My kids were playing with their plastic dinosaurs toys this morning that the police were chasing and trying to kill them. I asked them why, and they said “because we’re just trying to live.” My kids' dystopian playworld is Minneapolis #AbolishDHS
That Ben Johnson-Matt LaFluer postgame interaction felt like a guy who knows he's going to win a Superbowl in the next decade shaking hands with a guy who knows he'll be an offensive coordinator again soon*
*After one more stop as an HC to develop a young QB & max out a team in the wildcard round
My favorite (relatable) line from In Your Dreams: "I'm a dad with two kids, I'm always down to sleep."
A sociological approach to New Year's Resolutions
Check out this OPEN ACCESS pub by my on-the-job-market PhD advisee, @akotanko.bsky.social. This is the article version of Adam's excellent master's thesis and the seed of inspiration for his even more excellent dissertation project on what he's termed "moral ambassadorship".
What's the collective in this #collectiveaction?
A. Kotanko’s (@akotanko.bsky.social) #Socius study of an #immigration clinic demonstrates how #socialmovement organizations draw on #personalidentity to encourage collective action participation.
Read: doi.org/10.1177/2378...
NEW ARTICLE/OPEN ACCESS
Proud to share my PhD advisee, @akotanko.bsky.social's, recent publication in Qualitative Soc. Adam and I worked on this one together, which was a great collaborative experience, but he is very much the lead author.
The first of many to come from the future Dr. Kotanko!
From the NYT: Not Just More Babies: These Republicans Want More Parents at Home As the Trump administration shrinks federal child care programs, Republicans are backing policies they hope will allow more parents to scale back at work.
They want more MOMS at home. And not just because they hate women.
Their *economic* model depends on unpaid labor. And the most effective way to coerce unpaid labor is to create a second class of people and teach them that they're only "naturally" suited for labor they're forced to do for free.
So contrary to many post-election analyses, Dems don't need to move rightward to win. Rather, they need to figure out what those nearly 40% of nonvoters want & how to help them vote. A good place to start: protect voting rights, make election-day a federal holiday, fight disenfranchisement, etc.
Seeing someone use “woke” as a derrogatory descriptor is useful in that it lets me know I don’t need to take whatever they say next seriously.
Btw, substitute #healthcare for learning & the post is just as valid. Commodifying some things ruins them
AI, MOOCS, etc. = tech solutions for symptoms, not the disease. #Learning is a messy, inefficient, personal, relational process. It’ll never be rational (in the Weberian sense). We need to embrace the messy, costly process bc it’s good in itself, not instrumentally (eg for profit, jobs, etc.)
When I was a young writer, I received a LOT of rejections. Now, after decades of hard work, I am no longer young.
Tonight is a work night, as I try to finish giving students feedback on final projects--which is why I'm on Bluesky, bc staying focused in the middle of the night is difficult
I regularly wake up in the middle of the night. If I can't get back to sleep & don't start working, I often listen to a couple eps of Star Talk w/ @neildegrassetyson.com. It's perfect, bc it's fascinating/fun & not tied to my work. I'll usually understand the 1st ep & fall asleep during the 2nd
We're never going to catch everyone, or even a majority, who "cheat," esp given AI capabilities, & trying to do so is emblematic of a bigger problem in education: a focus on what students do wrong over over an emphasis on intrinsic reasons to care about learning even when it's difficult
My extroverted wife: My sister’s graduation party went until 4am
Introverted me: That sounds horrible
Wife: Everyone had fun
Kid: I’m hungry
Me: You just ate
Kid: I just ate FIRST bfreakfast. What abt second breakfast? Elevensies? Lunch? Tea time? Dinner? Supper? Once? Midnight snack? Pre-bfast snack? Random treats?
My kids are basically hobbits
This post captures so much post-election analysis: some voters don't like reality, so Dems need to better embrace fantasy in order to win their votes. Oh, and throw some minoritized folks under the bus while you're at it
Finally, I started No Homework Mondays last year bc students deserve weekends free from homework. We do activities on Mondays based on the previous week's content (e.g., "create your own religion" after a module on solidarity, or "create McPurdue" after a section on rationality)
some groups complete a module on implicit bias, while others focus on weathering. They discuss their module in groups, & we conclude the class sharing between groups that did different modules or discussing each module as a full class
I'm also experimenting with what I call "choose-your-own-adventure" modules. We all do the same prep work/discussion on Wednesdays, but for Fridays, students choose from bt similar modules. For instance, on a Friday focusing on how stereotypes get inside of us...
There's no final exam, but students do complete & share w/ classmates an open-ended self-learning project, where they choose both the topic and medium of presentation (paper, presentation, board game, sociological short story, musical analysis, podcast, etc.).
Instead of exams, students watch doc films at the end of each section, & we talk about them in light of theory/empirical stuff that we've covered in that section (e.g., Merchants of Doubt -> cultural hegemony, social identity theory, etc.). Students collaborate in turning in group responses
A few more thoughts on how the class runs: we spend most of our time in small groups discussing readings/podcasts/videos. I check in with as many groups as possible during each class period, after a brief intro/preview of next class period. In the last 10 mins, we share big takeaways as full class
Also, during the 1st week of classes, we critique the artificiality of "industrial education," reading @susandblum.bsky.social, watching a Ken Robinson talk, & discussing what a better learning system would look like. I do this to prime students for why our class is different from other courses
Here's what works 4 me instead: I (mostly) give students credit for completing activities (bc the U requires a grade), & I give individualized (or group, depending on class size) written feedback for most assignments. It takes a lot of time (about 2hrs after every class period), but it's worth it
To distract you from end-of-term #grading, here's @alfiekohn.bsky.social's wonderful essay (which I have my students read in a module on Foucault & discipline) laying out reasons why u should stop (or at least minimize) grading www.alfiekohn.org/article/case...
Big spoiler: grading impedes learning
