On Moral Injury
I just re-read a post full of sound and fury that I wrote last year at this time, detailing my initial shock at our unsafe and unprecedentedly intense working conditions…
Marie Snyder
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 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…
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…
Self-Diagnosis with Checklist Criteria: the Big Five and ASD
When I was a kid, my folks said I was a little slow to warm up to people and sometimes needed a nudge to interact. Then, in grade 11, we…
Next Steps: Violence? Policy? Adaptation? Acceptance?
Ezra Klein wrote a compelling piece about Andreas Malm’s book How to Blow Up a Pipeline. We’re not doing enough to stop the trainwreck we’re driving, but is violence the…
Wolff on Generating Allies
Whenever I read or listen to Noam Chomsky or Chris Hedges talk about citizens changing the world like they did in the 30s, I get equally riled to action and…
MacKinnon’s Call to Stop Shopping
J.B. MacKinnon co-wrote the 100-Mile Diet years ago, which was a good read. It didn’t have much effect on my eating because it was a bit too extreme for even…
Timothy Snyder on the War on History
In “The War on History was a War on Democracy,” Snyder compares Russian memory laws, which we’re quick to recognize as propaganda, to American under Trump: By March 1932, hundreds…
The Future of the Left with Natalie and Noam
I stumbled across a video of Natalie Wynn in conversation with flippin’ Noam Chomsky. They are two of my favourite thinkers, but I never, in my wildest imagination, would have…
Paranoid or Prescient? Does it matter?
It’s interesting to me when people make fun of anyone taking what they perceive as undue precautions. There are two general reasons for precautions that seem unreasonable: #1 a lack…
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…
Kolbert’s Under a White Sky
It’s World Environment Day (who knew?!), and the Independent published a collection of hopeful messages despite the world not being on track to keep temperatures below two degrees this century.…
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…
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…
Got a Better Idea?
When I was little, my parents told me never to complain unless I have a better idea or a solution that can work. They likely did that to stop me…
Michael Mann’s New Climate War
It’s not all that new. There are tons of books on this topic now, so it would be hard to find a completely new angel. But the public still needs…
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…
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!…
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…