I’m gobsmacked by the recent move to remove the mask mandate for schools starting March 21st, at the start of spring. The Hamilton Board dared to face down the ministry, but my board only had one trustee, a former nurse, willing to go on record as voting against the new
Continue readingTag: Teaching
A Puff of Absurdity: On the Importance of Civics Classes
On Monday, I did a five minute bit on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning with Ismaila Alfa about teaching civics. They called me last Sunday afternoon, having exhausted all other avenues, because I happened to tweet this the previous day: It wasn’t even a particularly well-liked tweet! And then right after
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Bad News is Increasing, but More Slowly?
Teaching in Ontario right now is an absurdist’s wet dream. Schools can only close if there’s more than 30% absent, and many classes are half full, but nobody’s actually away because any online contact gets them marked present, so even sick kids are logging in. Masks provided for kids smell
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Ontario Schools Opening Monday: A Collection of Responses
There is a simmering rage out there from Lecce & Moore’s reiteration of the “leaked” news of schools being in-person in five days. Of course it wasn’t truly leaked. This is how Ford gets feedback on his ideas before making them his ideas. It’s a childish way of establishing plausible
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Juris My Diction Crap
This Matrix clip has been at the front of my mind since I started looking into how to get a booster for my youngest, who’s 17, because I question if recent orders around delaying boosters for the 12-17 and around getting kids back to school in nine days are really for
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On "Fixing" ASD
I watched a course-load of videos by Dr. Alok Kanojia (@HealthyGamerGG) this past summer. He’s a therapist specializing in addiction in his day job and focused on gaming addictions online, but he has broadened his videos to encompass many other issues. He doesn’t do therapy online but “coaches” people instead.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Still Going On about Masks!!
I’ve never been much of a rule-follower. I’m that teacher that lets kids sneak out early and shows movies with some questionable content (with kids forewarned and allowed to leave if triggered – none ever do). I go way outside of curriculum, allowing the class to guide the direction of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Burnout
Dr. Alok Kanojia is a psychiatrist who specializes in addiction treatment. His videos are fantastic for some everyday issues as well, like this one on burnout. The most impactful line from this video is that burnout tends to happen when, “people who want to do a good job are placed
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Nobody’s Rules
We’re becoming subject to unrest in our schools and hospitals, with anti-vax picketers yelling at cancer patients and school children alike: “Stop being sheep! Take off your mask!” It’s not the fault of our government, not directly, although the province next door somehow managed to draft a bill to end
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The View from Here: Preventing School Spread of Covid-19
Stuck in another gruelling semester of school, it’s striking how a minor schedule change can completely disrupt time and energy. I’m falling asleep as soon as I get home! But that’s also from additional stressors, like all the rapid tests being repossessed by the Ford government for business use only.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Work and Connection
I just read this lovely essay by Esau McCaulley. In it he discusses how our new nearness to death has affected our lives: “This pandemic has left conversations and lives cut short. And it seems to be bringing a similar clarity to people about their priorities. . . . All
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Unpopular Opinions: On Failing Credits, Teaching Hybrid, and Grading Student Work!
Riding on my high that a post-covid education system could be different, I joined a committee. It quickly killed by buzz with a reminder that bureaucracy will only allow choices between a very narrow range of options. But I also appear to be in the minority of teachers on many ideas
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Post-Covid Educational Reform
I try to restrain any excitement that bubbles up over the prospect that education will be different when all this ends, assuming it will end. Teachers have suddenly had to learn how to teach in radically different ways, and some of that is gold! But I’m pretty sure we’ll end up
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist
Nearing the end of my two-week long prep period at the END of a year that slayed me with back-to-back senior courses, and I’m finally getting caught up on my reading! Just on Friday, Vancouver police were looking for a 40-year-old suspect, and arrested an 81-year-old Black man who happened
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Safe Schools in September – Second Try
Last September, despite all the science to the contrary, school boards opened schools with “mask breaks” built in to the mornings rather than have a shorter day and let the kids go home for lunch. I left my windows open an inch, and kids complained about the cold. And then
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Michael Sandel’s Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good?
This excellent read, The Tyranny of Merit, by Harvard philosophy professor Michael Sandel, actually shifted some of my thinking, and I love a good lightbulb moment provoked by a book! I found the book sometimes a little outside my reach in places enough to need to read a few chapters
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Interview with the Guelph Back-Grounder: On Teaching Critical Thinking
In early February, just before immersing myself into the current quad of online teaching, a friend of a friend interviewed me for a local independent journal. I thought it would be all about teaching during a pandemic, but together we meandering through a diverse chain of topics for about 90
Continue readingWritings of J. Todd Ring: History with kid gloves and a gloss?
A response to AP Euro Bit By Bit, By Paul Sargent, on youtube I’ve enjoyed the videos I’ve seen so far – about a dozen. I especially liked your coverage of the Enlightenment and the foundations of modern constitutional democracy. I do have a couple of points I’d like to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: 2020 Year in Review: Teaching Under the Banner of Covid
Dr. Jennifer Kwan put out a call on Twitter for messages we wished to have sent ourselves a year ago. Then she added, And Ryan Imgrund, provider of daily stats and graphs, added, Many wise people were prescient but unheard. And it’s still happening. We have lots of excellent information
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: How Is Hybrid Teaching Going?? It’s Complicated.
We’ve recently been told that next semester, starting in February, will operate the same way as this semester did: running quadmester terms with in-school students attached to each school in a hybrid model with a rotation of half at home and half in the classroom, and online students being taught
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