#most important pedagogical research of all time I would even say

[kindafooey]

Currently reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and this shit fucking slaps 👏

[post-academic]

Academic Job Market: Teaching Philosophy/Teaching Statement

If you’re applying for an academic job and will be required to teach at least some of the time, institutions will often ask for your teaching philosophy/teaching statement. In my experience, these terms are interchangeable, but they accomplish one main thing: they outline your pedagogy.

Here are some tips I used to create my own teaching statement:

General Guidelines

Keep your statement to 1-2 pages, single-spaced. Sometimes, an ad will request a 1 page statement, so be prepared for that, too.

DO NOT shrink your text or margins to fit more info on the page. 12pt font is the minimum, 1″ margins all around.

You job is not to just list off all the courses you’ve taught/would like to teach; your job is to show the reader what your approach to teaching is (or will be)

DO NOT neglect intro courses - these are often a department’s bread and butter

If you haven’t taught before or have taught very few courses, you still want to talk about your pedagogy as if you have it all figured out. Don’t use hypotheticals; it’s not “I would like to do X,” it’s “I will do X” or “X will do Y in my classroom.”

Top of the Page

Include your name, school, and “Teaching Statement” or “Teaching Philosophy” somewhere. Center align these things.

Example: Teaching Statement (bold font) Hiccup Haddock III Berk University.

Intro Paragraph

Talk about your overall pedagogy. This might be hard to figure out if you haven’t taught a lot before or haven’t thought much about it. Think about what you want your students to take away from your courses and how you accomplish those goals. Don’t just say “I give out essays.” Even if you use essays because that’s just what everyone does, think about why you use essays or how you write prompts. It’ll be hard, but hiring committees want to see that you craft every part of your course with a purpose.

Open your statement with a strong sentence about your teaching goal.

An example from my statement:

“My goal as a teacher is to be an ambassador to the Middle Ages and show students how the seemingly archaic past is relevant to the present. I use my expertise as a medievalist as a starting point for teaching literature from ancient to modern.”

Talk about what sets you apart from traditional approaches or how your research interests influence your pedagogy. You don’t want to go so far off the rails that a committee won’t be able to see the value in your methods, but you do want to make sure you explain how you’re making the classroom yours, so to speak.

An example from my statement:

“Contemporary medieval scholarship emphasizes England as part of larger geographic, temporal, and cultural networks, and I am committed to bringing this perspective to my classroom. My courses encourage students to see themselves as part of a diverse and interconnected community, not just while they are on campus, but beyond.”

Transition to talk about how you accomplish your pedagogy or the goals you have for your classroom. Stay somewhat general at this point.

Example:

“Each assignment contributes to student development in this regard, and my hope is for students to leave my classroom with an expanded view of not only what the “medieval” means, but what they can accomplish by viewing themselves as part of a network.”

End your paragraph with a statement about how you accomplish your pedagogic goals (i.e. a statement about what kinds of assignments you use). In this sentence, you should list 2-3 things that you will elaborate on in your body paragraphs. These things can vary, but I suggest breaking it down in to 1.) types of major assignments, 2.) types of readings, and 3.) types of minor assignments/in-class activities

Put the most important first. Remember that the first body paragraph will stick in your reader’s mind more than your second or third body paragraphs. If the ad is really looking for someone who does digital assignments and most of your digital assignments are major assignments, put that first. If the ad really wants someone who can give lectures twice per week for a survey class, put minor assignments/daily activities first.

Example:

“These goals shape my teaching in three ways: by engaging students in digital and independent research projects to connect their classroom skills to the world beyond the university, by assigning primary sources with global angles, and by using collaborative class activities.”

Body Paragraph 1: Major Assignments

The goal of this paragraph should be to justify why you assign the types of major assignments you do. Whether that be essays, creative projects, group projects, or something else, you should be prepared to talk about why you think these assignments are effective.

Open your paragraph with a topic sentence about what your assignments are meant to do. What do you hope to accomplish? What skills do you want to cultivate in your students? You can elaborate on what inspired this goal, if you have the space.

Example:

“My end-of-semester assignments are designed to bridge the gap between class experience and the world beyond the university using digital media and independent research. These projects are a natural outgrowth of my interest in public scholarship: my ultimate goal is to forge networks between students and the world in order to emphasize the transferability of skills such as critical thinking and close reading.“

Notice that I don’t just focus on medieval stuff; though I’m a medievalist, this pedagogy can be applied to multiple types of classes, not just medieval literature ones.

Talk about a major assignment that illustrates your pedagogy. Be specific in how you discuss it: don’t just say “I assign a paper at the end of the semester.” Talk about what the end-of-semester paper is supposed to do.

Example:

“I assign a paper in my literature courses in which students analyze a text, film, or television show not covered in class. Students frequently choose to engage with popular culture, such as Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and comics from Marvel and DC. Using frameworks from class, students then create their own parameters for their projects to explore how a piece of literature or media influences culture. This project ensures that they can write and analyze literature and culture independent of instructor guidance.”

Talk about another major assignment that helps you achieve your teaching goals, but don’t be repetitive. Two papers with minor differences won’t impress a hiring committee.

Example:

“My digital media assignments have the same goals: in my History of English course, students write blog posts summarizing independent research of English in non-Western countries. Students think about diversity within English and confront colonial pasts to produce a final product that is designed to reach a public audience. The blog post positions students as co-curators of an archive that is greater than what can be covered in the classroom by the instructor alone, thereby building on my emphasis on collaborative learning in my daily activities.“

Notice that both of my assignments are meant to help students apply skills from class to an independent project; that was something I wanted to emphasize because my pedagogy is all about networks (in this case, I’m trying to illustrate an in-class/outside-of-class network).

If you have any student evaluations that say nice or helpful things about these assignments, include 1 or 2. Make sure they’re illustrative an not just “I liked this assignment.”

Example:

“One student wrote that the groundwork for this assignment as something they would like to see more of in my future classes, noting that sharing collaborative research was ‘more interesting and prompted more discussion.’“

Make sure you always talk about what these assignments help your student achieve, focusing on transferrable skills. Academic success in an of itself is great, but most of your students will be taking you lessons out into the non-academic world, and schools are always looking for teachers who can have an impact on the world outside of the classroom.

Example:

“By using expertise from class to inform their blog posts, students learn to translate their academic knowledge for a non-specialist audience and form connections between the university and the public.”

End your paragraph with a statement about how you plan to use or expand these assignments for courses you will teach at your new job. Feel free to look up what kinds of courses are currently offered at the school you’re applying to, or see if the job ad lists any required classes.

Example:

“I am eager to expand and adapt this project for future History of the English Language courses.“

Body Paragraph 2: Types of Readings

No matter your field, pretty much every course will require a textbook. Even if you don’t assign a textbook, you might assign articles, blog posts, websites, videos, or something that students will engage with outside the classroom.

This sentence should build on the goals from your first two paragraphs. The goal here is to keep your pedagogy consistent-looking, not veer off in a number of different directions.

Start your paragraph similar to how you start Body Paragraph 1: your topic sentence should be about what your daily readings are meant to do. You can elaborate on what inspired this goal, if you have the space. DO NOT repeat anything from Body Paragraph 1; part of the art of writing a teaching statement is to say the same thing in 5 different ways.

Example:

“The assigned readings for my courses foreground diversity with the goal of preparing students to discuss complex cultural relationships across time and space. In creating each syllabus, I combat the assumption that premodern and early modern authors wrote independently from the local and global contexts around them while ensuring minority students are represented in the curriculum.”

Notice here that I repeat the theme that runs throughout my entire statement: students as part of a larger, global network (just as medieval writers were part of a larger, global network).

Give examples of your readings while remembering that not everyone on the hiring committee will be a specialist. You may have to explain what the readings are and why they are relevant/significant.

Example:

“For example, my Introduction to Poetry course assigns the anonymous medieval African epic Sunjata, the poetry of Langston Hughes, and contemporary slam poetry and spoken word to showcase orality in African and African-American cultures. This course also traces the transmission of literary form: students compare the sonnets of modern Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, to Renaissance sonnets by Sir Philip Sidney, Lady Mary Wroth, and William Shakespeare to consider female subjectivity, love objects, and the sonnet beyond English-language literature.”

Notice here that I gave an example from Introduction to Poetry. At my school, that was a general education course. This shows my reader that my pedagogy is consistent no matter what level course I’m teaching.

Talk about what you hope your students get out of your reading assignments.

Example:

“These assignments not only show that the past continues to inform contemporary literature and culture, but that writers are constantly influenced by transnational contexts.“

End with a similar statement to how you ended Body Paragraph 1: talk about how you plan to use or expand these assignments for courses you will teach at your new job.

Example:

“My experiences teaching a wide range of global texts from ancient to modern has prepared me to approach courses such as [COURSE FROM AD] with similar frameworks, as well as assign readings in Old English and Beowulf courses that reflect early medieval people’s embeddedness in larger cultural networks.”

Body Paragraph 3: Minor Assignments/Daily Activities

In this body paragraph, you’re going to be showing your reader what your day-to-day classroom might look like. Minor assignments may be things like take-home worksheets that you go over in class the next day, daily journals, etc while daily activities might be various kinds of in class activities such as games, class exercises, demos, and so on.

Start your paragraph similar to how you start Body Paragraphs 1 and 2: your topic sentence should be about what your minor assignments/daily activities are meant to do.  DO NOT repeat anything from Body Paragraphs 1 and 2.

Example:

“When encouraging students to engage critically with the above-mentioned texts, I create networks between students by using collaborative daily activities and assignments. My literature courses position students as active participants in their learning process, and I achieve my goal primarily through assigning a reading journal.”

Continue by talking about the types of assignments/activities and what you hope students will take away from the experience. Also focus on what skills these activities are meant to cultivate. You don’t want to appear as if you’re assigning busy work for the sake of having material to grade.

Example:

“Journals record impressions, questions, and connections to previous assignments, and are submitted weekly, prior to covering the reading in class. I use these journals to create lesson plans, thereby giving students – including minority students – a voice in the topics we cover.”

If you have quotes from students evaluations that would be helpful, include them

Example:

“This approach makes the atmosphere in my classes more welcoming and productive; a student from my British Literature Before 1800 survey course wrote that class felt “very open to different interpretations and respectful towards them,” and I believe the reading journals helped facilitate this kind of openness.”

Elaborate on your assignments/activities, either by focusing on the various skills you’re hoping to cultivate or different activities that go hand-in-hand with the one you just talked about.

Example:

“Journals also encourage students to generate knowledge before coming to class so that discussion acts as a framework for refining their ideas into specific research questions or close readings. A student in the same survey course wrote that they “liked that [they] could review material with others and have a guide for discussion.””

Notice that these journals were used (or could be used) in a number of different courses. While it’s ok to focus on one specific course, you ultimately want to demonstrate that you’re capable of teaching more than one class.

If you have the space, talk about another assignment/activity for another class.

Example:

“In composition courses, I make similar use of collaboration between students through peer review. Students provide feedback on each other’s work during every step of the writing process. Each assignment is divided into four parts with due dates spread across a two week time period: students first produce a working thesis, then an outline of their paper, followed by rough and final drafts. By submitting each part to their classmates for review, students see writing as a group effort, while also learning to give and receive critique.”

Notice that this part of my paragraph is about a composition course (a low-level English course at my school). I also talk about peer review - something that is relatively common in English classes, but I connect the activity to my overall pedagogy of creating networks between students.

End your paragraph with a statement about what your assignments/activities do or how you plan to use or expand these assignments for courses you will teach at your new job.

Example:

“Combined, these activities show knowledge to be collaboratively-generated.” (I was running out of steam but also out of space at this point and just ended it).

Conclusion

End your statement with either a strong overview of your pedagogic goals or by highlighting the success you’ve had implementing these goals so far.

It’s ok if this paragraph is short, but you don’t want to make it look like an afterthought.

I ended my statement by inserting an especially flattering quote from a student evaluation. It was a cheesy ending, but it got the job done. Notice that I still connect it back to my pedagogy; the quote is about making class assignments feel meaningful outside the classroom (again with networks here).

Example:

“One student from my Introduction to Fiction course kindly wrote, “she always made people’s comments in class feel validated and she made the reading choices meaningful to my life.” What caught my attention was not their enjoyment of the class – which was admittedly nice to see. It was rather the comfort they felt sharing their ideas with others and that they believed reading and analyzing literature from various time periods had a place in their lives.“

[amyscascadingtabs]

i’ll walk through hell with you

chapter 7. i’m gonna stand by you

read on ao3 here and read other chapter here!

the happy ending. 

BONUS: i created fake social media posts for this! they’re here, look at them after or have them open in another window! you’ll get when it’s time - there are two instagram posts and a text conversation with rosa.

and when you decide, it’s your time to arrive

i’ve loved you for all of my life.

~ halsey, more

   december.

Once Amy starts trusting that she is pregnant and the obsessive test-taking comes to an end, there’s the question of when to start telling people. There’s also the question of what to tell them.

“It just feels like I’m faking it,” she complains from the couch as she tries to write down ideas in her notebook. “It’s happy news, but it feels wrong to not even mention what we went through before getting here.”

“So tell people about it?” Jake shrugs, handing her the McFlurry she sent him out at ten p.m. to buy. “That's always an option.”

“I know, but how? How do I say hey, please be happy for us, but know that we went through hell to get here, without being overly dramatic or too personal?” She takes a spoon of the soft-serve, chewing on the mini smarties, and tries to stifle a moan when it feels like fireworks of pleasure are exploding in her mouth. “Oh my god, I love you.”

“Me or the ice cream? Never mind, shouldn't ask.”

“It's so good.”

“Can I try some?”

“You should have gotten your own.”

“You would have eaten that too,” he grins, taking his spot at one end of the couch and stretching his legs. “But I'm proud of you. McDonalds is at least an unhealthy craving. Grapes was just lame. You have the chance to eat whatever you want and blame it on pregnancy cravings, and you want grapes.”

She sticks out her tongue. “Screw you. Anyway - thoughts on a pregnancy reveal?”

“We make our own Die Hard-style short film with explosions and animations, the end slate says something like Peraltiago Baby number two, coming in June. Super badass.”

“Nope. We write everyone cards?”

“Lame and time-consuming. We have an announcement at work and one each with our families?”

“Maybe, but I still don’t know what to say.”

“We tell Leah and trust her to spread the news for us?”

“We definitely should tell her first, but counting on her to spread the news means they’re going to get twisted in some way. Remember when we went on vacation and she told all her teachers we were moving to Mexico?” Amy shakes her head. “It’s better if we say it ourselves. I don’t think I’m ready yet, though.”

“Okay,” Jake nods. “Let’s wait, then. Are you sure I can’t have any of that ice cream?”

“Not unless you want your hand chopped off.”

“Wow.”

  -

  Amy wishes they could hold off on telling people until she was sure she felt ready, but reality is quick to get in the way. The first-trimester nausea finally gets better around week thirteen, and suddenly the weight gain is a fact. She doesn’t mind it too much - she’s growing a human, all that matters is that they’re healthy - but it does make it increasingly difficult to hide. A size bigger uniform for work is easily solved and conceals the tiny bump rather well, but regular clothes are not as efficient. Her bras don't fit, her regular jeans won’t button, even the most flowy of shirts in her wardrobe seem to cling to the slightly rounded shape her stomach is taking. She’s running out of time.

With two days left until they're leaving to celebrate Christmas with the Santiagos, Amy realizes she has to give up. She's tried every possible outfit, considered whether she can just wear pajamas for the duration of the event, and very reluctantly accepted that it’s a bad idea. She's out of options. Both of her red dresses are too tight, she doesn't have any bras that work with anything sleeveless, and even the tasteful floral wrap dress she was hoping for manages to frame her bump in an obvious way. She tries on several blouses with a generous skirt, but it's still notable to the trained eye and her mom had eight kids. Amy’s screwed.

“This doesn't work,” she groans as she pulls off the blouse, throwing it on the growing no-pile. “I look stupid.”

“You look adorable,” Jake insists from his watching position on the bed. “I’d say go with the wrap dress.”

“It’s nice, but it shows off this.” She points demonstratively to her stomach, watching his eyes turn soft as he follows her hand. “This baby’s not hiding. I think we have to tell people.”

“Do you feel okay with that?”

She considers it for a moment. “I guess? I still don’t know what to say about the infertility stuff, but… I’ll figure that out.”

“It’s not like you have to make an official announcement, right? You could tell people privately, whenever you’re ready - if you want to.”

“That’s true. Maybe... it’s okay if we just enjoy these news?” She shrugs. “We are having another baby. That’s awesome. Seems fair for the world to know.”

Jake meets her tentative smile with a wide, goofy grin. “True that. So, how do we tell everyone? We’re not seeing the squad again until after Christmas.”

“We could take a cute picture with Leah and post it on social media? I know it’s cheesy, and a little impersonal, but it’s efficient and I can’t be bothered to plan an announcement.”

“I could totally work that Die Hard short film out -”

“No Die Hard.”

Jake grimaces. “Fine, fine. Your way, then. So, cute picture of Leah in a big sister-shirt?”

“Yeah, and she could be holding the latest sonogram pictures? And some short, sweet caption with that. We’ll think of something until tomorrow - that, and another thing.”

“What?”

“We have to tell her.”

  -

  Amy is, of course, overly prepared. She’s bought the pedagogical children’s books. She’s researched and taken notes on all the recommendations for how to manage the conversation and explain the matter in a way her three-year-old will understand. She’s made sure Leah’s not too tired, too hungry, or too grumpy for any other reason. Still, she’s never felt less prepared for a conversation with her kid, and she’s anxious as they take a break from playing with her toy dinosaurs - who either seem to run a bakery or catch criminals, or if it’s both, Amy can’t tell - to drink some water and subtly reveal the life-changing news.

Jake must pick up on her nervosity, because he’s the one to start the conversation.

“So, bumblebee,” he ruffles his daughter’s hair and laughs as she immediately pats it down again, “We’ve got something to tell you. A surprise, I guess.”

Leah shines up at the word surprise. “What?”

“Do you remember how miss Edwards at your daycare had a baby?” Amy tries to lead her on to the topic. “And her belly grew and got really big, and then she wasn’t at work for a while because she was at home taking care of the baby?”

Leah scrunches her forehead and pouts her lip in focus, but she nods.

“And you know how your cousin Maisie has a little brother, and Sarah and Samuel are getting a baby sibling soon?”

Another nod.

“Okay. Well, baby,” she says slowly, but her heart is beating fast. “You’re also getting a sibling.”

Leah looks around, as if the sibling in question would be hiding in her room somewhere.

“Oh, no, not today,” Amy adds, and the girl frowns.

“When?”

“This summer,” Jake fills in, “when it gets warm outside and you don’t have to wear a jacket anymore.”

“But where’s the baby now?”

“Right now the baby’s in here.” Amy pokes at the tiny bump, and Leah tilts her head as she tries to piece it all together. “It’s small, but it will grow, and then you can talk to it or feel it kick in there, if you want.”

“And when the baby comes out and grow bigger, they’re going to think you’re the coolest person ever and want to play with you all the time,” says Jake, catching Leah in his arms and tickling her neck so she giggles. “You two will have so much fun.”

“Like Anna and Elsa?”

“Well, we don’t know if it’s a sister or brother yet, but yeah. Like Anna and Elsa.”

“Okay!” Leah’s expression turns serious. “But I’m Elsa.”

Amy laughs. “Of course, baby, you can be Elsa.”

 Leah accepts this, and insists they keep playing the dinosaur game which remains incomprehensible to everyone but her.

“I think that went pretty well,” Jake mumbles to Amy, and she nods, relieved.

“Dada?” Leah looks up from the dinosaurs.

“Yes, bee?”

“How did the baby get into mama’s tummy?”

Amy has never seen her husband look so uncomfortable before. His face goes from normal to beetroot in a matter of seconds as his eyes go wide, and she’s trying not to explode with laughter as she looks from Jake’s mortified expression to Leah’s curious eyes.

“We’ll read a book about that later,” Amy assures her daughter while Jake mumbles something about a very important call from the Captain as he looks at his blank phone screen and hurries out of the room. “I promise.”

 Leah doesn’t seem particularly interested in changing from her Frozen-shirt or taking pictures with the sonogram print-outs she claims looks like a fish, mama, but then Jake promises her ice cream for dessert if she does and it’s a done deal. She tires after thirty seconds and she refuses to hold the pictures in any other way than in front of her face, but they get the shot and it’s good enough. It has to be, because only a minute later, their three-year-old has thrown off the sweatshirt and changed back into her t-shirt.

Amy types up the caption, presses share, and puts her phone in front of them on the kitchen table.

“Now we wait for Charles to call and yell at us for keeping this from him,” she states, and Jake snorts. “I’m betting four minutes.”

“I’m going to go with three.”

It takes one and a half.

  -

  It’s a great Christmas.

Sure, everyone is asking the same questions and she explains over and over that she’s feeling okay, better now that she’s in her second trimester, she doesn’t have any intuition as to what they’re having but Jake’s claiming it’s a boy, they’re excited, and they’re pretty sure Leah is, too. She clenches her fists underneath the table when her mom mentions how wonderful it is with a big family, how lovely it is that Amy and Jake finally decided to expand theirs, and she can see Jake do the same as he gets ready to defend her - their - honor, but she shakes her head and changes the topic before he has a chance.

She doesn’t want to be upset today.

 There’s no point to being angry with her family all around. Not when Julian high-fives her and tells her good for her she keeps reproducing with those Peralta genes, not when Christian gives them actual useful tips on how to adjust from one to two kids. There’s no point in being upset when her brothers wives all tell her she can borrow maternity wear if she wants, or when Jake makes note of the mistletoe above their heads and kisses her so long and reverent that both Tony and Simon start wolf-whistling. There’s no point to being sad when Leah pulls at the edge of Amy’s dress, asking to go up, up, and Luis takes a picture of Amy and Jake kissing their daughter’s cheeks under the mistletoe.

She’s just happy.

 She feels quick little flutters in her stomach throughout the day, a feeling she vaguely recognizes from the first times she felt Leah move inside her. They’re gone before she has the chance to lay a hand there, but she feels them.

 -

  Leah insists on sleeping in her parent’s shared bed that night, and even though it’s barely a queen-size and they’re all forced to huddle together with the three-year-old somehow taking up the most space, they give in. Jake and Leah both fall asleep in what seems like seconds, and Amy wants to join them, but her brain refuses. It’s not that she’s feeling anxious - her heart is so full from today, made fuller by her daughter’s face pressing into her shoulder and Jake’s hand reaching across her so he can rest it on the little bump - but there are some things she can’t stop thinking about.

Her mom’s comment about them finally deciding to expand their family, for example. All the congratulatory wishes streaming in after the picture - even Holt messaged them to give his well-wishes - that she can't fully take to heart, because no one sending them knows what she's gone through. She thinks of the shame and disappointment she’s felt throughout this year, of how much it would have hurt her to see a sweet announcement like this from someone else when she’d just had a miscarriage or another negative test. She wants to be honest - not just for her own sake, but also for the sake of a possible acquaintance out there who could be going through the same thing, feeling equally as alone in it as she did.

Amy grabs her phone from the nightstand, smiling at the mistletoe picture she's made her background, and tries out a few captions in the Notes app before settling on one.

She turns off the comments before anyone can react, not feeling like she needs anyone’s thoughts on this, and she's about to put her phone away again when she sees a single text from Rosa.

Proud of you.

Amy smiles.

She's just about to fall asleep when she feels the brief flutters again. This time, they don’t disappear right away, but repeat until she's certain of what they are.

She can't feel them from the outside yet, but she rests her hand below Jake's anyway, letting the reason behind the flutters know she's there.

“Hey there,” she whispers, lightly tapping her fingers against her abdomen. “Merry Christmas to you too, baby.”

The next little movement is right below her fingertips, and this time she can't stop herself from tearing up with joy.

  ~

   february.

Everyone’s convinced Jake and Amy are having a boy. Jake claims he can feel it, and Amy believes him. She’s a Santiago, and two girls in a row are more or less unheard of in her family. Charles claims he can tell because of the position of her uterus, which grosses everyone out, but a vote is a vote. Rosa’s saying boy, as is Terry, as is Gina, as are all of Amy’s brothers and her parents. Karen Peralta invites them for dinner and talks for at least twenty minutes about how excited she is to have a grandson before Jake dutifully reminds her they don’t know the sex yet, and she waves it away and says she thought it was obvious.

 The only person who doesn’t believe they’re having a boy is Leah. From the first time anyone asks, the three-year-old declares with absolute certainty that she’s having a sister, and doesn’t change her mind. Amy’s nervous about how they’ll manage the inevitable disappointment and tries to write down a pedagogical conversation plan in her head as they go for the anatomy scan, but she ends up never having to use it. It turns out Leah’s correct.

 “So you’re going to be just like Anna and Elsa,” Jake tells her as he’s putting her to bed that evening. Amy’s secretly listening in on their conversation through the baby monitor - modern technology is the best. “How does that make you feel?”

She can see Leah holding up her hand on the little screen, doing what she thinks must be a thumbs up. Then her tone turns serious again.

“Dada, how did the baby get inside the tummy?”

“Uhm, didn’t you and mama read that book about it?”

“Tell it again,” Leah insists.

“Okay, okay. Cool, cool, cool. This is cool, Jake, you can handle this,” Amy hears her husband mumble to himself.

“What?”

“Nothing, bee, here we go. So, sometimes, when two people who are adults and love each other a lot, they decide they want to try and make a baby. So they take a part - cells, you remember? From both of them, and those, well, stick together? I guess. And sometimes that becomes a little baby that grows inside a mom’s tummy until it’s big and ready to come out.”

It’s pretty much an accurate description. Amy’s proud of him, but Leah doesn’t seem satisfied.

“But how do they take it?”

“You’ll learn about that when you’re older, bumblebee.”

“Like algebra?”

“Who told you about algebra?”

“Grandpa Holt.”

“That tracks. Ehrm, sure. Like… algebra.” Amy can see him grimace from a distance on the screen. “We’ll go with that. Anyway - all you need to know is that everytime it works, it’s a miracle. You were our first miracle.”

“Miracle,” Leah repeats, yawning. “Dada, can you sing now?”

Amy hears Jake take a deep breath of relief before he begins to sing the Tangled soundtrack.

 “I’ll give it to you,” she tells him when he slinks into their bedroom ten minutes later, red in the face when she points to the baby monitor and he realizes she's been listening. “That was impressive.”

“You owe me big time,” he groans, slumping down on the mattress next to her, and she chuckles and kisses his forehead.

“Algebra, huh? Could you replace my X without asking Y?”

“If you had used that pick-up line on me, I literally never would have slept with you.”

 ~

  april.

Leah's feelings about becoming a big sister are fluctuating to say the least. Some days, she'll ask how the baby is doing and press her hands to the ever growing bump, laughing when she's able to feel a kick. Some days she doesn't want to talk about it at all, and they make sure not to force it on her. Some days - and those days are the ones that break Amy's heart - she's angry, shutting Amy out and wanting only Jake to take care of her because she's not sure how to handle the fact that her mom looks different and is tired and can't pick her up like she used to. It's after one of those days Amy has her first breakdown about feeling like she's not enough for two kids, that she was stupid to think she ever could be, and maybe this was a bad idea. She cries under a blanket as Jake puts Leah to bed because Amy wasn't allowed to, and there's a series of soft kicks like her baby’s trying to comfort her, but it only serves to make her more out of breath. Her eyes are all puffy and red when the door to Leah's bedroom opens and the girl peeks out, giving her a cautious look before tiptoeing out to the couch, climbing into her mother's arms and burying her face in her chest.

“I don't want to be a big sister,” Leah confesses in a quiet voice. “I want to be little, too.”

“You're always going to be my little baby,” Amy promises her in full honesty then, hugging the girl as close as she can. “Forever.”

 Other days, it's easier. They try to keep her involved as much as she wants to, letting her choose what outfit they’re bringing in the hospital bag and asking her opinion on where she thinks the crib should be. The girl definitely has an interesting taste in baby fashion and Amy ends up vetoing the suggestion that her little sister should go home from the hospital in a baby Santa suit, but as long as Leah feels she's been part of the decision-making, it’s good. One night, they go through photo albums of what she looked like when she was a baby, making the three-year-old proudly exclaim that she was so cute.

“You really were,” Jake agrees, catching her in his arms and tickling her. “You think your baby sibling will be as cute as you were?”

Leah just shakes her head at that, making them all laugh.

 “Well, she sure is confident,” says Jake when he returns from putting her to bed, finding Amy still looking through the albums. “Crazy to think she used to be that tiny.”

“Even crazier to think we'll have another one that little, and one day they’ll be a three-year-old, too.” She lightly strokes the top of her bump, feeling a sharp kick way too close to her ribs.

“So many levels of crazy.” Jake shakes his head in bewilderment. “I wonder when you get used to the thought.”

“Never?” Amy shrugs. “Sometimes I still think this is a dream.” There’s another strong kick at that, making her flinch. “Oof. Fine, very real dream.”

 It takes her a while to fall asleep that night, with her thoughts and a wildly moving baby helping to keep her awake for longer than she’d prefer. She thinks of how they’re nearing a year since they started fertility treatments, when she fought through the needles and bloating and hormonal chaos because she was praying for something to finally work, and she wonders what her reaction would have been if someone had told her about what she’d go through in the next months.

The events of their struggle to have another baby and her eventual spontaneous pregnancy feel entirely separate in her head, two roads not intersecting. She’s still bitter over their struggle, still wishing she could have saved her energy and frustration, still trying to forget it more days than not. The infinite gratitude she feels over the fact that they are having another child hasn’t erased those memories. It’s mitigated the pain, made the flashbacks much less frequent and helped her towards acceptance, but Amy knows part of her will always remember.

In an odd sense, she’s happy about it. It reminds her it was never a guarantee.

  ~

   may.

The cat plans have been put on pause indefinitely, but it doesn’t keep Jake from bringing the topic up. One day, he’s coming home with onesies that have patterns with cats on them or a stuffed animal that looks like one, one day he’s leaving web pages with sources for why it’s good for kids to grow up with cats open on her computer, and another day, he’s coming with new name suggestions from what seems to be out of nowhere.

 “So for baby names, I was originally thinking Benjamin, but since that’s no longer on the table, I’m down to Meredith and Olivia.”

“That’s a weird combination of names,” Amy huffs. Jake looks the other way, tapping his feet against the floor and whistling in a way that’s probably supposed to come off innocent, but only succeeds in making his behaviour look more conspicuous. “They’re a reference to something, aren’t they?”

“Why would you say that?” Jake snorts. “That’s crazy!” His laugh is overly loud, and she shoots him a warning glare that shuts him up in a second. She’s nearly nine months pregnant now, so her don’t fuck with me-looks are pretty scary at this point.

“Tell me what they are, Jake. I know they’re not Die Hard-characters, and they’re not from Harry Potter or Ninja Turtles, so I’m going to make an assumption and say they’ve got some kind of relation to Taylor Swift.”

“Well, that depends on how you define relation -”

“Jake.”

“Fine, they’re her cats. But they’re nice names!” He wags his index finger in front of her, a childish grin on his face. “They work for humans!”

“Let the cat thing go, babe.”

“Nuh-uh, never.” He leans down, putting his face as close as possible to her bump. “Hey, kick once if you want us to get a cat ASAP.”

It takes a couple of seconds, and Amy almost thinks she’s won, but then Jake puts his hand on her shirt and instantly there’s a kick aimed against it.

“Traitor,” she mutters to the child still trying to play football with her ribs. “I’m the one growing you, you’re supposed to side with me.”

 The cat conversation might be able to wait - Jake reluctantly accepts that a three-year-old, a newborn and a kitten would be a little much to take on at one time - but the name conversation’s more urgent. They’re having a baby in a month, maybe less, and even though Amy thinks it feels like forever as she waddles around with swollen ankles, unable to see her feet anymore, she knows it’s not. They need to make a decision.

 “This is hopeless,” Jake groans as they look at their handwritten lists one night. They've each written down ten names, then switched with each other and crossed over ones they disliked, leaving them with exactly zero names. “How did we even decide on Leah’s name?”

“Technically, we decided on Leo as in Leonardo like Ninja Turtles, the painter and the actor, and then we found out we were having a girl and Leo became Leah.”

“I know why, I just don't know how. You said no to all of these!” He points at a scratched-out name on the list. “What's wrong with Luna?”

“Sounds too much like Leah.”

“And Abigail?”

“Too different.”

“Meredith?”

“You’ve got to let go of the obsession with Taylor Swift’s cats, man.” Amy massages her temples. “And too Grey’s Anatomy.”

“Fine. What about Olivia, then? Come on,” he says when he sees her pressing her lips together, “no one will know that’s where it’s from. It’s a cute, normal, human name. It’ll work with both our surnames and it goes well with Leah without sounding exactly like it.”

“I don’t know…”

“If we use Liv for a nickname, they’ll be Lee and Liv, which both sounds kinda badass and kinda adorable.” Jake tilts his head to the side, giving her the puppy eyes she swears were passed down straight to their first-born daughter.

He doesn’t entirely convince her, because she doesn’t want to give in to her principle about no Taylor Swift-related names, but she doesn’t hate the sound of Leah and Olivia. Really, the more she thinks about it, the more natural it sounds. She’s not giving him that satisfaction, though, so she tries to hide the smile on her face as she takes his list and writes down OLIVIA below the scratched-out names.

“This doesn’t mean I’m agreeing,” she warns him when his face lights up in excitement. “It just means I’m considering it.”

“Oh no, you’re definitely agreeing. Just like you will with the cat,” he grins, proud of himself, and she lets him have it for about three seconds before she whacks him in the shoulder.

(One evening - almost a year later - when they’re about to move into a bigger house with a garden, and their youngest daughter has started taking her first unsteady steps, Amy does agree to the cat. It’s a moment of weakness, she argues, but she never truly ends up regretting it.)

  ~

   june.

Since Leah was born a timely two weeks before her due date, Amy’s hoping for the same thing to happen again. Everything is ready as can be for the arrival of their next family member, and they're just waiting, going day out and day in hoping today will be the day, but nothing’s happening. Leah asks every morning when she wakes up if today’s the baby’s birthday, and she gets equally disappointed each time they tell her they don't know yet. She also keeps asking about when she'll get to have her sleepover at uncle Charles’, which seems more of interest to her than the actual event of becoming a big sister, and she gets more and more upset for every day they have to tell her not tonight.

Amy enters her fortieth week of pregnancy, which is the most pregnant she's ever been, and time seems to move impossibly slower. She's swollen, achy, and tired, ready for this to be over and labor to start, but their baby seems to be enjoying herself in there, because the due date comes and goes without a single contraction. No more painful Braxton-Hicks than regular, no water leakage, no nothing. When the clock passes midnight on June 23rd and Amy’s officially past her due date, she’s getting seriously frustrated.

“This baby has to get out,” she complains as Jake rubs her feet that evening. Sometimes she’s pretty sure he’s an actual angel, but also, it’s what she deserves right now. “Starting tomorrow, I'm trying all of the tricks.”

“Or you wait a few days longer? You know she’ll be born eventually.”

“Nope. I need her out of me,” she says, feeling in the exact same moment how the kid’s trying to stretch out from her curled-up position, pushing her feet to Amy’s ribs and her head somewhere seriously uncomfortable, and Amy curses in pain. “Come on, kiddo. You’re clearly uncomfortable too. Don’t wait it out.”

She gets another kick in the ribs for that.

 A quick Google search informs her there are many at-home methods available to try and kickstart labor, so she starts with the least terrible ones and works her way up. Sex isn’t bad, but it’s also sweaty and impractical and has no effect whatsoever. Walking is boring and makes her feet swell up like crazy. Jake suggests they go to her favorite bookshop in New York so she can walk around there and have an awesome story to tell if labor were to start in Strand’s Bookstore, but the only thing that happens is people give her sympathetic looks and she nearly cries when a book she wants to look at is on one of the lower shelves. The spicy Chipotle takeout they bring home just gives her heartburn. Pineapple makes her tongue hurt. The raspberry leaf tea tastes like chewing on grass. She saves the castor oil for last, wanting to avoid the distasteful liquid at all costs, but even that has little to no effect and Amy’s furious. On top of it all, Jake can’t stop laughing at her as she waddles around their apartment all grumpy and uncomfortable, and his laughter makes her even angrier.

(Leah just says Amy looks like a couch. That isn’t much better of a self-confidence boost, but it does, at least, make her laugh.)

 -

 When Amy’s three days past her due date with no changes, Leah decides she can’t take the anticipation anymore and throws a full-on tantrum. It takes them nearly ten minutes to figure out that the three-year-old’s not crying because she wants the baby to come out, but because the sleepover she’s going to have when her parents are at the hospital is never happening. They try to comfort her with promises of Disney movies and ice cream at home instead, but it doesn’t work, so they give up and call Charles to see if she can stay there an extra night. Charles also cries, because unfortunately, Nikolaj has gotten a stomach bug making them unsuitable for babysitting. After a moment’s consideration and consultation with their still-sobbing daughter, they call Rosa instead, and Rosa’s confused but accepts the request.

“And you're sure you know how to take care of kids for a whole night?” Jake asks when their friend stops by to pick up Leah, who is hyped to hang out with her aunt Rosa for an evening, and drags her into her room to show all her dinosaur toys the moment she steps inside the apartment.

“I assume there's instructions,” Rosa nods to the thick babysitting binder Amy's holding. “And I’ve taken care of my nieces. I’m pretty sure I can keep her alive for a while.”

“Solid. She eats pasta and she's supposed to go bed at seven, but that usually never works, so don't get too stressed about it.”

“Great.”

“Brush her teeth before she goes to sleep and don't let her backflip off the bed,” Amy adds. “There’s lots of information in the binder and we’re a phone call away if there's any issues.”

“Send us pictures if Jocelyn braids her hair!”

“Send us pictures anyway. Please update us.”

“Got it,” says Rosa and lifts up Leah on her shoulders, making the girl scream with laughter. “Pictures, pasta, no backflips. We’ll be fine. You guys enjoy your last night alone in forever,” she grins, pointing to Amy’s baby bump. “Text me if you go into labor.”

“I wish,” Amy groans, and then they’re the overly emotional parents who kiss and hug their oldest daughter goodbye until she begs them to stop.

Rosa leaves with Leah, and the apartment turns the peaceful but unnatural kind of calm they rarely experience at daytime anymore. She guesses it will be but a memory once their second baby finally arrives, but for now, she turns to Jake and asks,

“Wanna have a date night?”

And so they do.

Their last night on their own before life with two kids is gentle and undramatic - a shared bath, a takeout dinner in front of a Harry Potter movie they’ve seen a hundred times before, cuddling and chatting on the couch before going to bed at midnight with hope of a night’s undisturbed sleep.

Nine years they’ve done this, she thinks as he kisses her, and then the bump for good measure, goodnight. Nine, crazy, ever-changing years that have turned their lives upside down more times than she can count, and every day, she wakes up grateful that it’s him she gets to do this with.

It takes her upwards an hour to fall asleep. First she has to pee, then she can’t find a comfortable position, then her back is hurting and Jake has to get her heating pad. When she finally sinks into a dreamless unconsciousness, Amy’s so tired it feels like she could sleep for days.

 -

 She sleeps for an hour.

 It feels like it’s only been seconds before a dull ache in her lower back and stomach wakes her up, mild at first but increasing steadily, reaching a truly painful point and then ceasing.

Weird, she thinks, and tries to fall back asleep. She’s too tired. She just wants to sleep. Whatever’s going on can surely wait until tomorrow.

 A few minutes later, the same pain appears, a little stronger this time. She opens her eyes to glance at the alarm clock - 2.04 in the morning - and shifts her position in hope for that to help, but it doesn’t.

 The next time it returns, her clock says 2.08. This time it’s real painful, worse than any Braxton-Hicks she’s felt before this, and it feels a lot, too much, like how she remembers the real deal from when she was in labor with Leah.

 2.11, the same sensation appears again, lasting for a full minute and forcing her to breathe real deep to manage the pain. Her belly’s going rock hard for the entire time it’s lasting, too. Definitely suspicious, but she’s still too tired to reflect over it.

 2.14, it happens yet another time.

 Nope, is the only thought Amy can think when she realizes how close together they’re coming. Nope, nope, nope. She’s way too exhausted. She can have a baby in the morning, when she’s slept, and she’s not a fan of the idea of doing anything before then. This isn’t happening, she tries to convey to her body. This can wait until tomorrow.

 2.17. This time, she can’t be still. She tries to find a comfortable position in their bed, but it doesn’t work, she needs to lean against something for support. She slides down to the floor and puts her crossed arms on the mattress, placing her head down and lightly swaying with the rest of her body as she breathes, breathes, breathes through the wave.

 2.20. Another one. Amy’s fuming; she’s not having this right now, she’s tired, and no matter how badly she wants to meet this baby, she really wants to sleep before she does.

 2.23, the same thing happens again.

 2.26. She tries to muffle her groan in a pillow when it’s impossible to be silent. The pain is nearing what feels like an unmanageable point, and she hears Jake stirring awake at the other edge of the bed.

 “Ames? What’s happening?”

“Nothing,” she says too quickly in an exhale. “Nothing’s happening.”

“Okay,” he replies in a skeptical tone, stretching himself over the bed and looking her in the eyes. “So you’re just doing that for fun, then?”

She doesn’t reply, but she's hyper-aware of him watching her scrunching her face in god-awful pain when the next contraction hits.

 “Babe,” Jake asks, giving her a look of mixed worry and entertainment when it's over, “how many times has that happened?”

“Ten,” she hisses. “It’s fine. They’ll stop. I want to go back to sleep.”

“And how close together are they?”

“Three minutes. Two.”

His eyes widen with fear.

“No.” She shakes her head. “I need to sleep. This baby waited this long, it can wait until the morning.”

“I really don’t think that’s how it works.”

“It should be.”

Jake laughs nervously, stroking her hair. “Sure, but - maybe we should really, definitely, go to the hospital?”

“No, I want to go back to sleep.”

“How exactly do you plan on doing that?”

“I don't know.”

“You know, if we go to the hospital, you could have the epidural like you did last time. Then you could probably sleep for a while.”

She stares him down. “Promise me.”

“Uh, sure. Promise.”

“Okay. Let's go. But only for the epidural,” she declares, and then another torturous contraction forces her to shut up.

 A quick call to their doctor confirms they should be going in immediately if contractions are that close together, so Jake is rushing, running around the apartment like a chicken with its head cut off as he packs the final things for their bags. Amy tries to help, but she's pretty useless, because every two minutes she has to lean against the nearest piece of furniture and rock slowly from side to side until the pain subsides. She's not sure how she gets in the car, because each contraction makes her feel like everything else blurs and she can't think, can't speak, can't do anything but try her best to breathe and not faint when the pain radiates through her lower back and core, intense and demanding and so much worse than she remembered.

 Only a year ago, she remembers as Jake squeezes her hand and tells her he loves her, they’d been sitting in this same front seat as she cried and cried after finding out their first IVF transfer didn't take. It feels like a lifetime ago, and at the same time, like yesterday. She wonders if she could have predicted this back then, and figures probably not.

“We're having a baby,” she whispers to Jake in a break between contractions, and he smiles so wide she thinks his face is going to break. “You ready?”

“So ready. You?”

“To meet her? Yeah. To give birth? Not really.”

“You're gonna kill it,” he tells her, and there's another contraction just then so she can't reply, only grit her teeth and squeeze his wrist really hard. “You're already killing it.”

“I really can't wait for that epidural,” she mutters through the pain, and Jake just laughs.

 Amy's not sure how she gets through the twenty-minute car ride. It's absolute hell, because she can't move in any way, can't do anything except keep breathing and keep holding on to the thought of the pain relief she's going to get once they get to the hospital. She wonders why people willingly choose to put themselves through this without any drugs. She sure as hell isn't going to, not after having learnt the difference last time.

 Jake gets them parked and grabs their bags as Amy maneuvers herself out of the car. She manages just in time, closing the door in the same second as there’s a sudden warmth down her thighs and she almost wonders if she’s peed herself before realising what’s happening.

“Water,” she tries to communicate to Jake, and he digs up a pink water bottle from her bag before noticing her wet leggings.

“Oh. That kind of water. Well, at least you didn’t get any on the seat? Very considerate.”

She just glares at him.

 Amy guesses it’s meant to be something like a five-minute walk through the corridors, but when she has to stop every other minute for the contractions that seem to have increased fivefold in strength, bringing with them an uncomfortable pressure that she really does not like, it’s probably closer to twenty minutes before they can be guided into their room.

Their doctor - the same one she had for her first labor, an older woman with dark hair and a comforting smile who perfectly meets Amy’s rock-hard criteria for professional but nice - does a quick examination, which Amy can barely feel in comparison to how much pain she’s in by now, and then she laughs.

“Yeah, you’re having a baby tonight alright. Good job getting here in time,” she nods to Jake, who looks unsure if he should accept the compliment or freak out over the possibility of not having gotten there.

“Great,” Amy huffs. “So can I get the epidural? Because I want it now. Please.”

“Oh no,” Dr. Cowan laughs. “You’re eight centimetres dilated and this seems to be progressing quickly. My guess is you’ll be pushing in half an hour, so I’m sorry, but there’s no time for that.”

“What?”

“You could have the laughing gas, if you’d like, but anything else will just slow labor down.”

“You promised,” Amy hisses towards Jake, and he holds up his hands.

“I’m pretty sure this isn’t my fault.”

“You promised!”

“What are we fighting about here?”

“I don’t know,” she confesses, and then another brutal contraction washes over her, together with the realization that she’s going to have to do the rest of this unmedicated.

She’s not happy about it.

 -

 Really, Amy's not sure how she gets through it.

To say that it's bad is an understatement; it's excruciating, some kind of evil torture she genuinely can’t believe humans were made to be able to handle, agonizing to a point where she's nearly hoping it will render her unconscious because that means she wouldn't have to take it anymore. She tries the laughing gas, but it just makes her feel dizzy and out of control, so she powers through without it. Jake tries to tell her she's crushing it, that she's badass and strong and doing amazing, but she can't waste any focus listening and eventually she tells him - not very gently - to shut the fuck up. It makes her feel kind of bad, because she knows he’s trying to be supportive, but at the same time, she really couldn't care less about his feelings because she's pretty sure she's going to die every time the pain increases.

But somehow, she survives.

 One good thing - and it's not even good, it's more like a band-aid on a gaping chest wound in comparison - about no epidural is that she's free to move around, trying different positions in hope for something to ease the pain. Nothing does, but some ways give her a little bit more power, a little more control over what's happening. Amy supposes it's worth something. She does love control, even if she’d trade it in a heartbeat for some sweet, sweet pain relief. She ends up standing sort of on her hands and knees on the bed, getting some help from gravity, and it feels like the last bit stretches on forever but later on she’ll learn it was really fast. It's scary, a surrealistic thing to feel how her body just takes over, like it knows how to do something her head definitely doesn't.

And then, right as she’s certain she's not going to make it even another second, it's over.

   There’s a moment of petrifying fear that something's wrong, that her baby’s about to be taken away like Leah was for the first traumatic minutes of her life, but then she hears a sharp, gurgling cry and she's not sure what’s happening but suddenly there’s a baby on her chest and everything is so, so, right.

Her daughter's kind of purple still, a little slimy and a little bloody and completely perfect, and Amy's shaking with a mix of shock, adrenaline and tears as the newborn puts her tiny hand high up on Amy's chest and she can't help but grip it, whispering a gentle hi, baby, hi, as the child squeaks in return.

She's imagined the sensation of holding her just-born baby in her arms since the first day she started thinking of having another kid, and yet all the fantasies pale in comparison to the explosive, unyielding love she feels when the newborn opens her eyes, gazing carefully at the world for the very first time.

 -

 “You know what time it is?” Jake asks her once when they’ve been moved to the recovery room, trying to fathom what just happened. “It’s five-thirty. She was born at four-thirty. When did you say you woke up?”

“Two a.m.,” Amy mumbles, and he shakes his head.

“So you did that in, what, two and a half hours? Man, you’re insane.”

“Thanks.” She chuckles, stroking her fingers over the thick, dark hair that appears to be a dominant trait for Santiago-Peralta children. Their newborn daughter is blinking at them as she tries to figure out the whole breastfeeding thing, seeming pretty exhausted from the events of the morning but not really wanting to sleep, either. “It was awful.”

“But worth it?”

“Yeah,” Amy nods without tearing her eyes away from their hour-old miracle. “Worth it. I’m not doing it again, though.”

Jake grins and kisses the top of the newborn’s head. “Very fair. I mean, we literally have the two most perfect kids the world has ever seen, so it’s not like you have to.”

“She really is perfect, huh?”

“For sure. You really are,” he whispers to their baby, running his thumb over her round cheeks and tiny nose. “Just like your sister.”

“Leah,” Amy bursts out, sitting up a little straighter and instantly regretting it because she’s sore and ungracious in every way. “We need to tell her! We never even told anyone we were going in! Fuck, I gotta text Rosa. Can you get me my phone?”

 Jake brings it to her, and Amy carefully transfers their daughter over to his chest so she can have her arms free. The newborn whimpers at first, not too happy about the move, but then Jake softly pats her back through the pink and blue hospital blanket and lets her grip onto his thumb with her fist, and she’s at peace again. Her little head snuggles into his chest as she relaxes, and Amy just watches, barely making an attempt at wiping away the happy tears.

 It’s been an obvious feeling to her, to hold her children for the first time and know that they are hers in some miraculous way, that they were part of her - but it’s another unique and indescribable feeling to watch Jake hold them and know they are his just as much, always safe and loved in his presence. Although she could never have predicted the sensation, she’s always had an inkling of it - a deep conviction and a ceaseless, rightful confidence that he would make the greatest dad. It keeps being proven correct.

“I forgot how small they are,” he mumbles, and there are tears in his eyes, too.

“She’s like a pound and a half bigger than Leah was.”

“Doesn’t feel like it. Do you think they look the same?”

“A little?” Amy tilts her head. “Same hair, same nose. But so different, too.”

“I think she looks a lot more like you than Lee did,” Jake smiles, stroking the little fist holding onto his thumb before kissing it. “I’m fine with that. You look like your mom, kid. Oh, don’t look so upset,” he says when the newborn scrunches her face together, “it’s a great way to look. Would you rather have my nose? Yeah, right. I didn't think so.”

 Amy laughs, letting them continue their exchange as she snaps a picture of them and then sends that and another one of the first baby pictures to Rosa.

Rosa’s reply is as instant as it is shocked. She congratulates them, tells Amy she's crazy, promises them they can talk to Leah once she wakes up and even offers to drive her there later in the afternoon “if it means she'll beat Charles to meeting this baby”.

 Amy figures she should probably text more people to spread the news, but the important thing is Leah knows, or at least will know, so she puts her phone on the side table and turns back to Jake.

“Rosa’s going to call us when Leah’s awake,” she says, unable to keep herself from leaning over and kissing their baby’s cheeks when she squeaks a little again.

“Great. You want to get some sleep before?”

“Oh, so bad.” Her exhaustion faded away somewhat in the chaos, pure adrenaline and a cascade of hormones keeping her awake, but it's catching up with her now. “Promise you two are good?”

“Olivia and I are great,” he promises, and his smile and their daughter’s softly blinking eyes makes her certain he’s right. “You agreed to that name, right?”

“One condition.” Amy yawns. “You are never allowed to tell her she’s named after a cat. Ever.”

She thinks she can hear him mumbling something about not making promises he won’t be able to keep, but she’s falling asleep before she can protest.

 -

 Leah’s and Olivia’s first meeting doesn’t start out great.

Amy’s trying to be methodical and gentle, making sure Olivia’s in her bassinet and she can have both arms free to hug her three-year-old, but then the infant starts wailing the moment Leah enters the room and she gets terrified, immediately trying to run out with tears streaming down her cheeks. Jake has to chase after her while Amy tends to Olivia, who’s decided she needs to eat right this second and not a moment later, except she’s literally ten hours old and not very good at nursing just yet, which only serves to increase her frustration before she calms down enough to figure it out. When she does and Amy can take a deep breath, Jake and Leah return. Leah’s calmed down a little, but she’s still red under the eyes and skeptical to even say hi to her mom and her sister. Amy’s heartbroken as the girl wraps her arms tighter around Jake and turns her head away, and there’s a second where she wonders briefly again why she thought this was a good idea.

But then, Jake asks if Leah wants to see the gift Olivia brought her - a nifty trick Amy found on some Instagram account - and the three-year-old squeals with happiness as she unwraps a singing Elsa doll, and it’s upwards from there. She dares to climb into the hospital bed and first look at the baby, then carefully pat her head, then laugh as Olivia finishes nursing and makes another squeaking noise. Amy figures Leah won’t want to hold her sister at first, but once she’s told them all about her sleepover with Rosa - it seems to have included gymnastics, a Disney movie and cake - she’s looking at the baby with a little more interest, and then she asks the question all on her own.

“Can I hold her?”

 They put a pillow in her lap and a pillow behind her back for support, and Jake holds his hand under Olivia’s head throughout, but they let her. It’s the best thing Amy’s ever seen in her life. Just when she thinks it can't get better than this, Leah leans her head down so her cheek is touching her little sister's, and Amy has no way of stopping her happy tears.

 She’d never thought people were lying, per se, when they’d described how your love just doubles when you have another child. She’d been certain she would love another baby just as much. It had been part of the reason she fought so hard to have one, but she realizes now that she was never even close to understanding the full meaning of double the love. The power with which she loves Leah has grown exponentially for every day, reaching infinity and still becoming stronger, and today, it's like her love for Olivia has clocked in at the same level, stretched out a hand and increased in tandem with the love for her sister. Amy wonders how it makes sense, how it’s possible for a heart to grow that big, but she's accepted that it’s one of many questions about motherhood she’ll never know the answer too.

Instead, she just makes sure she takes a series of pictures to document the moment, and then she meets Jake's eyes for a second to mouth a silent I love you.

 -

 They get to go home the next afternoon. Amy was expecting it to feel more natural with their second child, less like they’ve stolen someone else’s baby and is pretending to know what they’re doing, but it feels just as absurd as the first time when they secure her in the car seat and carry her outside.

The sun seems to be shining particularly bright as they drive, but Olivia sleeps for the whole way home.

 She does not, however, continue with that for the rest of the day. Rather, she wants to eat for most of it. Which is fine; Amy knows and remembers that’s what it’s like at first. Still, it’s exhausting and far from painless while they’re both trying to figure it out, and it keeps her stuck to her corner of the couch for hours on end. This gets Leah jealous, making her throw a tantrum because she wants Amy to play with her in her room and she can’t, and there's a moment where everyone except Jake is crying at the same time before Leah calms down and accepts the suggestion of everyone watching a movie on the couch and ordering pizza for dinner. Partly to celebrate, partly because no one has the energy to cook.

There's going to be an adjustment period for them all, Amy figures. She’s certain it will come with a cavalcade of challenges, but as Leah insists on being Jake's helper as he changes a diaper and shines with pride as she hands him too many wet wipes and picks out Olivia's pajamas, she can already tell it's going to be more than worth it.

 When it’s time for Leah to go to bed, she claims she wants everyone there to read stories. Amy asks, just to make sure, if that means her sister too, and Leah nods. She’s very intent on storytime taking place in her bed, though, and so Amy ends up squeezing herself to fit in the toddler bed with Olivia on her chest and Leah on her side. Jake has to sit on the floor.

“This is unfair,” he grumbles, and Leah laughs and snuggles closer to her mom, pressing a kiss to her baby sister’s head.

“Read the story, dada.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it.”

 They read two different stories, both of them yawning through the second one. Amy’s pretty sure Leah’s about to fall asleep, can feel the little arm draped across her stomach going heavier, more relaxed, but as Jake closes the covers to the second book, there’s a whisper.

“Another book,” it comes out in a yawn, and Jake laughs.

“Are you sure, bumblebee? I think you’re getting pretty tired.”

“No.” Leah shakes her head. “More stories.”

“Fine.” He presses a kiss to her forehead. “One more. Just for tonight.”

 He begins to read, and a few minutes later, Leah’s sleeping. She has her mouth open, one arm still resting on Amy as if to hold her in place, her other arm hugging the stuffed lion animal she still sleeps with.

She seems so big in comparison to her little sister, yet so innocent and peaceful as she’s sleeping, and entirely magical to watch. Every day, Amy thanks her lucky stars that she gets to watch this child grow up and take on the world, and it blows her mind to think she’ll get to do the same with the baby curled up on her chest. It seems so far away to picture this tiny infant growing up and becoming her own unique individual, too, but she knows it will happen, and she cannot wait for the rollercoaster ride she figures raising these two children will be.

 She’s squeezed into a far from comfortable position in the narrow toddler bed, she’s still sore and in pain after the nightmare that is childbirth, she's sleep-deprived and figures she's looked better after a 48 hour work shift than she does right now, but both her children are sleeping so close to her, and she's never been happier.

There’d been a time, not long ago, where she thought she’d never get to experience this. A second child had seemed like something the universe wasn't willing to give her, until it was, and now she’s living the reality she once feared would remain a dream.

She knows she’s never going to see her infertility journey as something beautiful, because it wasn’t. It was heartbreaking, soul-crushing and lonely even with Jake by her side, and the few comments she’s heard about how it must all have been worth it, though have made her want to punch someone. It was a curveball life threw her, an unfair challenge she had to go through for some reason, and she’s happy she survived it but she’s not grateful it happened. She’s simply accepted it. In the end, her life also gave her this; two objectively perfect children who are the best thing to ever happen to her, even pushing their father down to a still close second-place position. Her gratefulness for them still doesn't erase the painful experiences, but it makes them fade into the background, to a point where they’ll eventually become but a faint shadow of a memory. Amy figures that is the most she can ask for.

 It takes her a moment to realize she has no idea how she's going to get up from this position. She’s closest to the wall, and she gets now that it was an unwise choice. Leah’s holding onto her arm, Olivia’s sleeping lightly and already stirring, and Amy has strong doubts in her own ability to get up without waking anyone.

She looks to Jake, hoping he might be able to help her, but finds that he’s fallen asleep on the floor using a stuffed animal as a pillow and holding his thumb between the last pages of the book they were reading. It looks ridiculous and deeply endearing at the same time, and even though it means she’s so screwed and she’s going to have to wake him somehow before Olivia starts screaming bloody murder, she can’t be mad about it.

All she can do is laugh.

  and at last, i see the light

and it’s like the fog has lifted

and at last, i see the light

and it’s like the sky is new

and it’s warm, and real, and bright

and the world has somehow shifted

all at once, everything looks different

now that i see you.

~ i see the light, from tangled

~

[5questions]

JERALD PODAIR

The UFT Has Made Sausages: an interview with Jerald Podair

In November 2020, the NYC United Federation of Teachers endorsed the Black Lives Matter in Schools campaign. About 90% of the union delegates voted for this. This was a stark contrast to previous years, when the UFT hierarchy plotted to filibuster or derail attempts to have the Delegate Assembly endorse this national campaign for liberation.  And this is, unfortunately, a deeply rooted part of the UFT history, from its recent collaboration in ballooning school segregation, back to its battles in Ocean Hill-Brownsville strikes in 1968 and its cold shoulder to the largest student boycott in 1964.

In the following interview, I discuss the UFT’s history with Jerald Podair, the author of the book THE STRIKE THAT CHANGED NEW YORK, we cover topics from the 1968 UFT strike through present-day conflicts over NYC’s unequal schools, considered the most segregated in the country. The 1968 strike pitted Superintendent Rhody McCoy, the black superintendent of the local Brooklyn school board, against Al Shanker, the powerful president of the UFT (and later the American Federation of Teachers). McCoy insisted on his right to fire or at least reassign teachers who openly resisted his afrocentric, liberatory, and postcolonial pedagogical vision. Shanker refused with great zeal, sending the teachers union into a confrontation with the city lasting several months. The media tried to frame the event as a conflict between blacks (the community) and Jews (the teachers). The UFT ultimately was successful and became a stronger force in its role as co-manager of the NYC schools, but the reaction to the UFT’s principles and tactics during the strike has ranged from glowing adoration to harsh critique. 

While Podair is ultimately pessimistic about the UFT’s capacity for embracing radical action for social change as a primary priority – and one can’t say he doesn’t have 60-plus years of history to back him up – the recent Delegate Assembly vote on BLM in Schools suggests the UFT may be ripe for a change in attitude and direction. Can the UFT break its 60+ years of following the business unionism model of Samuel Gompers? Can it put educator union power to work in a fight that many NYC communities are ready to join against material and racial inequality? These questions and more are discussed below. 

 Jerald Podair, professor, historian, and author of numerous books, including THE STRIKE THAT CHANGED NEW YORK. http://jeraldpodair.com/ 

How did you become interested in and research the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike? 

JP: The Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike was almost a part of my DNA because I lived through it as a high school student in the fall of 1968. I was in the New York public school system when the strike occurred, and at the time I didn’t pay all that much attention to it. My main concern was getting out of school, not having to go to school. Ocean Hill-Brownsville basically kept New York City public school students out for about 3 months. I wasn't very political then. It struck me maybe 20-25 years later, when I was thinking of a dissertation topic, that it was really not only an important event in New York City education history, it was really an important event in New York history, general New York City history, and especially racial history. So I guess what I felt and heard and read and listened to during the strike sort of stuck in my DNA. or somehow got hardwired into me, because when I started thinking about a dissertation topic, I was a graduate student in history at Princeton, it's really the first thing I thought up, and so I began researching it. 

This was in the 1990s. It was not an easy topic to research, as you might imagine, because emotions were still so raw on each side, and not everybody I wanted to talk to was willing to talk to me. Albert Shanker never talked to me. As I understand it, I gave a presentation at the American historical association convention in the early nineties on Ocean Hill-Brownsville and he went to it. He was the president of the UFT and president of the AFT, at the time. He was in Washington, so he came and apparently he didn't like what I had to say because he had promised to give me an interview. After he heard what I had to say, he didn't want to talk to me. And that’s not the fault of Albert Shanker. He had his position. 

It wasn't the easiest topic to research and I found it much easier to just go through a newspaper run and I had to pretty much read every word of the New York Times, the New York Post and The New York Daily News for about a year to get quotes, to get reactions, to get information. Now newspapers are not always the easiest and most reliable sources, as you know. They are known as the first draft of history for a reason. But what I found is that they were more reliable than some of the people who would talk to me because I felt in many ways I was being spinned, again, by both sides, and I was always reminded as I did research of this of the great Japanese film Rashomon; basically people on both sides of the conflict were telling me things that were not necessarily true but we're basically filtered through their own self-interest so just like a little Rashomon the characters were not necessarily lying out right but they were just shaping the truth to fit their own sensibilities and their own agendas and that's what I found when I interviewed both, so for this dissertation I found relying on newspapers and at least what people were quoted as saying was my most reliable source. I went through the papers of the UFT at NYU and also the city board of education at Columbia.

So to make a long story, the PhD dissertation writing took me about 4 years but I had some road blocks along the way I got my notes stolen then it cost me about a year so I would say it took me 6 years to research and write it.

How did the notes get stolen? 

JP: It's become a family legend and a legend among my colleagues. We were living in Princeton at the time my wife and I and our daughter and we drove up to the Bronx to visit my parents who still live in the Bronx. I don't know if you've ever been a graduate student or know graduate students but they get very obsessive about things.  I took all my notes and I piled in the back of the trunk of the car because I thought I was going to look at them over the weekend, which was unrealistic, and I took basically everything, and the car got stolen and it was pretty horrific to go back to that parking space and not see it there. They found it in the South Bronx completely stripped and everything was gone and the notes were gone as well, so I basically had to start all over. I had to go back to Columbia. I mean it was easier the second time around because I knew where to look but it basically cost me a year and a half, maybe 2 years, of my life. I always heard it said you have to be a little crazy to be a graduate student and write a dissertation and that helped because the same person who would say that would have viewed that lost a dissertation notes as a sign from god and just quit. I didn't. 

Otherwise, why was the book hard to write? Basically just because it was hard to get access to people? Was Shanker the only one that didn't give you access?

JP: There were plenty of people who didn't give me access, or gave me only partial access, or they gave me access and didn't really give me what I needed. So the second time, after all my notes were stolen I decided to sit down and go through the Daily News and all the New York City dailies for every day for 1968 and the beginning of 1969, as well as the Times, who's the most accessible, to see what they said. I also feel that my own knowledge of Ocean Hill-Brownsville was so deep, right down to the ground level, and I certainly could tell whether somebody was stating the truth, so access was also complicated by the nature of the dispute. Usually there are heroes and villains in most historical stories – not in this one, because they were you know it was almost like everyone was right and everyone was wrong and I think it's very difficult for historians even today to approach Ocean Hill-Brownsville because it's so paradoxical and doesn't really fit into any sort of a coherent narrative like that all whites are racist or these teachers were racist; it doesn't fit into the narrative that they you know that all blacks were were unrealistic and anarchistic and violent. It fits into some of those categories but it doesn't fit into all of them and so it's not the easiest story to tell and I think what I had to do is sort of leave my own baggage at the door. We are all people, we have backgrounds: we have ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, racial backgrounds. So I tried to leave all of that at the door and try to get into the heads of all of the participants in this, to get into Al Shanker’s, Superintendent McCoy’s, Mayor John Lindsay's heads, and try to do that in a reasonably just passionate way. Hopefully I did a fair job. I think that's a good thing because I think if I surprised and maybe even just made both blacks and whites can I get that meant I was doing a good job and trying at least to be if you want to do a fair job.

Can you explain just a little more why Shanker didn’t want to talk to you? Talk a little bit about why people thought you were black besides just the cover?

JP: Shanker was looking for an exoneration basically and endorsements of pretty much everything he and the union had done during the strike; in other words, journalists who would say this is not about race or the strike is not about race, it is only about due process for teachers who are unfairly fired. To deny that they were racial issues is completely unrealistic. You have to confront those issues in order to do a good job with it historically, so I think what Shanker was looking for and of course he's not an academic historian. I know that many of my fellow historians would agree to disagree with me on that but I think you have to try to hold yourself outside of it, leave your baggage at the door, and try to be fair to both; historians have to criticize, I mean that's our job, but you also have to have some sense of sympathy for a person who is in a position that you are not, in knowing much less than you know 20 or 30 or even 100 years down the line, so you have to both be critical but sympathetic. I understand he would want me to completely exonerate the UFT, but I couldn't do that and I think that's sort of what bothered him. He was emotionally invested in ocean hill Brownsville as much as anything in his entire career. That probably was the most emotionally draining situation that he had been in as the union leader. I can't think of anything else that came close and he was so emotionally invested in it even 25 years later that wounds were still raw. To a lesser extent I got that from a lot of people that I tried to talk to about it: just too emotionally involved.

How do you see the UFT development since then?

JP: The UFT established itself as co-manager of the New York City public school system through the strike. Most of the strikes right now are about money but Ocean Hill Brownsville though was not about money it was about control. It was in 1968 that this strike established the UFT as a co-manager of the public school system which it was not before 1968. Before Shanker and the union leaders’ goal was to get money, but control in many ways was was more important than money; in other words, if Shanker had allowed Lindsay to buy him with money during this trial, if he allowed for everyone in the system to get a check but go back to work, Shanker would have turned that down, because he understood that that would have been a short term victory but the long term goal would have been lost: control.

The same caucus controls the union, the UNITY Caucus, since Shanker was in power.  

JP: Really, wow. Didn’t realize that. So they’ve been around over 50 years? 

Basically. And they filled a power vacuum left by government purges of “reds” and other socialist-leaning unionists. UNITY Caucus themselves were staunchly anti-communist when they were founded. The previous union, the Teacher’s Union (TU), was actually filled with many socialists and communists and the UFT, led by the UNITY Caucus, filled that void.

JP: You're absolutely right. It’s really crucial to understanding the history of the UFT. They're really tough anti-communists and they were one of several competing associations trying to get collective bargaining power for teachers. 

What would it be like if  the union had been less opposed to social justice and done less damage to community ties in the 60s in some of those neighborhoods? Is it possible for them to both win protections for the workers and also further social justice in terms of integrating schools and that type of thing and promoting black empowerment. 

JP: My book shows how complicated that was for the UFT.  First, Shanker and most of the UFT higher ups would say “we are for social justice” and what they would say is “you know we supported Martin Luther King and all of his campaigns. Martin Luther king is a personal friend.” He did address the U.F.T. On many occasions, he supported them when they were establishing their own union, and they supported him at the March on Washington and at Freedom Summer, so they thought they had the social justice bona fide. What what Shanker and other union higher ups would probably say in 1968 is “you don't know what it was like to be a teacher in the New York City public schools in the forties and fifties, but we do and what we know is that teachers had no control, no power, no dignity.” So the UFT was founded to change that – did change that. As for social justice, at Ocean Hill-Brownsville they were asked to make a choice between the 2 and the UFT leaders ended up choosing the power of the union and the power of the teacher over ideals of more radical militants interested in social justice. In other words, they were for social justice but not at their own expense. 

Albert Shanker, founder and president of the United Federation of Teachers 1964 to 1985 and president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) from 1974 to 1997.

Wildcat teacher strikes in recent years in West Virginia, Oklahoma, and Oakland were fighting for higher wages, benefits, protections, and other working conditions. The LA strike and then the Chicago one in 2019 they were more fighting for expanding funding for the schools and increasing counselors and that type of stuff. Do you think that had Shanker had the union mobilized at that time that they would have fought for those issues? Because public schools in NYC were basically gutted in the 70s and 80s. 

JP:  Back when Samuel Gompers was the president of the AFL testifying before a congressional committee in the early 1900s and somebody said, “You know Mister Gompers, what does labor want?” and he just says, “More.” That's it. “More.” And that's what Shanker wanted. He wanted more. He wanted more counselors, he wanted more money to be spent on schools. He wanted it for two reasons: he wanted it because I think he was honestly committed to some form of social justice but also he wanted more jobs for his teachers and more power for the union. He did want all those things but what he didn't want to do was cede control over education to a community group or community groups that he felt threatened his teachers and threatened their jobs. All the money in the world,  he was very happy to have. The New York City government spent lots of money on teachers, or social justice, to fund counselors, special ed,  everything. He wasn't into allowing the community school board to fire one of his teachers. That he would not do, and that's what caused the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike. So you know in many ways as we look at it retrospectively: it didn't have to happen, and that means that if both sides had compromised, it probably would not have happened. But we can't go back. From the standpoint of community people and parents in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville community, they see that their children are not getting good education and even more specifically not getting the kind of education the kids in the white middle class areas of New York City are getting, who are getting the better teachers, better facilities.  There’s something colloquially called combat pay in the 1960s, where teachers in poor neighborhoods get paid more money and also get a chance to transfer out after like a certain number of years.

There’s something in the most recent UFT contract where if you go to teach at struggling schools in the Bronx or Brooklyn you get higher pay.

JP: In the 1960s there was some sort of a provision where if you put a certain number of years and in those schools then you could leave and what happened in the sixties is that they were trying younger teachers, the beginning teachers (not veteran teachers) to the schools in communities like Ocean Hill-Brownsville, who could see that the education their kids were getting was not the same kind of education that that white middle class kids were getting and they were angry about that and I think justifiably angry about that, and of course Al Shanker would say, “I'm angry about that too and I want to do something about that and the way I want to do something because it is I want the school board to hire more teachers, more counselors, more administrators” and the community said, “well that's that's not really what we had in mind. We want control.” And that’s not what Shanker had in mind and he wouldn’t stand for that. 

Now a big fight in New York City schools is over the screening process. Are you aware of this?

JP: I'm actually not really.

So kids take screening tests. The original schools like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant had to take tests to get in, but starting with Guiliani, then it was expanded during Bloomberg. Students take these tests at the end of middle school and there's some schools – like the school where I teach – that are unscreened but there's some schools that are screened, where you have to have a certain test score to get in and those schools are predominantly white and Asian and then you have schools that are unscreened that are predominantly black and brown students, so you really have a segregated school system, arguably the most segregated in the country.

JP: Well I was going to say that at least in the sixties you had the zoned school and Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, only a certain number of students.

So I guess my question, returning to social justice,  but through the lens of focusing on teachers' working conditions, and Weingarten and Mulgrew were Shanker’s successors, so I'm just kind of wondering how that fits into this? 

JP: They really had the same agenda as Shanker. In other words, they're all tough union bosses who put the interests of their membership above all. The conceit for the UFT all through the years is that the interests of their members coincide with the interests of social justice and you don't have to make the choice between one or the other, but of course that's not always the case as we saw in Ocean Hill-Brownsville. When push comes to shove they're going to protect members; if they have a chance to get more money and more hiring but taxes go up and taxes go up for everybody including poor people they're going to do it because that's what comes first. The social justice component is important but when it collides with the interests of the union members, they come first and. I think most union leaders, even the public sector union leaders who say they're for social justice, they're going to make that calculation. 

Do you think we still see some of the same forces at work in the contemporary struggles over education?

JP: From what you've just told me, in New York you have a school system that is more segregated than it may have been even in the 1960s and it's pretty segregated in the 1960s and that was the basis of community control, the philosophical basis of it. African American parents in the mid 1960s basically gave up on the integration struggle because white parents had certainly given up on the integration struggle, and what black parents said is, “Well it looks like our schools are going to be segregated almost permanently and if that's the case, we might as well control it.” They're really being segregated by class, it seems to me, so that is that is going to be the issue going forward now. What is the UFT going to do with that? Well they may want to do something about it but I think again they are beholden to their members and their members may not have that will. Everyone in America says we want to be equal. But when you get into real life situations you sometimes wonder how many Americans really want to be equal, and take it to the UFT I would imagine that the majority of members view themselves as liberals or even on the left, and they vote for Democratic candidates, but when push comes to shove do they want to teach in an unscreened school or a screened school? Well a lot of them are going to make the choice to go to the screened school and they may give you all sorts of justifications that nothing to do with race, but it does come down at least to some extent to race and it also comes down to maybe something inside of them that does not want to be equal, that's wants to be elite or special, and maybe that's part of human nature but I don’t think the UFT itself is going to contribute to breaking down the system because I think in many ways the membership has an interest in perpetuating the system as it is.

You're a labor historian. Can you think of an example of a union or labor movement that was both focused on working conditions for the workers in the union but then also focused as a primary concern on the community or in the society? 

JP: The Wobblies was a union that focused not only on working conditions for their members but also wanted to change the entire economic and social structure of the United States.

Poster for the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies, a trade union across industries that has fought for work protections and power as part of a larger campaign for social revolution. https://iww.org/assets/One-Big-Union.pdf 

Similar to the Teachers Union (TU), the socialist and communist -oriented union that came before the UFT and was destroyed by the red scares in the 1940s and 50s. 

JP: Yes, and former members of that formed a caucus that was against Shanker’s UNITY caucus in the UFT. They are trying to do that massive social change and that caucus within the UFT opposes the strike from the very beginning and they're saying we have to align ourselves with the communities in which we teach so that we can change them for the better but in a sense they are making choices too. They’re unselfish in the sense that they would say well we're willing to forgo raises to help the community, we're willing to give the community control, in order to get equity and social justice in these neighborhoods. But I would argue that most teachers were not like that; they're much more self interested, much less willing to sacrifice themselves. I think what distinguishes these teachers is they were truly selfless. Because the right has many problems of its own, which we know, but one of the major problems on the left is hypocrisy and the idea that they want other people to do what they themselves will not. You talk the talk, but you don't walk the walk. Well these anti-strike teachers in 1968 in the UFT, they walked the walk. They were willing to make personal sacrifices, not have somebody else do it.  Shanker opposed them and tried to destroy the caucus, but I think on some level he had to respect them. 

Yeah the caucus I am in, the Movement of Rank and File Educators, is sort of the descendent of that caucus. 

JP: The only UFT leader who spoke out at the time was John O’Neil. Also, George Altomare, one of the only living and remaining members of the UFT hierarchy, and I talked to him a couple of years ago and he's the only really high ranking UFT who really tries to settle this and make a compromise and he got estranged from Shanker and the leadership over that. And Shanker basically just kept saying, “Fuck you, we want these teachers back in the classroom now” to the city and the media. And possibly the person who was floating a compromise of reassigning the teachers to other duties was George Altomare. He's the last one left from Ocean Hill-Brownsville who's actually alive as far as I know. He was sort of half in and half out and I think he was trying to be sort of a go between the community and the union hierarchy. Shanker was very absolutist over this and I think they had a falling out over that.

I also found it interesting that you said that your book doesn't really fit comfortably in like a right wing or left wing historical narrative. I took it to show that the UFT failed to work with communities for funding and equality and instead had been focused on working conditions only. What would have happened if the UFT had worked more with communities on more systemic changes that could have been more mutually beneficial? 

JP: You could make that argument. But based on my research,  I think most city school teachers were and maybe are politically with the cops, the firemen, the sanitation workers. They're just interested in “more”. They're not politically active and what they're worried about are their salaries and their jobs. So when you have a union that is mostly composed of people like that, there's a limit to how far you're going to be able to go in terms of social justice. Again the UFT always said, “We're for integration.” Shanker said all the way through: “We are pro-integration”, but when Bayard Rustin (who I actually wrote a biography of) organized a student boycott and the UFT at least nominally supported that but they were not willing to go to bat for their members who boycotted that day. They said, “Take a sick day” or something like that,  and didn't necessarily confront the board of education directly over this. The organizers of the boycott were disappointed in the UFT hierarchy's reaction to it. They didn’t oppose it but they didn’t use work stoppage. The UFT at that time was in favor of school integration. It's not like they were ever, you know, against it.  But again, there's you know then idea skin in the game. And resources. I think the UFT was worried about that and the reason they're worried is - it's related to this idea of social justice clashing with the goals of union power -- this is 1964: they're not that powerful a union and they may not want to piss off the board of education with whom they're trying to share power. They're not necessarily a struggling union but they’re young, only like 4 years old, and they may not have wanted to throw in fully. Sometimes you have to to do what you have to do. When I wrote my biography of Rustin, I was struck by an incident in the late 1950s, where Rustin is a close adviser to Martin Luther King, and Rustin helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and probably was going to be the managing director of the SCLC. What happens is Rustin, who is gay, gets caught in rumors of this and they reach Martin Luther King, who cut off Rustin and they reunited for the March on Washington in about 3 years. He basically cut Rustin off, and they don't have all that much contact. I think that King's thinking here is, “I have enough problems with what I'm doing without also having a gay man as the director of the SCLC I'm already being called a communist. I'm already being called an anarchist, a revolutionary. King made a strategic decision and cut this guy off, and that's how it works sometimes. In many ways, the UFT was generally thinking in 1964: “We've got enough problems with the Board of Education, establishing ourselves with the union, do we really, really want to go all in on this boycott and support every teacher? That's probably going to hurt us down the road when it comes to bargaining with them.” There’s that saying that watching legislation get passed is like watching sausages get made. Well, King was making sausages, and so was the UFT. 

[thealogie]

what do you plan on doing after law school? i'm a sophomore and i'm thinking about trying to go to law school because its the only thing i'm actually interested in. but i have no idea what i would do post-law school. i know for sure i could never be a trial lawyer. i don't know anyone that's gone to law school so i don't know how important it is to have a post-school career planned out.

I get variations on this question off anon pretty often so i’ll try to answer in more depth than this requires for future ref...so from what i gather you want some idea on what post-law school job choices look like? and also some advice about strategizing?

So first, what are job options other than the Atticus Finch? 

So first: Most people who work at “trial” firms/non-profits (as i will be) do not go to trial. Going to trial is rare and desirable so you could easily go into trial/litigation (meaning: bringing or defending specific lawsuits) and spend your time researching, writing, and occasionally arguing specific parts of the case in front of a judge rather than going to trial (even the arguing part is something others will be more than happy to do!)

Second:  If the thing that makes you go “I don’t want to be a trial lawyer” is more “I don’t want to deal with cases/clients at all!” and not “I don’t like the idea of trials specifically or performing for people.” there are plenty of other lawyer jobs but this requires more research on your part. most organizations/non-profits have a legal policy department...you research and write policies your org should pursue and then strategize on how to make it happen. you can work in any government agency or for any lawmaker as a legislative person....you can even work for a creative company or start-up helping with licensing/content creation. there are a lot of options but the answers are too infinite and dependent on your own strengths and interest

Personally, i AM going  be a trial lawyer (specifically litigating to make good law in the intellectual property area, bringing civil rights violations, and hopefully eventually impact litigation...which is just a fancy way of saying social policy-based lawmaking through lawsuits) but i could and do see myself exploring other things in the long run!

How to strategize for law school:

i decided to go to law school because it’s the exact area of the Venn diagram that overlaps my particular strengths/abilities; stuff i like to study; and power to make the world a better place while also doing day-to-day stuff i enjoy.  i also went straight from college but (i’m def repeating something i’ve said a lot on this blog)  i worked significantly during college. first an unpaid internship but subsequently paid research assistant/production assistant/analyst jobs at various orgs (e.g., i worked for small documentary unit of bcc world news and an education non-profit). i do think that was important because FIRST OFF it helped me see the type of work i’d be doing going into an entry-level job, which sucked. the lawyers got cooler work straight out of law school and i just didn’t want to work a couple of years at a job that i didn’t like if i got in and could just become a lawyer. and SECOND yeah it definitely helped me get in...if you’re not in a position to intern (which is like a ridiculous requirement of modern day life when unpaid) or do substantive paid work, you should definitely start thinking of post-college jobs in your area of interest (doesn’t matter so much what that is as long as you are consistent with it, can explain why you are passionate about it, good at it, and show strong writing skills). 

in terms of what to do in college...same advice. pick your thing and be good at it! it generally doesn’t matter all that much what that “thing” is as long as you can pursue it passionately, diligently, excel at it and explain how it connects to law school (anything in the world can have a law school link so you shouldn’t let this affect your decision too much).  you can always completely change track in law school (frankly once you get to law school no one knows what you did before...no one cares what you studied or where you worked) and even after but law schools def wanna see people who can go after shit and who bring something very specific (or several complementary “somethings”) to the table.

i personally love law school but it’s not for everyone. i did well in college but like...never enjoyed doing the work associated with subjects i chose to study because i was supposedly super invested in them. i felt most of it i could have just learned by following the syllabus and reading a few of my professor’s papers. but pedagogically law school is so engaging to me (like i even pay attention in class...) and 90% of my professors have clearly put so much thought and effort into how to develop our skills/thinking/knowledge in their class. BUT two of my super close law school friends don’t like it...or at least not 1st year because 1st year classes are really theoretical and rule-based and seem disconnected from policy work...so unless you get professors who can make the social connection (or you can make those connections yourself and that’s enough for you) it doesn’t get interesting until 2nd/3rd year when you can just do whatever. 

if you’re not sure about law school i definitely recommend thinking about it and doing jobs/internships/volunteer-work in some area that involves a law angle...and then think, do i like this? do i hate this but like the work the lawyers are doing? 

[talabib]

How To Be On Top Of Your Game At Work

Most of us can probably picture one of those great days at work when we’re at the top of our game: we’re bubbling over with ideas, can handle any problem and even get along with that one especially surly coworker. Of course, not every day can be as smooth sailing as this. But if you follow the advice offered here, you can turn almost every day into at least a good day; you’ll feel good about yourself because you get things done, focus without too much effort and bravely withstand the urge to procrastinate. You will learn

How to get a lot done in the day,

Manage workload and beat procrastination,

Surround yourself with pleasant relationship

Address decision systematically by using thinking routines,

Give great presentations and

Deal with challenging situation at woork

If you feel concerned that you have completely wasted your day or you are not getting a lot done before the day runs out , here are a few tips to help minimize that feeling

First, clearly set out your intentions for each day and try to eliminate any activities you know tend to distract you from achieving them. Instead of turning to distracting habits like checking news websites whenever you feel overwhelmed with your daily tasks, increase productivity by identifying what those distracting habits are for you and put extra focus on avoiding them. Keep your sights on the day’s goals

Second, frame your goals in positive language. Goals framed positively can also be called approach goals – that is, goals that state the positive outcome you’re hoping to achieve, such as “make my product irresistible.” The contrast to this would be an avoidance goal, like “stop losing customers.” There is research to back up the benefits of this strategy: a 1997 study found that students using approach goals improved their performance, whereas the opposite was true for those using avoidance goals.

Third, make a when-then plan to prepare for obstacles that could come between you and your goals. For example, say you decided to start a consulting firm and you are naturally not an early bird. Since you don’t have a boss expecting you at work at nine in the morning, you can be tempted to sleep in and while away the morning.  You can commit to a when-then plan to overcome this obstacle: when I wake up, first I’ll take a short walk, then I’ll check my e-mails. This little rule will help you get out of bed and face each day in a good mood.

Another way to be on game at work is to manage overload, beat procrastination and stay focused by making a plan and scheduling enough breaks. Crammed calendars and full to-do lists at work make it easy to feel overwhelmed. Let’s look at some of the ways to deal with these situations.

First, the physical: lean back on a couch, exercise ball or even your office chair for a few minutes and focus on your breath until you’ve calmed down enough to think clearly. Then, to order your chaos into manageable chunks, make a plan and decide where to start. First, write down everything you need to do in the next few days or weeks. Mark the most important tasks and take one step toward completing that task today, no matter how small it is.

Let’s take Crystal as a case study. Crystal was an attorney who wanted to run for a post in her company, which self-elects rather than appoints managers. However, the task of “start election prep” always felt too daunting. The enormity of those three words gave her anxiety, so she kept avoiding the task and procrastinating. What eventually worked for her was splitting the task into smaller steps, breaking it down into something like, “have a talk with my boss about my idea.” Once she’d split up the big task into small, manageable steps, “election prep” became much less overwhelming and she was able to tackle it.

Another essential prerequisite for focus is scheduling breaks at least every hour and a half. Focus inevitably wavers throughout the day and needs to be recharged periodically. Over the course of 90 minutes, our brains go from highly focused to scatterbrained, which is why we end up doodling or playing on our phone if we’re forced to concentrate for longer. When famed psychologist K. Anders Ericsson studied people at the top of their fields, like world-class violinists, athletes and chess players, he found that they also practiced in blocks of 90 minutes or less, with short breaks in between.

Surround yourself with pleasant relationships by building rapport with the people you meet and resolving tensions directly. Getting along with the people around you is essential for getting the best out of your day. Here’s how to kick-start those relationships!

First, build rapport when you interact with someone at work. Don’t just awkwardly slip by them in the office kitchen when you’re both reaching for a mug – engage them and ask open questions like, “how are you spending your holidays?”

Find commonalities or shared areas of interest by showing a genuine curiosity in your coworkers, as well any other people you meet. Creating this sense of connection is important because it creates a culture of trust and collaboration in the workplace. Highlighting shared interests is also important when looking for work, as employers are more likely to hire people they share similarities with.

Let’s take a look at a study conducted by sociologist Lauren Rivera from Northwestern University, where she asked recruiting managers about their most recent hires. She found that 74 percent admitted feeling some similarities with their new hires, whether it was based on a shared interest in sports, technology or something else. This indicates that managers prefer to hire and be around people with whom they share commonalities.

To have a great day, it’s also important to address and resolve any tensions with coworkers, as they can really sap your enthusiasm. The best way to go about this is to openly explain to your coworker what you’re feeling and why in a polite but firm manner.

For example, let’s take Jeff, a real estate advisor who was annoyed with a client who kept promising him specific assignments but rarely followed through with them when the time came. Instead of reproaching his client or bottling up his frustration, Jeff was up-front and communicated how he felt: “I’m confused because I received positive feedback from you, but didn’t get the project. Would you mind telling me what you were dissatisfied with and what I can do better next time?” This approach helped his client understand him without feeling attacked and getting defensive, and they ended up having an in-depth discussion about what the client was looking for.

Another way to be top on top of your game at work is to address decisions systematically by using thinking routines and breaking down complex problems into an issue tree.The next time you feel overwhelmed because you are struggling to make difficult decisions, try the following simple steps:

First, develop a versatile routine that helps you reach sound decisions in all manner of situations. The routine might be as simple as asking yourself a set of questions like, “what are the alternatives and potential disadvantages to this choice?” or “what would the worst-case scenario be, and what are some of my options if that happens?”

Peggy is an advertising art director who developed a routine that works for her. Her trick is to always invite colleagues to give her feedback about her current work. While she doesn’t agree with them all the time, their input often helps her catch potential problems in her campaigns, thereby improving her decisions. Remember, good advice can come from anyone, not just experts. Peggy once received valuable feedback from someone in customer support about an air freshener campaign. The support representative had on-the-ground knowledge suggesting that customers didn’t understand the visuals of the campaign, and Peggy was able to adjust accordingly.

Another tip for optimizing your problem-solving skills is to break down a complex problem with an issue tree. Start by jotting down the key issue – let’s say your business is doing poorly, which might make your central question, “how can I increase profits?” That question is now the trunk of the tree. Now, write down the two possible options that form the branches of the tree, in this case increasing revenues or reducing costs. Then, think of concrete actions that would help you realize those options; for instance, you could dismiss employees to decrease costs, or launch a new product to increase revenue. These suggestions make up more branches of the issue tree, until eventually you’ll have systematically mapped out many potential next actions you can take to tackle your problem.

A bad presentation can throw you off your game. To get your message across, involve your audience and make your presentation memorable. Have you ever been giving a presentation, only to look around and see that most of the audience wasn’t actually listening? To avoid this in the future, just follow these simple techniques.

First, remember that your audience will be much more receptive if you involve them and make them feel as if they’re choosing what to learn.

For instance, Emma organizes training programs covering new pedagogical techniques for teachers. In the past, it was hard to get any of the participants to deviate from their own, entrenched methods, thus making it difficult to get anyone to actively listen during the training session. So Emma tried a new type of meeting, in which ten teachers each presented their own methods at different stations around the table. Participants were then free to walk around and stop by the stations they were interested in. Emma’s strategy gave the teachers more agency in terms of what to learn, which in turn made them much more enthusiastic about the training.

Second, make your presentation interesting by incorporating videos or posters that will keep the audience on their toes. Make sure to utilize a whiteboard if there is one; people will internalize much more of your message if you draw and write in real time, rather than just using prepared slides. An experiment at Stanford University showed that people will recall nine percent more of a chart’s content if they see how it comes together as it is drawn, rather than just seeing the completed chart on a slide.

And throughout it all, make sure to use short and simple sentences in a fluid manner to hold your audience’s attention and emphasize why your audience should care about what you’re telling them.

How you deal with challenging situations at work will determine how great your day will be. It’s Monday, you’re tired and longing for the weekend already – but you’ve got a meeting with a dissatisfied customer first thing in the morning. What do you do?

First, keep your cool by taking some distance from the situation. Imagine it’s not you but a friend who has to face the client. What advice would you give? You can take this even further by talking to yourself in the second person to gain a more distant perspective.

Next, think of a past situation you handled well and ask yourself what resources helped you then. Maybe it was your wit, fearlessness or supportive friends, all of which can probably help you through the present situation, too!

Let’s take Jacquie, a college PR officer, as an example. Once, an earthquake cut off her college’s power and water supplies. But instead of seeing it as a disaster, Jacqui spun the earthquake into a positive PR story for the school. The school still managed to hold a graduation ceremony amidst destroyed buildings, a story that the national media covered as a success story of perseverance and community – thanks in large part to Jacqui’s attitude and skills in dealing with the media.Thinking back to how she managed that situation continues to make Jacquie feel like she can handle anything.

Turning to positive thoughts in challenging times is another surefire way to inject some energy and cheer into your day. Try out these tricks next time you’re in a tough situation. Start by identifying the mental, physical and temporal patterns and triggers that affect the ebb and flow of your energy. Maybe, for example, you always feel lethargic after lunch. Then, find ways to boost your energy during the energy lows. Maybe it’s getting up to make a cup of tea, having a five-minute chat with a coworker or taking a walk around the block.

You can even try a gratitude exercise: think of three things that happened to you today that you’re grateful for, even if it’s just a small thing like remembering your umbrella – or forgetting it, and running like a little kid through the rain! Even small thoughts like this can make a big difference.

[oberlinconservatory]

Opera singer Kathryn Leemhuis ’05 returns to campus

The award-winning American mezzo-soprano visits Oberlin this summer as a guest faculty member of the Vocal Academy for High School Students. Leemhuis is a former young artist with Lyric Opera of Chicago and Opera Theater St. Louis, and a national semi-finalist in the 2012 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. She’s sung all over the United States and beyond, most recently making company debuts with Dallas Opera, Annapolis Opera, and Cincinnati Opera. 

Keep reading to hear what Leemhuis has to say about the role Oberlin played in her journey towards a professional career in opera... HEAR LEEMHUIS LIVE IN OBERLIN: Friday, June 15, at 7:30 pm in Kulas Recital Hall, where Leemhuis and Oberlin collaborative pianist Javier Gonzalez will present a recital of vocal works by Bach, Rossini, Berlioz, Brahms, Falla, and Copland. 

How did Oberlin prepare you for making music in the world?

“It begins with the fact that that the singers at Oberlin are primarily undergraduate vocal performance majors and the program centers around those singers. This means that the undergrads get the opportunities, and this is so important because you are not competing with graduate students. This matters when you audition for graduate schools (and beyond), when those who look at your resume see that you’ve had actual performance experience. Oberlin’s faculty consists of voice teachers, art song coaches, opera coaches, and an opera director, among others. This is unique because many other universities simply don’t have the same resources, nor at the same level. There are so many brilliant minds and exceptional talent from which to learn at Oberlin, and while many alumni will tell you that they’re the best … it’s just true. I strongly believe that my time and opportunity at Oberlin helped to build my foundation as an aspiring professional opera singer, and it was proven when I received multiple competitive offers for graduate school. This is frequently the case with Oberlin’s vocal performance majors. Without my education from Oberlin, I certainly don’t think my path would have been the same.”

Who did you study with in Oberlin? What was a great lesson you learned from your private teacher?

“I studied with Ms. Manz for the four years I was at Oberlin pursuing my undergraduate degree. By the time I graduated high school, I was not very knowledgeable about the best pathway for classical singing, but I truly hit the jackpot. I requested Ms. Manz simply because she is a mezzo-soprano, but I quickly learned that that didn’t matter because she’s brilliant with every voice type! She strengthened my technical foundation, enhanced it with her endless pedagogical knowledge and keen ear, encouraged the right choices at the right times, and was supportive during my time with her and after. I was never lost or confused in her care, and I always felt like my voice was in the best hands. There is no one “great” lesson from which to pick because she structured every aspect of my technique, my performing persona, my knowledge, my acting, and my musicality block by block. I am forever grateful to Ms. Manz.”

What were some of the highlights of your Oberlin experience? Opportunities you had on campus as an undergraduate?

“The Oberlin Conservatory is known as one of the best classical music programs in the world. Additionally, because of its history as a liberal arts college, the broader campus at Oberlin offers an exceptionally strong academic program. To benefit as much as I could, I applied my elective credits toward courses in the college that would only enhance my growth as a singer even more. For example, singers can take acting classes, additional language courses, and athletic classes, all of which only strengthen the growth of the young classical singing actor. Socially, there aren’t many places like Oberlin: the students are unique, smart, friendly, and ambitious, and it’s easy to make lifelong friends. I enjoyed numerous get-togethers, parties, study sessions, and events with those people who helped shape me into who I am today. And many of us are still friends and colleagues…Oberlin vocal performance alumni are everywhere!”

What advice might you offer a young high school student heading into an undergraduate voice program?

“In my opinion both as a professional performer and voice professor, there are three elements which should shape the decision you make when choosing the best undergraduate program. Who will my voice teacher be? How many performance opportunities could I potentially have there? What kind of scholarship money is possible for me? Do your research carefully on each of these questions because the answers will most likely impact you well beyond your undergraduate degree. Once you’re in the program, soak up all the knowledge from your professors, be a generous colleague, be diligent about your practicing, learn foreign languages, better your acting side, and get tough. Because ultimately, you’re preparing for the tough competitive performing world: and a place like Oberlin will set you up for success.”

[aaroncutler]

October 2nd: The link above leads to the website of the Brazilian film festival Olhar de Cinema (“Cinema View”), traditionally realized in physical form in the city of Curitiba, which this year will take place online from October 7th through 15th. (The English-language version of the site can be found here.) Anyone that has followed the news lately will likely understand the reasoning behind the change in format: The surge of COVID-19 throughout Brazil, and the financial crisis accompanying the pandemic, have made the realization of a physical festival impossible at this time. The current reality shines more than clearly from my home in São Paulo, where theaters (along with museums, concert halls, and other cultural spaces) have been forcibly closed in the name of public safety since early March and won’t reopen before mid-October at the earliest. Such forced shutdowns also explain why I have been absent from this blog since February – with the postponements of the Mutual Films Sessions and other physical programming possibilities, I have felt that there has simply been no activity to report.

One could, of course, say in response that there has been lots of activity to report. The great filmmakers Bruce Baillie, Sarah Maldoror, and Nobuhiko Obayashi all passed away during one week in April, joining a number of amazing film artists that we have lost in these past months such as Olivia De Havilland, Michael Lonsdale, Ennio Morricone, Michel Piccoli, Luther Price, and Brazilian filmmakers and researchers including Suzana Amaral, Arlindo Machado, Saulo Pereira de Mello, and Sérgio Ricardo. Cinematheques and repertory theaters around the world have been threatened with extinction, including invaluable repositories of film history such as the National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre in Ukraine and the Cinemateca Brasileira in Brazil. The most recent editions of high-profile festivals around the world such as BAFICI, Cannes, Cinéma du Réel, Courtisane, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, TIFF, and others were all significantly altered (either canceled or severely diminished in scope), and the seeming majority of other film events realized since March have either gone hybrid (physical/virtual) or been forced entirely online.

Such was the case with Olhar de Cinema, where I have worked as a film programmer since 2017, and for which I continued my role on the selection committee for feature-length films this year alongside Carla Italiano, Camila Macedo, Eduardo Valente, and the festival’s artistic director, Antônio Gonçalves Junior. The 2020 edition of the festival was originally scheduled to take place in June, but by mid-March, it became clear that the edition would need to be postponed if it were to take place at all. Olhar’s team (led by Antônio and the festival’s executive director, Eugenia Castello) chose a set of dates in October in the interest of waiting as long as they believed they could before beginning to plan the 2021 edition, and also with the hope that a delay of four months would allow for physical screenings. The directorship decided by early August, however, that this year’s edition could only take place if it were 100% virtual.

I once again stress that this decision was not mine in order to make clear that, once it was made, I chose to support it. I understand that, in the ideal, a festival’s editions should be held with regularity, since one of the chief functions of a festival is commemorative. Each time out therefore should be different, as a way of recognizing and honoring the changes that occur around the event (in its city, its country, its world) between each realization.

At the same time, I have felt inspired by some acts of resistance that I’ve seen taking place in the film world in response to the virtual (not digital) sphere’s rise. These included a number of rejections from filmmakers and their collaborators whose films we invited for this year’s edition, which they made with the justification of preferring to wait for an opportunity for physical screenings, even if their work was to be become ineligible for future screenings with Olhar. I cannot salute enough the courage that I perceive in such artists for challenging the value so commonly afforded to premiere status in the interest of seeking their ideal screening conditions. Some might say that their position courts irrelevance; I believe that it signals faith and trust in the work to find its audience, and in the audience to find the work in return.

I have also valued the gestures of festivals whose organizers believed they could operate only in physical fashion, with this year’s Bergamo Film Meeting and the archaic heroism of its cancellation notice’s closing line coming to mind in addition to other events already named. While an online festival often proffers a kind of fictitious declaration of independence by streaming films through its own website (while remaining quite dependent on a number of online elements), a physical festival more than ever now exists in solidarity with people charged with operating physical screens. The physical option adds value to the work of cinematheques, cultural centers, repertory houses, and first-run commercial venues alike through the extent to which it highlights traditional pedagogical aspects of cinema – not only what individual films can teach us, but also what it means in essence to watch a film in a theater, both in aesthetic terms and in social terms, which I believe work together to raise consciousness of how each audience member relates to his or her surrounding world. A small-screen projection can of course help raise this consciousness to some extent, but on a big screen, the lessons are amplified, and one’s perspective on them changes as a result.

So I made a deal inside myself and was glad to find unified support among my colleagues. While Olhar’s Retrospective section has always been one of the calling cards of the festival, it is a section that I have also always understood as being both physical in nature and timely rather than time-sensitive; as a result, I made clear my unwillingness to work on an online retrospective in 2020, and the festival’s team eventually decided not to mount any retrospective at all before 2021. Everyone stayed more open to the possibility of a significantly reduced online version of the festival’s Classics section – which has also frequently been a drawing point for Olhar’s audiences, due to the organization’s consistent ability to offer crucial intersections of strong and historically important films in good-quality restorations with suitable projection conditions – but once this section’s screenings proved logistically impracticable to mount, our group proved able to swiftly move on.

We stayed committed from the beginning, however, to presenting panoramas of new films which, as always, would represent our best efforts to showcase highlights from recent Paraná-based, Brazilian, and international film-making. (These include the festival’s Focus section, whose spotlight this year on Brazilian filmmaker Daniel Nolasco emphasizes the continuing importance of recognizing directorial authorship and its individual touch.) The sad reality is that most of these films, doomed as they are to no or limited distribution in Brazil, would likely never screen in theaters in the country if it were not for festivals and other specialized events. And, as a result of the current moment, they do indeed run the risk of not screening at all here in the foreseeable future if they don’t screen online before one or another turn of the calendar. This year’s slate of new films and potential audience members deserve to be introduced to each other at least as much as similar matches have deserved to be made in the past. We also all deserve – and need – to be continually reminded that there exists a world beyond that of commercial cinema. We all deserve to breathe fresh air.

I won’t list recommendations here for specific films from Olhar’s program, since I understand that the echo chamber of any festival (physical or online) makes it so that works compete with each other for a viewer’s attention. But I will cite a few practical resources to help audience members make informed choices regarding what to view. The most comprehensive, indeed, is the festival’s own website, where all the films from this year’s selection are listed along with trailers and original synopses and filmmaker interviews, as well as a downloadable general screening guide and a listing of seminars and other non-screening events. Much of the audiovisual material available on the site can also be viewed through the festival’s YouTube channel. A recording of special note is that of a Portuguese-language roundtable discussion held earlier this week with all of the festival’s current programmers (the aforementioned features programmers, plus the three shorts programmers), in which we discuss issues related to mounting this year’s edition and name some personal highlights.

Each one of Olhar’s films this year will be made available for screening on two separate days, each time during a 24-hour-long period from 6 A.M. to the following 5:59 A.M. Tickets are five Brazilian reais (less than one dollar) for each feature or shorts program. The showings will take place exclusively on devices within the Brazilian territory, which points up a bittersweet irony of our virtual moment. The festival’s outreach will likely be the widest that it has ever been this year, in the sense that viewers throughout this large country will be able to watch a shared body of films without needing to gather in one city. At the same time, those who would have been willing and able to travel will now be unable to physically meet each other or the festival’s guests. The now-virtual guests include filmmakers from Brazil and many other countries, who provided wonderfully generous and informative interviews recorded before the festival, but won’t be on hand for more spontaneous and developed conversations during it, and a remarkable group of curators representing countries such as Brazil, Chile, France, Germany, Holland, India, and Japan who have been preparing to make their jury deliberations from home.

These points of sadness and others, in my mind, address the extent to which Olhar de Cinema’s 2020 edition will not be bringing the world into living rooms. It will be bringing many good things, however, which my colleagues and I hope with all our hearts for interested people to discover. I personally also hope for people to watch and love the films with something of a dual consciousness – to fall hard and deeply in love with some films to the point of urging for theaters to show them. The cinema constructs and presents visions of the world in order to point to possible worlds. And in this sense and others, I hope for Olhar and its audiences to work together to inspire change. A bit of dissatisfaction can be healthy. 

*

November 1st: The act of watching the awards ceremony on the festival’s closing night brought the strangely disorienting and familiar sensation of being confronted with another person’s happiness. In fact, the sensation came from seeing multiple peoples’ happiness, beginning with the awarded filmmakers. Each of them gave the impression of feeling genuine gratitude towards the festival, and each one emitted the feeling that the prize held legitimate value and meaning for him or her.

I found their sensations remarkable for a number of reasons, both in relation to the awarded films and in relation to questions beyond them. Most pressingly, it struck me that the filmmakers valued the prizes awarded by an online edition of the festival at least as much as they would have valued prizes given by an edition of the festival held in physical form. I also sensed from the jury members at least the same levels of commitment and responsibility towards their work as they would have shown in a physical festival, and from my colleagues that appeared on camera, a double feeling familiar from the closings of festivals past: Relief and pleasure for having gotten through the thing, combined with an already mounting nostalgia for what had come to pass.

Which therefore raises the question: What, in fact, had come to pass? I could say that I wasn’t there, and that no one else was, either. I could also say that I and many other people were following and keeping track. I could point to an absence of physical gathering spaces, a lack of crowds, and an inability to hold spontaneous conversations with strangers outside screening rooms where films had been projected on DCP with the physical presence of guests. I could also point to the astonishing number of reviews of the festival’s films published by critics (many of them pertaining to outlets that were themselves native to online), which were in turn frequently shared by the festival’s filmmakers, one of whom told me that he had never seen so much attention paid to short films in particular. I could further point to the concrete numbers of online tickets sold, with several films attaining their maximum number of available entries; to the concrete numbers of views received by the online recordings of the festival’s free filmmaker interviews and roundtable talks; and to the myriad comments made about films by audience members across social media.

The essence of cinema is material, but its essence is also ephemeral. As I hold absences and presences side by side in my mind, I perceive Olhar’s organizers working this year to create an umbrella under which disparate and previously unrelated things could be gathered to form a kind of temporary shelter from the chaos of the world outside. In other words: They created a festival.

In relation to this, I find myself somehow both divided and resolved. I personally feel home viewing to be inherently unsatisfying; although most of the films I watch are seen at home, I generally direct my viewing towards work or research purposes, and make every effort to save films that I’m interested in seeing out of curiosity or leisure for the day when I can watch them projected in theatrical conditions. I agree with what the critic Dave Kehr once wrote for the magazine Chicago in an article about home video in September of 1986: “It’s just simple human kindness to give every film its best shot and see it the way it was meant to be seen - in a big room, in the dark, and with other people.”

At the same time, I would add a qualification: “When realistically possible.” And in this regard, I do not remember ever feeling prouder of my association with Olhar de Cinema than I have in relation to this year’s edition, for which the festival’s organizers committed to the event’s survival precisely by embracing possibilities online. As should be the goal of any festival, they offered a tremendous public service, and if that offering ultimately felt incomplete, then perhaps that is partly because, in a way, every festival should. Festivals are often most satisfying in their achievements when they succeed in pointing to worlds outside themselves, and in indicating that they themselves are not enough.

All of which leads me back to the strangeness of our current moment. Since the ending of this year’s edition of Olhar de Cinema less than three weeks ago, no fewer than four notable Brazilian festivals (some of which had been previously postponed and some of which were held on their originally scheduled dates) have unrolled online in quick succession, with several more to come before year’s end. Physical cinemas have also gradually begun reopening (with expected restrictions on showtimes, ticket sales, and audience comportment) throughout Brazil during this time. In São Paulo, since mid-October, Mariana Shellard and I have had the fortune of watching multiple fine new restorations of Krzystof Kieślowski’s fiction features, as well as a beautifully restored copy of 8 ½. I don’t believe that any of these screenings have counted with the presence of more than ten spectators - paltry numbers, even if limited seating capacity is taken into account.

Two different audience experiences are therefore unfolding now along parallel tracks. In one sphere, online festivals break records for audience turnout and feedback, with outright celebration expressed by many people who – for reasons of distance, economics, and other life circumstances – would likely not have attended these events if they had been held in their traditional forms. In another sphere, commercial cinemas offer strong programming in efforts to entice potential audience members that, by and large, claim health and safety as justifications for not wanting to come.

I accept the idea that, if physical cinemas in Brazil are allowed to continue to stay open, then their audience sizes will naturally grow over the coming months. Still, one can easily imagine a dystopian narrative in which interesting films become increasingly available to watch, yet only in private domestic contexts, while public screenings are given over more and more to Hollywood and other studio products whose costly advertising campaigns offer more creativity than the films themselves do. Within this narrative, repertory theaters – which have never been profitable businesses – subsist on funding from governments and the private sector to an extent that they never have before.

This scenario disturbs me profoundly in the short term, especially since the various maneuvers that we have seen around the world in relation to quarantines and lockdowns give rude reminders that, for governments, culture is truly a low priority. But in the long term, I see some hope in the possibility of so-called alternative venues staying open due to their operators’ belief that there continues to be an audience for what they screen and the personalized care with which they screen it, and in the possibility of the audience rewarding this belief in return. I also like to think about festivals returning to physical spaces (no matter how much space they have in them) as a way of showing to audiences that they never truly left, but rather used the time they spent away to expand their outreach and possibilities.

At the very least, this is my hope. The fact of not being alone in hoping is, as it has always been, a point of lasting comfort.

[davidschnuckel]

Emails That Kick Ass (Vol. 18):(a)SYNCHRONICITY

3/20/2020

It took some time, but I eventually realized that I write a lot.  In fact, much more than I truly realized.  Just not in the way that I had always saw myself doing. As an educator, I’m approached by students, alumni, colleagues, administration and outside parties through email…a ton.  In fact, a big part of my after hours is spent on replying to all sorts of issues.  Some big.  Some small.  Never anything in between, interestingly enough.  But, the big-issue emails are the ones I’m most proud of because they usually provide a platform where I can address a significant issue (or issues) that relate to important matters regarding what this glass thing fully entails. I see these emails as small essays in the form of correspondence; emails that - should a student of mine ever take interest in this blogspot - provide a teachable moment that happens behind-the-scenes of what's going on in studio and addresses a very real issue within the realm of glass making, glass thinking, glass teaching, and/or glass learning.  An indirect form of "mentoring"  by example...but in digital space. I put a lot of care into every thing I do and, although trying to be informative, my secondary intention with these well considered emails is to impress upon my students the power of words and the value in articulating thought through written form.  EMAILS THAT KICK ASS are a collection of such correspondence, cut and pasted directly from my Outlook box, but with names changed to protect the guilty... ​ ​ *(a)SYNCHRONICITY* is a letter to our RIT Glass student body in response to the rapid spread of COVID-19  across the nation in early March that led to an equally rapid decision to close college campuses down for the remainder of the semester.  It was wild time...full of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and helplessness.  There was an unraveling of societal normalcy that was nothing short of stunning...new government issued protocols of quarantine, lockdown, distancing, disinfecting, and personal cleanliness given essentially overnight.  It was all so sudden and unforeseen... Faculty and students were just beginning a week of Spring Break when news was delivered from the University President that RIT was closed for the term and that academic continuity would have to be delivered online.  No one really knew what that entirely meant, but we were tasked to figure it out...which was a colossal problem to solve for folks providing studio-based educational experiences.  Especially us in Glass...educators and students whose learning objectives and outcomes rely heavily on very specific facilities, equipment, and tools in each of our courses.  Resources that just aren't available at home for remote learning.  In turn, it was clear that whatever we designed to fulfill our course's learning objectives in the back half of the term would have to make extraordinary theoretical/conceptual use of what material experience our students already had in the front half. Long story short, we as faculty were given a week to re-design and re-launch a modified curriculum to our Glass students to engage material competency, critical thinking, professional practice, and research-driven projects in a way that brought finality to the work we began together in this very peculiar Spring term.  And to develop ways of doing this for all our students levels: introductory, intermediate, and advanced.  (Which we did masterfully considering...) We couldn't promise that what we developed would be anything like the experience of being in studio together.  But we certainly developed content that would appropriately cover the course objectives that we hadn't accomplished yet...the ones that relied on out-of-studio research and development.  The email below was sent the Friday before we began our first week of remote learning following to announce that revisions to the course were made, where folks could find those things at various digital hot spots, and what our next steps were before launching this very bizarre pedagogical experiment.  Suffice it to say, there was a lot of heartache at the suddenness of it all...and those who were teeing up to graduate were the most disappointed in this remote learning experience as the replacement for their Capstone/Thesis exhibitions, final reviews/defenses, and graduation ceremonies.  It was important to address that, too...to lead our students forward into the fog with optimism, but with a firm acknowledgment that we just can't have any potential goodness that might come out of this circumstance compromised by an exasperated mourning over spilt milk...

_

Dear All, Susie and I have developed a REVISED approach to the rest of the term together that we are happy to share with you! As we already know, all courses are now going online and Susie and I have created a new approach to your classes with us that (1.) support you in fulfilling the current requirements of the course, (2.) continue to nourish your growth and spark curiosity, and (3.) to maintain a sense of connection between this small, powerful group of people.  Attached to this email are documents that outline the what/how/when of those things: a revised Syllabus to the course you’re enrolled in and a new weekly schedule.  They will also soon live in MyCourses and the Department GDRIVE.  Please spend some time with these documents and develop questions about what seems unclear.  Things are always subject to change, but we feel EXCITED about how to make the most of this funky situation.  We hope you’re game, too! Lastly, it’s clear that everybody is disappointed with how this term has rapidly shifted…how it compromised our hopes and aspirations in finalizing all the work we’ve done together in studio and through a physical exhibition.  You have our full understanding on that front. We’re heartbroken, too.  But the only way to move forward is to work on developing ways in making this unsavory circumstance useful for ourselves.  In fact, it’s the biggest part of the artist’s job description (!).  We give you permission to be disappointed, but not to lament...to not let the bummers of this moment interfere with recognizing all the personal transformation that has been happening for each of you during this past year.  Not to mention all the further transformation that is yet to come with what Susie and I designed.  With that said, we are honored to have worked with you so far, proud of what you all have  accomplished already, and super excited to still be able to crossover with you for the next few weeks.  Where ever we might be! Even in this incredibly foggy time, we must continue to walk boldly into this uncertainty...in whatever way that may mean.  Our course work, our practices, and our potential careers will only be as fruitful during (and after) this as we're willing to let them be.  Especially now with the factors of added constriction, constraint, and limitation in the. mix.  After all, an artist isn't measured by what one can do, but by how one can adapt.  The good news is that this is incredibly new and bizarre territory for everybody...and I'm grateful that we get to find our way together. We’ll keep in touch…and we look forward to seeing everybody in Zoom soon. With our best foot forward, David and Susie

[gosmelters]

Hello to [the] Your First Video Game: A Personal Reflection on My Scholarly Beginnings

I’m finding the writing process for this blog harder than other platforms because of one issue I hadn’t considered when making it: my audience. 

How much do those reading this know about me? How much will I insult my instructor if I copy-and-paste the syllabus goals with every post? I am simultaneously overconfident about my plans for this blog and hitting backspace every time I try to post on it.

I figure it might be easier to be explicitly clear about my research from the jump. Every week, I’ll be responding to this course’s assigned readings by connecting them to games of analytic interest -- specifically Night in the Woods and Doki Doki Literature Club -- to further hone my feminist and queer perspectives on game mechanics, games as cultural artifacts and close-reading conduits, and, ultimately, what games studies mean to me. 

The latter question has been especially pressing as this course begins, as its importance surpasses any other project I’ve undertaken in my academic career. When I was young, about fifteen or so, I knew I would one day have an opportunity like this one. I had no idea how, but I was destined to figure it out. My dreams of entering the games studies circuit were fostered by countless presenters at the late Games+Learning+Society conference in Madison, Wisconsin; modeled by the research of colleagues and close friends Kyrie  Eleison Caldwell and Sean Seyler; and thrown into overdrive by the classic work of Tom Bissell and his adventures in virtuality. And here, now, listening to the instrumental of “Your Reality” and pondering ever so lightly how mine reached this point, I begin to understand what Caldwell and co. told me just a few years ago as I failed to find an undergraduate program at which I felt at home: “you just kind of make it up as you go along.”

Sebastian Deterding's "The Pyrrhic Victory of Game Studies: Assessing the Past, Present, and Future of Interdisciplinary Game Research" concludes with the thought that games studies are “increasingly coalescing into a relatively closed community within it, composed of humanities and cultural studies scholars with homogenous epistemic cultures.” The split between “games studies scholars,” mostly comprised of film studies, comparative literature, and art and design scholars, and the vocationally focused game design programs have created “more of a narrow multidiscipline than the broad interdiscipline [games studies scholars] set out to become.” The quantification of interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and economically validated game studies fields reminded me of those early days of college searching: without a holistic understanding of what games studies was or even did, I picked a new keyword every week (”comparative literature!” “COMMUNICATIONS.” “narrotology, maybe.” “lu...dology?”) and sought out a (usually liberal arts) school that could foster that keyword the best. Yes, foster the keyword: the dream I had was so undefined, as if faded over months of sleep and never recorded in the bedside journal, that I was gambling my future on whatever “theory/method coupling” seemed right to me at the moment. I wonder if seeing these issues from the academic bird’s-eye view of Deterding would have given me any insight into Caldwell’s suggestion to MacGyver my future rather than reverse-engineer it, but I doubt it. I would have seen Deterding’s conclusion, his call to coalesce sociology, media philosophy, and the vocational education of game design to dissolve that “closed community,” and would have asked my inspirations the easiest way to guarantee a spot at that table. 

Therein lies a self-referential issue I have with the problem of interdisciplinary identification: on the most practical level, one that I experienced in my early days of higher education, there is no solution to the problem that is the proposed solution. In an ideal world, I would have liked a solid understanding of these game studies components because I saw them in action. I asked myself (and others) at Well-Played sessions how I could get paid by close-reading games (I’m so glad, if extremely surprised, no one responded with a snappy “you don’t”) -- because what is an interdisciplinary field if you cannot in some way categorize its facets and pedagogical inspirations? It’s hard to reconcile how much “easier” it would be to go into “games studies” when even that moniker made little to no sense to me. This article (or at least its evidence; it is clear that Deterding’s desire for cohesiveness [figure A] is contrary to my next claim) is a fascinating example of how the breakdown of scholarship at the highest of higher educations facilitates no understanding of how to break into its world at the freshman level. In other words, if I had read this in the keyword-obsessive summer before my senior year of high school, I know I would have ultimately picked one of the article’s own buzzwords (”OMG THERE’S LUDOLOGY AGAIN! WE’RE GOING WITH THAT!”) and defeated the article’s call for homogeneity -- as what constituted “games studies” was still too far beyond what I academically understood at the time to feel comfortable going into it.

(Figure A) The above, for example, are solutions to the problem that would have made my break into academia much smoother, and less reliant on right-place-right-time philosophies. From “The Pyrrhic Victory of Game Studies: Assessing the Past, Present, and Future of Interdisciplinary Game Research.” Sebastian Deterding. Games and Culture Vol 12, Issue 6, pp. 521 - 543. First published September 1, 2016.

This sounds like a simple non-argument without a proper point of comparison, and I’ll concede that my issue could have been solved with proper (and simple) designation of what games studies actually is. Yet I found a perfect point of retroactive validation in the first chapter of Jonas Heide Smith,‎ Susana Pajares Tosca's textbook Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. Their four-point breakdown of video game study -- the game, the players, the culture, and "ontology" -- which correspond to four different types of analysis (figure B) made a still-extant insecure part of my sixteen-year-old self feel reassured by his desire to learn all of them. 

Figure B - “Four Major Types of Analysis.” From Egenfeldt Nielsen, S.., J. Heide Smith, and S. Pajares Tosca. Understanding Video Games: The Essential Introduction. Routledge, 2008.

It seems I’ve covered a lot of contradictory points in a few short paragraphs, but my reasoning is rather simple. I’m hyper-aware of the fact that there could be kids still struggling to understand how they might break into games studies, and need the most basic intellectual foundation upon which they may rest a future. To this end, I can say that studying what has interested me -- the visual arts, gender, feminist, and queer theory, and history of all kinds -- has provided me with a more-than-appropriate framework for studying video games. And I hope that on some level, our definition of “games studies” does not radically dissolve individual humanities identities. This “closed community” of humanities scholars that Deterding critiques may be borne of those four major types of analysis, but I didn’t know the latter even existed when I was trying to find the former. The knowledge I now possess of how to MacGyver this field is a privilege only in contrast to how ill-defined “games studies” as an “interdisciplinary field” was to me at the time. The closed communities must be open to visibility, especially at that aforementioned “freshman” level, but they should not lose their identities as interlocking methodologies that are available outside of a Platonic form of games scholarship. I wanted a path, so I made my own, but the structure to do so should have been clearer to me earlier. 

Sounds like a lot, huh? Of course it is! And that’s why I’m kicking off my blog with these deep-running contradictions and this confused psycho-scrubbing: to show that this blog is the end result of years of worry, anxiety, and, well, making it up as I go along. To have this kind of platform, to showcase my theoretical side in a space upon which my name is attached? That’s progress. 

And, hey: if you were just like me (I’m sorry, ‘cause I wouldn’t wish that on anyone), struggling with what games studies is or what it means, I hope that this little corner of analysis, self-reflection, and citation does you as much good as it does for me.

Now, about those video games...

[screechingnickelherringwinner]

Project Proposal

Project Proposal

Math class, for nearly thirteen years, was a drag. Just like a lot of other students I struggled and pushed through it. That's why I believe that the way math is taught can be changed, and for the better. Thus bringing me to this. The way we teach math can be improved. This of course doesn't come without questions i've had. Such as; why is math taught the way it is? How do teachers today feel about how math is taught? What are the current pedagogical strategies of math education? What are new strategies of teaching math? How has technology changed the way math is taught? Furthermore, how can technology be used to better teach math? Which is why I am proposing a change in the way we teach math and why I want to research it.

The research is the thing that I am most excited to do but, of course, I can't do that without listing how I plan on doing that. The best way to get started, I believe, is to start asking students and teachers their thoughts on the matter. By that I mean interviews. Every student in this university has to take at least one math class, of varying degrees, and there are people to teach those classes. I aim to speak to both pools of people. They will be the ones I interview. So I have an excellent pool of people to choose from. I also believe that by asking an experienced pool of professors I will be able to insert myself into the larger conversation of math education. Some of these professors may even be able to give me sources to use in my research. But what I really hope to gain from professors is their own personal pedagogical strategies in their classes, both in past and present classes. Because i believe that in this case it is important to examine how their strategies have changed over time. In terms of the students, their insights are the meat of this research. As stated before I want to ask students of varying levels of math to see if i can find any commonalities or differences between students of the same level. For example; asking two different calculus students how they view their math education, as opposed to asking two different students taking a quantitative literacy course. However, I do fear I will get a lot of similar data from students.

One very important detail that all of this research will build upon is; why? Why am I curious? Why does this matter? My experience with math is rooted in a difficulty to understand, for most of the time that is, eventually something clicked for me and through some good teachers and studying granted me a better understanding of math as a whole. My sister however, is thirteen years old and in the seventh grade, right now she's studying the distributive property and factoring, and she is having a hell of a time with that. So I help her, I help her work through problems and try my best to explain math. And I find that I always have to work within the framework of her teacher, and that is not a bad thing, but I can tell that she doesn't understand math the way that teacher wants her to. I do all this because I wish that I could teach her myself. Because I was once just as confused as she is now and I wish I could take all that away. This is my “why” and while it is the foundation of my research I also have to address possible flaws. Such as; will people tell the truth? How will I accurately measure people's experiences in a math class? Will I even be able to talk with professors? And the most daunting problem, Will I actually be able to answer the question?

Now that I have addressed the “How?” it's time that i move to the “Who?”. My goal in this is to evoke change and to change the way things operate, and who better to cause such change than a board of education? Maybe teachers themselves on a small scale in individual classes. Or perhaps the actual Department of Education? This leads me to the point of the proposal. The “Why?”. As a student that made my way all the way to college level math, I can say that that path was a very confusing one. I like to imagine all the students that made their way to college had their struggles with learning math, but what I think more on is all the ones that have been discouraged from following a path that involves math. That’s rather disappointing, I feel. It's important that our way of teaching this changes, for the sake of future generations of students. Making it easier for them to reach their potential. A question that is bound to come up is “Why are you qualified to research this topic?” Simply put; it's because I am a student. However, to be more detailed, it's because I have walked the path of struggle that is so often associated with math. It almost discouraged me from ever going down a path that involves math. But I was fortunate enough to have a few great teachers that kept me on a path that I couldn't imagine not being on. The end goal here is to ensure that students never get discouraged.

In summary; my vision is to essentially reconstruct the way math is taught at any and all levels of learning. In hopes that those who are educated, or re-educated, by this system will have  new found enjoyment and appreciation for math and what it means to humanity and the world at large. Today so many students are discouraged from learning math, they just want to get it over with. However, if we simply gave them a new lens to view it through, they could actually begin to enjoy math. If at the end of the day all that happens is some new enjoyment, then it still would have been a good day.

[exploringsocialinformatics]

Post #1: A One-to-One Utopia

I am basing this post off the article “One Laptop Per Child: Vision vs. Reality” by Kenneth L. Kraemer, Jason Dedrick, and Prakul Sharma, which I chose both because the timeline of the issue was very interesting and also due to my background in a Secondary Education program where I took courses related specifically to education and technology.

I am wary of anybody who says that they’re going to change the world, but the transition from reading about the Utopian vision of One Laptop, Per Child (creator Nicholas Negroponte once said that they were “invent[ing] the future” [“The Hundred Dollar Laptop: Computing for Developing Nations”]) to the slow but seemingly inevitable downfall was still somewhat surprising. The program is one that had been within my peripheral vision as someone who studied education in my undergrad program and I can understand how people got swept up in the concept, especially when the technology available was less accessible. On first glance, it does seem revolutionary and, in ways, it is. Revolution requires follow-through and support, though, and it inspired doubts even before its initial roll-out, with supporters expressing hesitant skepticism like, “We were excited about the prospects, but kind of scared by the over-simplistic plan, or lack of plan” (Robertson, 2018).

As Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma note, the issues behind OLPC’s original downfall were based in seemingly more consideration for the creation of the hardware than the people they were creating the hardware for (66 – 68). There are plenty of these issues to talk about—the entirely reasonable argument that basic needs like water and physical school structures should be met before the government spends money on untested technology, the notion that OLPC is just a “one size-fits-all American solution to complex global problems” that functions more as a “marketing ploy” (Robertson 2018) than any type of organized program—when it comes to observing why OLPC struggled to the point where they shuttered their organization until it was relatively recently revived. I would argue, though, that one of its fundamental flaws and potentially the most immediately debilitating was their lack of consideration for teachers and, in particular, their lack of follow-through when it comes to measuring their success.

In The Effect of One Laptop per Child on Teachers’ Pedagogical Practices and Students’ Use of Time At Home, a very thorough study that had to be thorough due to a lack of substantive data from OLPC’s program, the researchers found that there was no significant impact on school performance when the laptops were introduced in Peru (Yamada, Lavado, Montenegro 2016). Additionally, Morgan G. Ames—who I will reference several times due to her excellent research in Uruguay—found that the laptop use was largely focused on media consumption: music, TV, video games (Ames 2015). While media consumption absolutely has a place within education, it’s clear that this usage isn’t falling within the realm of what Negroponte was envisioning: namely, programming (Ames 2015) and creation. Essentially, the laptops are often a tool to consume and not create.

In a presentation titled the same as her recent book, The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death and Legacy of One Laptop per Child, Ames explains in-depth the fundamental issues that marred the program from its inception—extremely worth watching if this topic interests you and a fantastic introduction—and tells the story of how Nicholas Negroponte’s main goal was to get laptops in the hands of children and trust that they would make the most of it on their own (Ames 2019). Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma emphasize this, saying in 2009 that “it appears to some that the educational mission has given way to just getting laptops out the door” (66), which implies even more explicitly that the intentions skew a bit more towards business than ever stated by the organization—or, at the very least, attempting to save face when it became apparent they would not make their now obviously over-ambitious goal of getting 150 million laptops into the hands of kids in two years.

It’s important to note that OLPC has consistently stated that their program is about more than the laptops and is also focused on education. On their website, they emphasize, “OLPC is not, at heart, a technology program, nor is the XO a product in any conventional sense of the world. OLPC is a nonprofit organization providing a means to an end—an end that sees children in even the most remote regions of the globe being given the opportunity to tap in to their own potential, to be exposed to a whole world of ideas, and to contribute to a more productive and saner world community” (“OLPC: Mission”). Considering that Kraemer, Dedrick and Sharma reference this quote in their article (68), which means it hasn’t changed since at least 2009 and likely since the first launch in 2005, this is an idea that they’re attempting to embrace without necessarily having the means to do so.

There is an explicit education philosophy—constructionism, which encourages kid to “think about thinking” and have tangible experiences (Robertson 2018)—behind OLPC. I see issues with the implementation of it but don’t want to be overly harsh about it as a concept—after all, I absolutely believe it has a place in classrooms and Seymour Papert, the original mind behind it, studied with Piaget and was openly praised by him (“Seymour Papert”), which is pretty amazing. The main issues with constructionism from my perspective, especially as it applies to the distribution of the OLPC laptops, are twofold: 1. Many teachers in a variety of different educational systems are highly limited in how they’re able to teach and 2. As an educational philosophy, it arguably requires the students involved to have some. . .instruction. Very few, if any, educational practices are studied without being properly implemented by an educator.

This isn’t to say that OLPC doesn’t involve educators in implementing their programs. This is to say that they didn’t do enough in their implementation to properly prepare teachers for how to use the technology in their classroom, including, for example, not even providing teacher training when they rolled out the program in Libya or contacting the teacher’s union in Peru before they were already starting the program there (Robertson 71). In her presentation, Morgan G. Ames describes the decline of use in Paraguay where she studied for several years due to the fact that OLPC didn’t provide any service or repairs to laptops that were imminently more breakable than they advertised (Ames 2019). OLPC’s ultimate plan was to get laptops to kids. I would argue that this does not function as an education plan or even do more than offer a potential tool without guidance to introduce a constructionist philosophy.  

We can see a hint of how OLPC values teachers by looking back to their charter, which states “building schools, hiring teachers, buying books and equipment [. . .] is a laudable but insufficient response to the problem of bringing true learning possibilities to the vast numbers of children in the developing world” (“OLPC: The Mission”). That really speaks to most of the major issues: if there isn’t basic infrastructure in place—physical schools with working water—and teachers to guide their learning, can students who haven’t been exposed to this kind of technology (or even those who have) truly benefit from it? How do we measure those true learning possibilities? Can we measure them? It might seem overly technical to try to apply statistics to some big, expansive dream but the dreaminess is, in and of itself, the problem.

Just because these issues exist doesn’t mean that we must write OLPC off entirely, though. The bones of the idea are genuinely well-intentioned and they’ve still managed to get a significant amount of technology to kids even if they didn’t meet their stated goals as their original incarnation. As of this October, they’ve given out 3 million laptops (Cameron 2019) and that certainly matters. Regardless of the outcome, sharing those laptops made opportunities that could help kids in developing nations change their lives and open up more possibilities in the future. 

While there is plenty to criticize about the program, many of the fundamentals  are worthy of praise: constructivism is an important educational practice that can unlock critical thinking skills and creativity in a way that many kids don’t have the opportunity to explore. Just the ability to own and hold and use a laptop is empowering and prepares kids for using other technology. And, overall, Negroponte’s philosophies and reasoning are absolutely inspiring. 

He talks about kids becoming “change agents” and allowing them to “connect with the world, think critically and challenge indoctrinations of intolerance” (Ashling 2010). He wants kids to have the whole world open up to them and has a singular vision for doing so which, for better or worse, is a vision worth exploring.

Also, in a vein I hadn’t considered, Jason Johnson argues in his 2010 article “Can a Laptop Change How the World Teaches?” that he observed sixth graders in his one-to-one laptop program educationally benefiting from their laptops outside of the classroom through things like tracking sports statistics, recording skits, and creating address books (72). While he also invokes the need for a teacher to guide students toward productivity, this is another important factor to consider: OLPC laptops have gone to all kinds of kids in all kinds of places and other one-to-one programs have also been gaining popularity throughout the years. Broadly looking at how kids in general use laptops could bring new significance and meaning to these programs.

From articles titled The Laptop That Will Change The World to articles titled OLPC’s $100 Laptop Was Going to Change the World—Then It All Went Wrong, it’s both fascinating and discouraging to watch OLPC’s struggle. As people, we want to believe that we can change the world—that good people stepping up can change the world—but this is an overly simplistic concept in a complicated world. One good idea constructed within one cultural framework and one philosophy of education that by no means represents both the majority of teacher’s experiences or their capabilities within struggling, flawed educational systems isn’t enough.

One laptop can’t change the world.

 With a sustainable plan, though—it’s not a bad start.

Ames, M. G. (2016). Learning consumption: Media, literacy, and the legacy of One Laptop per Child. The Information Society, 32(2), 85–97

Ashling, Jim. (2010). Laptops bridge gap in structured learning. Information Today, 27(5), 22 - 23

Johnson, Jason. (2008). Can a laptop change how the world teaches?. Knowledge Quest. 36(3), 72 - 73

Kraemer, K. L., Dedrick, J., & Sharma, P. (2009). One laptop per child. Communications of the ACM, 52(6)

Lavado, P., Montenegro, G. & Yamada, G. (2016). The effect of one laptop per child on teachers’ pedagogical practices and students’ use of time at home. IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Robertson, A. (2018, April 16). OLPC's $100 laptop was going to change the world - then it all went wrong. Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop-education-where-is-it-now

Seymour Papert. (2007, March). Retrieved January 29, 2020, from https://web.archive.org/web/20150308021353/http://web.media.mit.edu/~papert/

The Hundred Dollar Laptop: Computing for Developing Nations. (2005). Retrieved from https://techtv.mit.edu/videos/16067-the-hundred-dollar-laptop-computing-for-developing-nations

The Life, Death and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child. (2019, March 5). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH13bVUfNuk&t=2s

[tefltraininginstitute]

Do Your Homework! (with Penny Ur)

I've never met a teacher who doesn't have to give homework to their students. But advice on giving homework is as uncommon in teacher education as homework is common in classrooms. Penny Ur tells us why, how to give useful homework and what to do with homework after students have done it.

Do Your Homework! (with Penny Ur) - Transcript

 Why Homework gets Forgotten

Ross Thorburn:  Hi, Penny. Thank you for joining us. I saw you give a talk about homework at IATEFL in Glasgow back in 2017. You mentioned that the reason that you talked about homework or that you did a presentation on homework is that no one else talks about it, really. Why don't teachers and teacher trainers talk more about homework?

Penny Ur:  Why does nobody talk about it? It's one of these topics like classroom management, and teaching mixed ability classes, and dealing with slow learners, the kinds of topics which are not directly and specifically concerned with language teaching but with teaching in general.

I gave a talk recently to teachers. I gave all sorts of topics, things which are problematic in the classroom. I asked them to say which of them were the most important, things like teaching grammar or teaching heterogeneous classes, or classroom management, or homework and so on and so on.

The topics they chose were all ‑‑ they chose as their top two or three ‑‑ linked to general teaching pedagogical issues, ones which teachers all over the world teaching all the subjects encounter and worry about.

In conferences in the ELT or language teaching literature in general, on the whole, the underlying research and thinking is very much oriented towards applied linguistics, towards language acquisition, specifically.

People just don't deal with the general topics like homework, but it is one which very much concerns teachers, which is why, very often, the topics I tackle at other conferences have to do with these things. I think they are neglected. Teachers need them and want them as well as the purely applied linguistics topics.

Ross:  That's why people don't talk about it. Just how important is homework in terms of helping students to learn a language?

Penny Ur:  It is extremely important, particularly for language teaching because the amount of language that people learn and the rate at which they progress is very, very much linked to the amount of exposure of the language they get, the sheer number of hours they're exposed to and engaging with the target language.

There's no way you can give them the amount of time they need of exposure to and engagement with the target language if you only have classroom time. You need the homework time. You need that time to accelerate their progress.

Otherwise, you'll hold them back. This is more important, perhaps, for language learning than for almost any other subject I can think of.

Best Homework Activities for Language Teachers

Ross:  Given then how important homework is, what kind of homework activities do you think are most useful? Is it write out the verb 20 times like I probably had in French class at school?

Penny Ur:  Did it help you?

Ross:  Well, I can still conjugate the verb "to be" in French, but I'm not sure how useful that actually is.

Penny Ur:  Conjugating French verbs comes into its own once you've got the fluency. It is quite useful.

Ross:  Maybe, if I had the fluency to go along with it, maybe it is useful to practice verbs. Do you think things like preparing for the next class as in flipped classroom or...?

Penny Ur:  Yes, by all means, anything which has them engaging with a language, basically, and doing things with a language on condition that it's something they can do successfully without a teacher at their elbow.

In other words, homework assignments need to be slightly easier than the kind of assignments you're giving them in the classroom. In the classroom, you're there to help. When they're doing homework, you're not there.

They need, therefore, to be doing things which are slightly easier, which are what I call success‑oriented. They're likely to be able to complete them and which have them engaging with a language.

Reading certainly, extensive reading, writing assignments, preparing, you say, flipped classroom, preparing vocabulary or a text for the next lesson, vocabulary assignments. All these things, I think, are valid.

Ross:  The standard thing that tends to happen with homework is it gets given out as the bell's ringing, and the students are walking out the door. What do you think's a better way of assigning homework? When is a good time to do it? How is a good way to do it?

Penny Ur:  A year or two ago, I published a book called, "Penny Ur's Teaching Tips." One of the tips I had there is don't give homework at the end of the lesson. Again, like everything else, never say never. There are sometimes when you do, but in principle, it's not a good idea to give it at the end of the lesson.

Not only because giving it at the end of the lesson implies that it's not so important as a sort of afterthought but also because at the end of the lesson, the bell's about to ring or has already rung, and the students are beginning to pack up. Their attention is at a low level. You really want them to pay attention to what you want to tell them.

In principle, give the homework immediately after the classroom activity that it is related to. If it's doing comprehension, work on reading text immediately after you've done the reading text or even before.

The advantage of giving the homework in the middle of the lesson rather than at the end is not only that you're saying, "Right, this is important. I'm going to spend class time on it," but also you have time to answer questions. You have time to explain things more clearly, time to write it up on the board.

Then all you need to do at the end of the lesson is say, "OK, students, it's been a good lesson. Well done. Just remember there's a homework that you have to do. I've already written it up on the board. I've already explained it to you."

They're more likely then to remember to do it, although your next question is going to be, how do you get them to remember to do it, right?

Ross:  Exactly. How do you do that?

Penny Ur:  The question is, how do I get students to do their homework? You hear teachers complaining all the time, "My students simply do not do the homework. Do you have any tips on how to get the students actually to do their homework?" There's no perfect way to do this. It's really difficult.

I was teaching a seminar recently to master's students in a university. They don't do their homework either, at least not as much as you would like them to, so let alone kids in school. Probably, it's very difficult to solve this completely, but things that can help would be fine.

Firstly, make sure it is doable in the time that they have. Doable, success‑oriented. I've already said, easy to do. One very useful tip is to tell them, not, "You have to do exercises two, three, and four," but, "Of the exercises two, three, and four, do as much as you can in half an hour."

It helps to agree with them in advance that homework will take so much time, half an hour, an hour, whatever the particular framework you're working within sees as reasonable. It's going to take you so long.

You do as much as you can in the time and then stop. Your success is according to the amount of time you've spent rather than doing a certain amount of work. Success orientation is one really important thing, easy enough to do in the time allotted without your assistance.

Two other things. One is that they clearly see it as relevant to what they're learning. They understand why it's important to do. You may need to spend a few minutes explaining, "I'm asking you to do this because this is what it's going to do for you. This is how it's going to contribute."

Lastly, that it's interesting and fun to do, things which they all enjoy doing and find motivating and stimulating to do on their own.

Ross:  That's how to get students, maybe, to do the homework. After they've done it, is it important to go over it in class, or to mark it, or to do something with it?

Penny Ur:  Yes. You've reminded me of something I didn't say in response to the previous question, making sure students give homework. That is, it's so, so important to give feedback on the homework.

I remember students telling me when I asked them about homework they remember doing as children in school. They said, "When the teacher didn't bother to look at our homework, we just stopped doing it."

It's important if the students are going to do their homework that the teacher relates to it, gives feedback on it. Another useful tip about this incidentally, which also I forgot to say in response to the previous question, is that it's healthy. Doing homework is part of their final grade.

In other words, 15 percent, say, of the final grade goes on, "Did you do your homework, or didn't you do your homework?" which, of course, obliges the teacher to keep careful records who has and has not done it.

Your question was how to check it in class afterwards. What do I do about going over or giving feedback on the homework? One thing I've also seen from observing teachers is that in more than one case, I see half the lesson being wasted or being spent on going over yesterday's homework before the teacher has even got to what they planned to do in today's lesson.

We've got to think about ways to check students' homework without taking up too much lesson time which I want to use for proactive teaching. One tip is try to avoid the ping‑pong teacher‑student interaction which consists of, "Who can do number one? Raise your hand. Yes, Jack, what's the answer? Yes, no," and then so on.

One has to run through the questions because that takes up an awful lot of time and does not produce very much learning. Alternatives to that are just dictate the answers and tell the students to self‑check. Ask students to check each other. Ask if there are any which they had problems with and relate to the ones they had problems with. Otherwise, just move on.

The best possible way of checking homework from the point of view of good learning by the students is to take in their notebooks and check them at home. The problem with this, of course, is it's very time consuming.

If you have large classes and lots of lessons during the week, there's no way you can do it every time. Do it as much as possible because there's no substitute for it. It gives the personalized feedback. It's the caring, and it ensures learning. It ensures that students do do their homework better than any other strategy I know.

Homework in Teacher Education

Ross:  We've mainly been talking about how to make homework successful with students up to this point, but what about getting this more into teacher training and teacher education? What do you think we need to do to make teachers more aware of the importance of homework?

I was a teacher trainer for a long time. I don't think I ever saw this being part of any teacher training course. Certainly none of the practicums that I worked on was homework, maybe part of any assess lessons.

I've never seen it be part of any continual professional development anywhere I've worked. What do you think we can do to make teachers more aware of the importance of homework?

Penny Ur:  Not much I can add to what you said. I agree with what you said. It's a topic which is unjustifiably neglected in teacher training courses all over the place and something we need to devote time to.

There's also not that much research on it. There is research, but not as much as I would have expected and hoped. It is so important, as I said before, so important for language learning.

Ross:  Presumably, homework should be something that's part of the planning process just as much as planning tasks, activities, and anything else in your lesson. I guess it shouldn't be something that you think about as you're walking into the classroom, should it?

Penny Ur:  Absolutely. It's part of your lesson plan. Also, as I hinted before, part of assessment. It should be part of the way you assess students, how they've done their homework and how much of their homework they've done.

[derekscottmitchell]

A Journalistic Piece from 2017

On February 23rd, during a Q&A with the American artist Jeff Koons, graduate student and young artist Layo London stood up and declared: ‘I am appropriating this space, to be sold as a work of art’. The verdant scarf wrapped round London’s head bobbed as she spoke, her voice resounding in the lecture theatre of the Ashmoleon Museum in Oxford. ‘Are you interested in buying it, Mister Koons?’ London asked.

A sea of faces encompassed her, mostly students—all listening, some smirking, others grimacing. Koons listened, too. She handed him a scrap of paper, with a value in pounds-sterling written across it. The scrap was a ticket, and a plea. The ticket was for the narrative, multi-media art piece London was swiftly constructing. The plea was for help, and for recognition: this Black Londoner, the only person of colour in her Art History MSt program, had resolved to relinquish her seat at the University of Oxford. Committing ‘academic suicide’, she planned to direct her own course fees towards the £25,800 necessary to prevent fellow student Gilbert Mitullah’s deportation. In doing so, they might ensure he’d graduate with a Master of Science in Comparative and International Education, the first ever Kenyan to do so.

Gilbert Mitullah is initially soft-spoken. But as one sits, absorbing the force of his person and his passion, it’s clear that a gradual change of temperament is less a warming-up on his part, than a letting-in. He is an educator, a student, a leader, and was voted one of the 100 most influential Kenyansof 2016. Initially, his enrolment at Oxford was to be subsidised by a Kenyan company. But, due to delays in obtaining his visa to study in the UK, the funds earmarked for him were diverted elsewhere. In the last week and some days, the GoFundMe pageset up to keep him enrolled—and in the country—has generated nearly half of its sizeable goal.

Of Mitullah, with whom she’s quickly developed a singular and kinetic rapport (they did not know one another before all this), London says: ‘it is important that he’s not seen as a charity case, which at times Oxford seems so wont to do.’ He says: ‘I simply want to be able to stay’.

The University of Oxford, this year ranked the best university in the world, has struggled with a sometimes reputationfor ‘institutional bias’. During the fever pitch of the fundraising campaign, London remembers an interaction with the principal of one of the Oxford colleges. In a few sentences, Mitullah framed his story for her. The principal paused, nodded, and said: ‘how unfortunate indeed.’ Moving on to London, she then asked: ‘and what do you study?’

London argues that there is a marked lack of empathy in the treatment of cases like Mitullah’s at Oxford. Such cases occupy a contentious and highly political intersection of race, class, and ‘foreignness’—issues which all feature prominently in current national and international discourse. For overseas students like Mitullah entering the University in 2017, annual fees could be as high as £30,540. While maintaining its solvency and reputation as an historical and most formidable research institution, it seems that the university struggles to confront the deeply politicized issues which affect students like Mitullah.

In devising the narrative and performative artwork which has lent structure, momentum, and urgency to Mitullah’s campaign, London has also begun to expose features of a conflicting ideological nexus emerging now at the university. Through her web-videos, which have garnered thousands of views to date, her presence on social media, and through live, extemporaneous performance pieces—like the one in Koons’ presence, in which she offered to sell him the whole work in exchange for Mitullah’s tuition—London has created an ‘imaginary narrative’ and structure of human commodity, not unlike the one, she contends, which the University of Oxford promotes. By appropriating the fame and influence of Koons and of the University, London has turned Mitullah’s narrative, and her indelible role in it, into a postmodern event.

Mitullah himself is not an artist. He is an educator, and an ambitious leader who hopes to effect dramatic change and educational reform in his home country. In 2008 he founded the African Solutions for Africa program, a youth mentorship NGO. Since, he’s worked as a legal aid lawyer and education reformer, is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Shapers Community, and is a mentor in Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta’s Presidential Digital Talent Program. To accomplish his long-term goals, he will use his talents, his many qualifications, and also the privilege an Oxford degree affords. Meeting his goal would mean ultimate impact upon countless lives. It would ratify the truth of London’s work. It would highlight the deleterious effects of British immigration policy, and it would evidence the desperate need for policy revision and a structural—even long-term pedagogical—overhaul at the University of Oxford.

Prior to all this, London already felt stifled and troubled by the overwhelming whiteness and Eurocentricity of her Art History course. ‘When we teach history from the point of view of the oppressor,’ she says, ‘we not only silence the voices of the oppressed.’ She sips from her tea. ‘We also do a terrible disservice to those lucky enough to receive this education at all, because we rob them of the ability to question, and to challenge what is ideologically enshrined as truth.’

‘There are so many people out there—educated at universities like Oxford—who assume that there’s just one single and unequivocal history to be learned.’

There is no word yet on Koons’ interest in the piece.

[theechosas]

Reforming the Grading System, Not Grade Culture, is the Key to Fixing SAS’s Toxic Academic Environment

To put things simply, I would like learning a lot more if there weren’t this thing called grades.

Unfortunately, although students, teachers, and administrators alike take pride in the academic excellence that SAS has cultivated over its hundred-year history, the pressure of academic achievement has become a toxic burden rather than an opportunity to overcome challenges. In Luca Lee’s written piece “Graded” published in our school’s Ascent magazine, he frames the issue perfectly:

We have created ourselves a competitive environment, a one where many of us look only for answers, forgetting to indulge ourselves in the challenge.

Although grades have always dominated, if not defined, learning experiences for students at SAS, the toxic nature of SAS’s academic environment extends beyond grades or GPAs. Any form of academic work, not just academic measurements, has become sources of stress for students’ daily lives. Areas of passion, be it a project or investigation in an area of interest, could easily be transformed into areas of stress. As a result, this completely impedes a student’s ability to enjoy learning challenges, as academic risks become threats to an academic portfolio rather than valuable experiences. For example, while capstones and projects are meant to incentivize students to take a more proactive role in learning, often times they ultimately become greater sources of frustration due to the pressure of achieving a high grade.

Granted, the issue is not unheard of, and thus action has already been taken— underclassmen have sat through various counselling core sessions to encourage them to strike balance in their respective lives, and college counsellors have presented many explanations to downplay the importance of grades. Counsellors have made numerous efforts in the past to relieve students of this seemingly unsurmountable pressure, but to no avail.

Even though there has been open conversation regarding the role of “grade culture” in our community, our actual grading system has seldom been included in the discussion. While grade culture does play a prominent role in fostering negativity within our academic environment, the role of the actual grading system is often overlooked and undermined due to its nature— the letter grading system is used in countless high schools worldwide. However, after many failed solutions that only involve simple conversation, it has become apparent that reform in the grading system, not attempts to create cultural change, is the only real chance the school has in invoking major ideology shifts in attitude or perspective regarding the topic of grades.

However, this issue is not one that is unique to our school community. Pedagogical research been calling for a change in the grade system as well. In A School Leader’s Guide to Standards-Based Grading published by Marzano Research, Robert J. Marzano states:

Grading is a well-entrenched element of education in the United States. As Lynn Olson (1995) observed, grades are “one of the most sacred traditions in American education… The truth is that… grades have acquired an almost cult-like importance in American schools. They are primary, shorthand tool for communicating to parents how children are faring” (p.24). In 2004, grading expert Susan Brookhart noted, “In a perfect world there would be no need for the kind of grades we use in school today…. [But] grades are not going to disappear from schools anytime soon” (p.4). This is certainly true; grades are here to stay. However, acknowledging that grades are an important element of schooling does not mean that the current systems and processes used to assign grades are necessarily the most effective.

In blunt terms, the current letter system does not adequately meet the standards of its own purpose; it’s simply impossible for a single letter to accurately reflect all the various complexities that qualify to be part of a student’s demonstration of mastery of an entire subject. Marzano elaborates on this point perfectly:

Translating an entire body of information about students’ performance and achievement over a quarter, trimester, or semester into one overall evaluation, or omnibus grade, is a daunting task for any teacher and not supported by much of the extant research.

To present a better visualization of this oversimplification, we can turn to metaphorical representations that provide an objective lens for assessing this issue. Mr. Matthew Zeman, an SAS teacher currently teaching AP Capstone Seminar and Innovation Institute, also recognizes this oversimplification in our current grading system. When explaining the issue, he turned to an unlikely source— video games.

For those who play sports games, player ratings are a familiar concept. These ratings are as overall scores that reflect a player's ability. In the case of NBA 2K, these overall ratings are concluded from different scores in various categories, such as inside finishing, midrange, 3PT shooting, among others. Here is an example of one those ratings:

This player, Lebron James, lacks significantly in some specific areas such as Midrange and Rebounding; however, he excels in others. All his strengths and weaknesses were combined for the overall rating of 96. Metaphorically, the overall rating would reflect the overall grade of a subject, and the different categories would reflect the different curricular standards. However, unlike the video game rating systems, the level of achievement in different standards are seldom communicated to students— while students are very aware of their overall score, the learning system hinders them from reflecting on the specific areas they need to improve on as a learner. Thus, this process undermines the complexity of each student’s learner profile, oversimplifying the “level of mastery of a subject” each individual student has achieved. This also damages the students’ ability to learn and improve on their weaknesses, which is again explained by Marzano:

In 2007, John Hattie and Helen Timpherly pointed out that “feedback us effective when it consists of information about progress, and/or about how to proceed” (p. 89). A single letter grade summarizing a student’s performance in one content area does not provide this type of specific feedback.

Furthermore, the concept of letter grades fully undermines the learning process— overall grades not only oversimplify the mastery of various skills or content, it also fails to reflect a learning curve. These are two hypothetical student scores that can reflect this shortcoming:

In these hypothetical cases, both students had 4 summative assignments evaluating one subject over the course of one semester. Student A performed at the same proficiency over the course of the four assignments, whereas Student B improved over the course of the semester. Yet, both of them would have the same average, despite Student B obviously having demonstrated a mastery in the assessed area. Therefore, this reflects that a grading system of averaging scores unfairly overshadow Student B’s true ability due to his or her early struggles

My experiences cannot reflect all the views of my peers, but for me personally, this type of misrepresentation is one of my main resentment towards grades. My fear of failure and low scores does not come from the failure itself, but rather from the fact that it will overshadow my future successes. Due to this misrepresentation, the grading system inevitably fosters the negative fear for failure. Thus, the toxic nature of academic in SAS isn’t something abnormal or unreasonable. How can students possibly learn to thrive when faced with academic challenge, or to “appreciate the learning”, under a system that already undermines (or even punishes) the learning process?

No amount of conversation can ever invoke a significant change within the student population. Especially for students that are also victim to deeply rooted academic pressure from parents, sessions of preaching to mass audiences will not be sufficient to lift the academic burden under a system that will not reward the learning process. Only when there is a grading system that does not punish students for failure—one that provides appropriate, not necessarily infinite, amounts of opportunity to prove consistent proficiency in the future, can a shift in attitude truly begin to materialize within our community.

There are courses in the SAS High School curriculum that already implement a reformed system that have proven to have positive effects on its students.

One example is the grading method implemented in the course of AP Capstone Seminar. In the course, various skills are assessed by collecting multiple evidence points that serve as data to measuring the student’s mastery of the selected skill. Essentially, every assignment is neither formative and summative, as each assessment is simply a data point to to inform the instructor regarding the student’s current level of mastery. At the end of semester, students map out their levels of mastery for each skill and engage in a conversation with the teacher regarding how their levels of mastery would translate into an overall letter grade.

However, this fluidity between the concepts of “formative” and “summative” inherently exist in every assignment or assessment. Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading, which is another book published by Marzano Research, explains this further:

In fact it would be accurate to say that, in general, a specific assessment is neither formative nor summative— it all depends on how the information is used. Theoretically them, the same assessment could be used in the formative sense or in a summative sense. John Hattie (2003) made this point quite eloquently:

As illustrated by Bob Stake’s maxim: when the cook tastes the soup it is formative, when the guests taste the soup it is summative. Thus a key issue is timing, and it is possible that the same stimulus (e.g tasting the soup) can be interpreted and used for both forms of assessment. Hence, it is NOT the instrument… that is formative and summative. It is the timing of the interpretation and the purpose to which the information is used. (p.4)

This grading method significantly limits the chances of a student being undermined by early struggles. Although the stress to do well is inevitable, the fear of being misrepresented in the grade book is taken away, which in turn removes a significant source of stress. However, it also does not take away the academic rigor of the course, since proving mastery would require consistent demonstrations of the select skill.

In contrast, within our school grading system, the terms “formative” and “summative” have become signposts for students to identify assignments they would need to “try hard on”, rather than tools of measurement to reflect an overall learning journey. While on the surface this may seem to be a product of students’ mindsets, this attitude is actually a result of an institutionalized separation between “what goes into the grade book” and “what doesn’t go into the grade book”. Since “formative” and “summative” assignments often measure the same skill or content area, there are no logical reason that explains why both shouldn’t be considered as measurements to inform a student’s mastery in a curricular standard. Thus, the notion that only summative assessments “count” is absurd considering that the two assessments essentially do not differ from each other. This standpoint is also reflected by Marzano’s argument also in Formative Assessment & Standards-Based Grading:

…a summative score should not be derived from a single final assessment. Rather, a summative score should be the most reasonable representation of a student’s final status at a particular point in time.

Thus, instead of perceiving each assignment as individual assessments separate from each other, we need to perceive assignments as data points that build towards a reflection of a student’s ability by the end of a given time frame (in our school’s case, a semester). However, the fluidity between formative and summative is not to be confused with a “infinite retake” system. In addition, teachers cannot possibly create a retake for every graded assignment, as it will interfere with the workload of future assignments. The system will have to rely on future assignments that can serve as demonstrations of mastery for a previous skill or standard.

The concept of formative and summative fluidity, however, also brings us to the major flaws and questions that arise from the current composition of final exams— the purpose of final exams is a blurry and undefined one. Currently, many final exams, especially for content-based courses, covers all subject areas or standards in the past semester. This has inevitable downsides, as again noted by Marzano:

As noted by Pellegrino, Chudowsky, and Glaser (2001): “often a single assessment is used for multiple purposes; in general however, the more purposes a single assessment aims to serve, the more each purpose will be compromised” (p. 2).

The degree can a final exam actually reflect curricular mastery is not established, which raises many doubts in its ability to actually evaluate a student’s level of proficiency. For example, how many questions is a sufficient amount to assess a standard or topic? If it’s essentially the same content as covered prior, why is it weighed more significantly? In straightforward terms, what’s the point of having an assessment that is essentially a review of all covered topics? If these questions cannot be answered in a clear manner, then this is an indicator that our system of final exams need to be reevaluated in terms of its role in assessing students.

There are counter arguments that can be made against reforming the grade system. For example, the current grade system at SAS already produces high scores and academic achievement— it is not a secret that SAS is one of the best academic institutions in the world. Grades provide incentives for students to put effort into their studies. However, it is indispensable to realize the relationship has become toxic. Does SAS want to produce learners who have a genuine passion for challenge who may occasionally dip below the mark, or does it want to produce stressed out and grade-obsessed students who will produce high marks at a heavy cost of their emotional well-being?  

Another legitimate argument can also be made that reforming grade culture would be a better solution to completely eradicating SAS’s competitive academic environment; some will argue that the pressure imposed by parents, peers, or even themselves are the real roots of the problem. On the other hand, reforming the grading system would be the most direct and clear option in solving the issue— eliminating the possibility of the fears themselves is more effective than somehow convincing students to let go of them.

Thus, it is time to rethink our approaches to fixing our academic environment; rather than focusing on what the students’ mindsets should be, we should start focusing on what can be done to shift those mindsets. This is SAS’s one real shot of truly upholding its historical promise of cultivating a lifelong passion for learning within its students.

Alice Qin 

[decolonisingleeds-blog]

"What I want to know is how the white man, with the blood of black people dripping off his fingers, can have the audacity to be asking black people [why] they hate him? ” -Malcolm X

Does this question reflect an 'extremist' mindset? Hate is horrible, we've been taught that since primary school. Why does one of the most prominent and dynamic Black activist-thinkers of the 20th century seem to be justifying it? At that time, this would be 'extremism' simply because it's a Black man saying it in America. That is, the overt racist structural and institutional apparatuses of power, of White American elites, who saw elementary mobilizing for equal citizenship rights, a seemingly innocuous liberal demand, by any Black woman (Rosa Parks) or man, as an 'extremist (existential) threat' to the status quo. It was certainly a 'threat' to the status quo of overt, both de facto and de jure, violent lynchings, segregation, and disenfranchisement of Black America. Whether it's an 'extremist' one is another story.

Today, it’s maybe the fact of Brother Malcolm's 'Muslim-ness' that generates the impoverished political characterization of the term 'extremist' for him. Why do all of these 'voices of color,' i.e. non-White movers and shakers, make 'us' (not just white people) feel a bit uncomfortable when they speak too loudly, question too strongly, and assert too confidently? Perhaps because it signifies something much deeper - and indeed, fiercely unsettling - about the global order and shifting planetary regimes and relations of power. 

A few years ago, the students at the University of Cape Town protested the ridiculously offensive statue at their campus of the 'adventuresome' colonialist, Cecil Rhodes, who modestly named an entire country after himself (Rhodesia, now thankfully renamed Zimbabwe). Though a symbolic act then, what the students undertook within the confines of bourgeois, White, racist-sexist academia (the prototypical 'Westernized' university, as the Decolonial thinker, Ramon Grosfoguel, terms it) had profound meaning and implications. It was a call not merely to destroy the physical residue and manifestations of statues, monuments, and other material embodiments of the pathetically unjust individuals, ideas, and practices. It was a demand that the symbolic destruction of these statues, these idols, these 'sacred cows' - all must be anchored to an intellectual and political trajectory that returns to the essential task of 'deepening decolonization.'

Western hegemony and its dominant 'geo-culture' of liberalism repressed, contained, and co-opted all currents that fundamentally challenged the Eurocentricity of the modern world system. It was in this context that the 'White Man' was deployed not as some crude cultural category, but as a political one. From 1492 onwards, if one cannot comprehend that it has principally been the White Man who has colonized the the planet's lands, the educational curricula and pedagogy in all of its corners, the hearts and minds of those deluded to believe they can 'catch up' to an 'embracing West' - then that's some rock you have, shielding you from anything and everything. Kindly share it with those of us constantly compelled to confront misery and injustice in its face.

The problem is, these 'Westoxicated' (S. Sayyid), deracinated, comprador intellectuals and 'thought leaders' don't really understand how the 'West,' as Talal Asad argues, is not some crude geographical entity, but a universalizing hegemonic project designed to subjugate and rewire every last living being's DNA to produce a singular world of 'homo oeconomicus,' or economic 'man.' Depoliticized, atomized consumers replete with cynicism and despair, told to 'go shopping' when nonstop tragedies, violence, injustices, and cruelties afflict them or others. The 'human rights' and 'democracy' rhetoric camouflages the real desideratum of this 'West.'

Though unevenly articulated throughout the Global South and Westernized universities from Cape Town, to Nairobi, to Lahore, to Sao Paulo, to...Leeds, there nevertheless is a broad understanding that things cannot continue as they were. The five hundred year-plus world system, resting on White racist-sexist colonial-capitalist conquest, slaughter, and hyper-exploitation of the overwhelming majority of the world's population, can no longer hold. The West, as S. Sayyid argues, is being de-Centered, whether it wants to or not (and one assumes it doesn't!). Within the context of the West's social, economic, and political decline, critically engaged students, intellectuals, and activists are underscoring the importance of creating the space for 'radical alterity.' We are mobilizing for a pluriverse of epistemologies and a multiplicity of pedagogical methodologies - of the Global South, of those who have been disenfranchised and erased from history, social science, humanities, and science and math literature, and from the cannon of 'serious' fiction. 'Why is my curriculum white' is a question that persists in haunting us today, but need not be dismissed for the lack of an ability to try to tackle it head on. The curriculum has been defined and shaped by the White Man because of a racist-colonial world system of the past five hundred years, and the ongoing global predicament of coloniality. Even as formal 'political' independence was given to most of the nations of the Global South, and even as the 'West' crumbles as it confronts a series of multiple, cascading crises that hasten its (and the entire world's) implosion/destruction, not to mention the doomsday triggers of climate change and nuclear weapons, there remains the utmost necessity to decolonize our curriculum.

Indeed, disastrously harmful and vicious social relations of power continue to exist among humans. Human beings also exert a rapacious domination over the non-human living world in which humans 'get to play God' with horrific results. in this light, decolonizing our curriculum, making it less White, bourgeois, and racist-sexist no longer remains merely an intellectual or feel-good, profoundly ethical, ideological exercise. It may very well be the prerequisite for human survival.

Author: Junaid S. Ahmad. 

Junaid S. Ahmad is a PhD candidate in Decolonial Thought in the School of Sociology an Social Policy, University of Leeds. He is Secretary-General of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)-Kuala Lumpur, and a non-resident Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA)-Istanbul. He also is the Director for the Center for Global Studies, University of Management and Technology (UMT), Lahore, Pakistan.