#be nice to teachers

[fru1typunch]

Here's a little post ranting about the Floridian education system and how it fucked over public school librarians this year, from the adult child of one who spent his whole summer helping his poor mom try and keep up with Desantis's ridiculous requests.

Every school year, the librarian always gets a couple weeks with a "closed" library to take inventory of the school's stock at the end. Normal stuff, y'know, if a bit tedious and boring. Scan every. Single. Thing. See what you have and figure out who last checked out what you should have, that sort of thing.

Well, Ron Desantis, in his genius, decided that concept had to be applied to all the books in the entire school to determine if they're "appropriate" (by his batshit conservative standards).

My mom didn't JUST have to do the usual inventory thing for her own library. She ALSO had to do something similar but far WORSE for her entire school's personal classroom libraries.

The objective of this SCHOOL WIDE requirement was to "approve" every book in the school as "appropriate". Every. Single. Book. In. The. School. Not the school library, no, the SCHOOL. All classrooms.

My mom's an elementary school librarian. There's around 1000 students at her school, give or take, and around 50 or so classroom libraries to sort through. And this was supposed to be done over summer, before the kids came back in the fall. Entirely unpaid.

She had to personally approve around 25,000-30,000 books school wide based on whether or not they're "appropriate for kids" (again, by Desantis standards), entirely unpaid, in about 2 months. Keep in mind these classroom libraries had been pre-existing for many years or even decades in most cases, so it's kinda useless to just now care about whether the books are "appropriate".

Mind you, you can't read that many individual books in under two months and then approve them in the system if you tried, even if most were children's books. She spent every single day of her summer, her only real time off each year, logging into the online portal and manually approving books from 8 in the morning to 8 at night, looking them up and trying to determine if they might be okay by the new standards since she couldn't possibly have the time to read them all and check, and again, entirely unpaid on her own. Teachers were scanning in their classroom's books to the system to be approved by her in real time, so she really never could get very far ahead. At most she'd knock out a few hundred a day, which I think is wildly impressive given the circumstances.

Even with all that work, she couldn't open her library for nearly a month into the new school year this August because she spent every school day finishing that approval thing for the classroom libraries for teachers. At least by that point she got paid for it. She was also way behind on getting her library ready for the school year, she really hadn't had time to prepare like normal. It was a crazy stressful time for her all around, moreso than back-to-school time normally is each year.

I helped as much as I knew how to, which mostly just meant looking books up for her or texting back and forth with my friends that work at Barnes and Noble or Books A Million asking if they could skim through certain books that might pose a threat at times, and coming up to the school with her sometimes while she worked on approving books and I worked on preparing her library for "business" again.

My mom was upset because she didn't have time for a real summer vacation, the most she got to do was occasionally visit the beach a few hours away for a day trip. (On one of the beach days, she even took her blessed laptop with her to work on it in the car ride over.) She was in the thick of it neck deep all on her own for months with hardly any time off and no pay to show for it.

It's frustrating because if she were to have approved a book that a parent later complains about, it could mean bad news for her. Again, no way in hell would she have been able to both read every single book, determine if she thought it was okay by Desantis's standards, and then approve every single book within the system. She did her best, but she's still nervous someone will complain.

All this conservative bullshit around books is hurting so many kinds of librarians and educators in so many ways, so just take a moment sometime soon to appreciate your local librarians and public school teachers putting up with this crap. They could use the love. Maybe some strong alcohol. And a big wad of cash, they do a lot of shit unpaid.

And do vote these assholes out of office that are making these poor librarians' and teachers' jobs harder with no additional support or pay.

[bixels]

I watched Starship Troopers tonight.

[inkskinned]

one of the things about being an educator is that you hear what parents want their kids to be able to do a lot. they want their kid to be an astronaut or a ballerina or a politician. they want them to get off that damn phone. be better about socializing. stop spending so much time indoors. learn to control their own temper. to just "fucking listen", which means to be obedient.

one of the things i learned in my pedagogy classes is that it's almost always easier to roleplay how you want someone to act. it's almost always easier to explain why a rule exists, rather than simply setting the rule and demanding adherence.

i want my kids to be kind. i want them to ask me what book they should read next, and i want to read that book with them so we can discuss it. i want my kid to be able to tell me hey that hurt my feelings without worrying i'll punish them. i want my kid to be proud of small things and come running up to me to tell me about them. i want them to say "nah, i get why this rule exists, but i get to hate it" and know that i don't need them to be grateful-for-the-roof-overhead while washing the dishes. i want them to teach me things. i want them to say - this isn't safe. i'm calling my mom and getting out of this. i want them to hear me apologize when i do fuck up; and i want them to want to come home.

the other day a parent was telling me she didn't understand why her kid "just got so angry." this woman had flown off the handle at me.

my dad - traditional catholic that he is - resents my sentiment of "gentle parenting". he says they'll grow up spoiled, horrible, pretentious. granola, he spits.

i am going to be kind to them. i am going to set the example, i think. and whatever they choose become in the meantime - i'm going to love them for it.

[sunderwight]

I love it in SV whenever it's like,

inside Shen Yuan/Qingqiu's Mind: I am a crusty old teacher man, why would anyone be attracted to me, let alone fall in love with me?!

external image of the crusty old teacher man:

your honor my client isn't stupid, but a lot of his thought process is taken up by a veritable rube goldberg machine of internalized homophobia

[marciaillust]

bro fuck it im workposting. i did illustrations, i storyboarded, i directed. I did many cool things in 2024 and millions of people all over the world saw em. that has to count for something

[idrawstuffsometimes]

The prophecy has been fulfilled

[turtletoads]

trunks and the terrible horrible no good very bad alternate timeline

[martyryo]

Dudes from maths notes is all I can offer for now 😵‍💫

[adanaac]

the watchparty art ive been doing every week for episodes 1 to 9!

i keep putting more effort into them every week. oops

[chikischichona]

Pov: I’m giving you personal Spanish lessons… and I take something off with each word you say correctly 😉

[ratatatastic]

8.18.24 (x)(x)

[lilithofpenandbook]

I'm sorry, the way he's smiling when talking about her?

The way he's acknowledging their relationship and how this will make her happy?

The way he says this about her and has no mention of ever being connected to Lucius?

My heart can't take this at all

[nothing-but-flowers88]

Matilda Dinluke au, 6 year old Grogu is in the care of the neglectful and crooked Mr Gideon, only keeping Grogu as his ward for image and extra money. The only friends Grogu can make are the over worked and under paid mechanics at Mr Gideons shop. Grogu likes Mando the most, he takes care of him more than Mr Gideon ever has. When Grogu learns about school he begs Gideon to let him go learn and make friends. But Gideon picks the worst school he can, ran by the cruel headmaster Vader. The only teacher everyone loves is Mr. Skywalker who’s always kind and caring and after Grogu learns about his powers accidentally in class, Mr. Skywalker takes him under his wing, revealing he has the same gift. When Luke wants a parent teacher conference, he’s a bit confused when Grogu gives him the address of a repair shop and told him to talk to ‘Mando’

[g0ddamnb0x]

Considering how bad Gideon and Harrow's childhoods were, I find it very sadfunny how in NtN it is a plot point how a teacher mistakes Nona for a abused child.

[mariatesstruther]

okay but sarah celebrating tommy every year for mother’s day

[chorioretinitis]

my take on pre-corruption shadow milk's design