing things out of habit/routine/heuristics rather than reasoning explicitly about what to do based on their goals) and the answer is that adults are unimaginably fucking tired all the time

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not sure if anyone is interested in this but here is a list of the most joyfully vital poems I know :)

You're the Top by Ellen Bass

Grand Fugue by Peter E. Murphy

Our Beautiful Life When It's Filled with Shrieks by Christopher Citro

Everything Is Waiting For You by David Whyte

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Alive! by Emily Sernaker

Instructions for Assembling the Miracle by Peter Cooley

Barton Springs by Tony Hoagland

Footnote to Howl by Allen Ginsberg

Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman

Tomorrow, No, Tomorrower by Bradley Trumpfheller

At Last the New Arriving by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

To a Self-Proclaimed Manic Depressive Ex-Stripper Poet, After a Reading by Jeannine Hall Gailey

In the Presence of Absence by Richard Widerkehr

Chillary Clinton Said 'We Have to Bring Them to Heal' by Cortney Lamar Charleston

Midsummer by Charles Simic

Today by Frank O'Hara

Naturally by Stephen Dunn

Life is Slightly Different Than You Think It Is by Arthur Vogelsang

Ode to My Husband, Who Brings the Music by Zeina Hashem Beck

The Imaginal Stage by D.A. Powell

Lucky Life by Gerald Stern

Beginner's Lesson by Malcolm Alexander

Presidential Poetry Briefing by Albert Haley

A Poem for Uncertainties by Mark Terrill

On Coming Home by Lisa Summe

G-9 by Tim Dlugos

Five Haiku by Billy Collins

The Fates by David Kirby

Upon Receiving My Inheritance by William Fargason

Variation on a Theme by W. S. Merwin

Easy as Falling Down Stairs by Dean Young

Psalm 150 by Jericho Brown

Pantoum for Sabbouha by Zeina Hashem Beck

ASMR by Corey Van Landingham

A Welcome by Joanna Klink

From Blossoms by Li-Young Lee

At Church, I Tell My Mom She’s Singing Off-Key and She Says, by Michael Frazier

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the unfortunate thing abt life is sometimes you Do have to wait for the bus in the rain and if you were a specific brand of annoying in 2012/13 this is significant

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the allergy i am seeing grow up around small talk in any form is troubling to me. do you know how to make friends with people in your physical environment? it typically starts with small talk. do you want to live in community? small talk. do you want to have the type of relationship with your neighbors where you can run over and borrow a battery for your smoke detector when it starts beeping at 10pm? small talk!! do you want leeway from your coworkers when you fuck up something small? you gotta be able to build a relationship and that's small talk, baybeee.

"but i don't need friends and i don't care about community!" okay, lone ranger, what about the people in your community who need you? "but i have social anxiety!" me too, bud! we simply must soldier on. making up lists of questions to ask people helps. and people are predisposed to be generous, i've found. even if you make some kind of mistake, what is this but the natural give and take of human interaction? nobody is perfect.

you were not put on this earth to live by yourself and then die. you need people and people need you. treat those around you with curiosity and generousness of spirit and you will gain so much goodwill in return.

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I did something dumb at work on Friday and then spent all weekend fretting about it (and also having strep, so my weekend was Not Good) but anyways I have concluded that:

- I am human and it is not the end of the world that I make mistakes sometimes

- it is not helpful or productive to beat myself up.

- instead, it IS helpful and productive to do what I can to fix the problem I caused, and then focus on doing better next time

- it is still necessary to stay home today and go try to fix it tomorrow, because I’m still contagious and breathing strep germs on all my coworkers would be a brand new mistake to repeat this cycle

I am telling all 4 of my remaining followers about this in an effort to prove to myself that making mistakes is not inherently embarrassing and I don’t have to hide them, thank u for ur time, I feel better now, ppl who kept elaborate diaries in the 1800s would’ve fuckin loved tumblr

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God, I don’t even hate this curriculum, it has a lot of the same structures and guiding principles I already use. I just hate that I’m being required to rigidly follow it minute-by-minute without any leeway or flexibility to modify it in response to the unique needs of my students. Why did you want me to have a masters degree for this???

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Also no matter how old and how professional you get, there are always a few ASSHOLES in EVERY group presentation you EVER attend who think it’s appropriate to raise their hand in the group setting give 15 minutes of extremely specific context for a question that cannot POSSIBLY be relevant to anyone but themselves

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My main issue is w researchers who are really smug about “universal design for learning” “equal access for all students” “we believe all students can learn at grade level!”

These are good principles. But it is a constant frustration to me that people want to ignore inconvenient realities, especially ones that might cost additional money and resources to address.

The big unpleasant truth of high school education that we ARE NOT ALLOWED to say out loud is: “a student who is testing at a 3rd grade reading/math level is not going to successfully learn the material of a 10th grade ELA/math class.”

There’s no way for them to skip 7 years of understanding and jump seamlessly in at the level we are currently teaching, and it’s nonsense to pretend that a graphic organizer or step chart is going to give them access to grade level work. But it’s very unfashionable to acknowledge this - especially because the kids who get to 10th grade 7 years behind fall into specific categories. “you’re lowering your expectations for students with disabilities/students of color/students from low income families, and that makes you ableist/racist/classist!!!1!”

Instead of providing targeted explicit support that meets these students where they are at (expensive! Small classes and pull-outs require more teachers and more space in the building!) they have all these fun smug new curriculums that are “exploratory” and when you ask “how can this be differentiated to support struggling students?” You get these smug responses that are like, “have you considered that you’re a monster for thinking they can’t just do it? Our curriculum is accessible, you’re probably doing it wrong because of your inherent bias.”

Also this lady is demonstrating her curriculum for us but it keeps force-logging her out every 2 minutes. REALLY looking forward to using this website.

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I’m in a PD today to learn about a new curriculum that I am being forced to do, and I’m pissed about it. This woman is a moron, and I’m gonna liveblog my reactions to bad educators for awhile. This will keep me from Being Rude On Zoom!