My Tumblr

I feel like I literally get 3000 scam calls day so sometimes I entertain it and let the class answer for me😂🤷🏾‍♀️

“Guys, I’m getting a scan call go!”

*whole class makes a chaotic horror score*

In my first year university course there was a class I remember as being mandatory (at least for English majors) about fallacies and biases in writing. And this prof was all about reading the whole article before you formed your argument. That was his whole thing. You know measure twice cut once he was read twice respond once. He stressed this so much that on our final exam (which was two long form essay questions and a few short answer questions) that I decided to read the WHOLE exam booklet before I grabbed my pen.

Turns out that is what he wanted. The final page, the final question, informed the student that if they wrote 1. Their name, 2. Their student number 3. Their favourite fallacy, and wait for 30 minutes so they don't arouse suspicion, you will literally be given 100 percent for the exam WORTH 40 PERCENT OF YOUR GRADE.

I think about it to this day. The prof literally saw the "reading comprehension on this site is piss poor" and said I can fix them

I feel like I need to stress. This was not done out of the goodness of his heart. This man thrives in chaos. About 4 seconds after me and the maybe 12 other students who read through packed up our stuff and left, the rest of the class discovered his little joke. First they cried out, but then they tried to argue with him. The man that had, at that point, spent two semesters teaching them about flawed arguments.

He was in heaven

gentle reminder: you are very capable and I’m excited for your future

slightly less gentle reminder: you do have to work for it

*annoyed but resigned moan of frustration*

if any minors are following me

always make sure to start forging parents' signatures on the first day of class. that way, your teachers won't know that you've been forging signatures for the rest of the year

hey I'm seeing some concerned parents and teachers in the notes, and I just want to say:

lmaooooo

Fellow teachers, you have plausible deniability because you aren’t expected to memorize what each parent’s signature looks like. You won’t get sued unless you watch them forge the signature in front of you and accept it. Neurodivergent kids and kids with chaotic home lives forget about and lose forms all the time-- or their parents forget to sign or lose the forms-- and it doesn’t mean their parents wouldn’t have approved. If the parent would not have approved, the student will learn a valuable lesson: either that they can get away with it with no one the wiser, or that their parent will catch them, depending on the parent.

In the end, it’s on the kid to be honest or not. If they’re going to be dishonest, they should at least learn to be strategic about it. Critical thinking skills will get them further in life than being taught to blindly obey authority.

What if you actually need to communicate with their parents about discipline or grades? Just email or call them. It’ll be fine.

Not to make a Christmas Post but Santa did everything right re: the Rudolph situation and every time I see some edgelord slander talking about “the lesson of Rudolph is that your differences will be punished until the powers that be find them useful” I just assume that person is a little thick and misunderstood a song written to be so simple babies can understand it

One of the most basic things they teach you in Teacher School is that if you know a kid is being bullied, bringing all the other kids together and scolding them for being mean and excluding That Kid is a great way to escalate it from “they don’t let this kid play with them” to “they are beating up this kid.” If you actually want to address the problem, the other kids can’t know they’re being told what to do. A good way to address it is to create a situation where the bullied kid gets to be the big cool hero in a way that benefits everybody, then put the bullied kid in that situation and let them save the day. Santa, in “Rudolph,” is essentially doing the same thing that any teacher does when they have a class jeopardy game with a pizza party riding on it, and give the last question to the weird kid who’s bullied for being super into anime, and that question happens to be about that kid’s favorite anime, and they get it right, and now EVERYBODY gets pizza, thanks to Anime Kid! Creating a situation, among a community of christmas-loving deer, where christmas can only happen because of the thing that’s special about Rudolph, was literally LITERALLY him intervening on Rudolph’s bullying. Do you think Santa, an immortal time-bending elf-saint who is sanctioned by god to monitor the children of the world and deliver them toys, is unable to navigate a foggy night? You really think his offering Rudolph, an untested rookie, the glamor post was an act of last resort? Do any of you know ANYTHING about Pedagogy or Classroom Management? These are deer. BABIES understand this song.

Im-

I would simply quit my job

idk who needs to hear this but when your english teacher asks you to explain why an author chose to use a specific metaphor or literary device, it’s not because you won’t be able to function in real-world society without the essential knowledge of gatsby’s green light or whatever, it’s because that process develops your abilities to parse a text for meaning and fill in gaps in information by yourself, and if you’re wondering what happens when you DON’T develop an adult level of reading comprehension, look no further than the dizzying array of examples right here on tumblr dot com

this post went from 600 to 2400 notes in the time it took me to write 3 emails. i’m already terrified for what’s going to happen in there

k but also, as an addendum, the reason we study literary analysis is because everything an author writes has meaning, whether it was intentional or not, and their biases and agendas are often reflected in their choice of language and literary devices and so forth! and that ties directly into being able to identify, for example, the racist and antisemitic dogwhistles often employed by the right wing, or the subconscious word choices that can unintentionally illustrate someone’s bias or blind spot. LANGUAGE HAS WEIGHT AND MEANING! the way we communicate is a reflection of our inner selves, and that’s true regardless of whether it’s a short story or a novel or a blog post or a tweet. instead of taking a piece of writing at face value and stopping there, assuming that there is no deeper meaning or thought behind the words on the page, ask yourself these two questions instead:

1. what is the author trying to say? 2. what does the author maybe not realize they’re saying?

because the most interesting reading of any piece of literature, imho, usually occupies the space in between those questions.

gentle reminder: you are very capable and I’m excited for your future

slightly less gentle reminder: you do have to work for it

Welcome to Night Vale

Literally me at every single university lecture

My students.

The Others (2001) dir. Alejandro Amenábar

— a freshman’s written response to the question “who are you?” on a worksheet

i am no longer baby i want power

As a teacher, I would strongly suspect you are one of my students because that is very them. Except that they have an essay due tomorrow so they are now baby again.

Yes! That was them today. However a surprising amount of them got their shit together. I am proud of them.

i am no longer baby i want power

As a teacher, I would strongly suspect you are one of my students because that is very them. Except that they have an essay due tomorrow so they are now baby again.