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@cberwick
I write about schools, cities, books, and books about schools and cities. I also teach in a school in a city. Jersey City is home. Doctorate in teacher education; fiction writer. Recent writing at carlyberwick.com.
#tdih 1969, SCOTUS ruled that students do not βshed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate" in Tinker v. Des Moines -- students (age 8-17) suspended b/c they wore armbands to school to protest Vietnam war. π§΅
www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/co...
**TONIGHT** - Join #literacies chat as we discuss "Get Over Here!": Gaming, Literacy, and the Victories in Between!
An interesting take too on how teaching *can* help one continually affirm a vision of solidarity, particularly in relation to power, for teachers who are invested in supporting and strengthening student voice. Once someone is no longer doing that, do they just forget?
This is the plot of Samanta Schweblinβs Little Eyes. Fiction writers see the patterns and possibility first.
5 women authors Iβve read at least 5 books by:
Toni Morrison
Agatha Christie
Deborah Levy
NK Jemisin
Jane Austen
I'm listening to a talk by expert in rhetoric Jennifer Sano-Franchini ( @jsanofranchini.bsky.social ) about refusing generative AI in writing studies.
She shared a resource for refusing genAI that might be helpful for other folks in academia:
#academia #genAI
refusal.blog
Just ~8 years out from Black Mirror, Metalhead episode
Quilicura, Chile, one of the communities I wrote about in EMPIRE OF AI, has launched a brilliant initiative to inspire more responsible AI prompting. Today, don't use AI; ask the townspeople instead: quili.ai. So heartened to see this creative act of resistance.
New paper on AI as carceral in schools: Tanksley and Cabral "consider how the proliferation of AI technologies into K-12 schools has worked to hide, speed up, and automate educational inequities for Black students, giving rise to a techno-educational carceral apparatus": www.mdpi.com/2673-995X/6/...
Report: In Some Urban Districts, Science of Reading Limits βRobust Comprehensionβ www.the74million.org/article/repo...
**TONIGHT** - Join #literacies chat as we discuss Navigating the #literacies Job Market: Sustaining Practices for Academics
Funded social science and education PhDs at University of Vienna, deadline 3/2/26. Great opportunity to get paid to do research in another country. #edusky #teaching www.researchgate.net/job/1034778_...
I like this a lot but feel my middle school students donβt have enough emotional awareness of when they might veer right instead of left. They might need to practice identifying affective response to work in class before as scaffolding. But I should try it with them before I speak for them :)
They get a choice of which articles to bring in but they have to be reported by newspapers or magazines that fact check. Some bring in culture pieces; some go right there. I try to just provide context if needed without commenting.
Yes they are in both history and ELA in my school
Librarians not only improve learning but also help students with media literacyβa critical skill today. In their absence, this skill falls to the English teacher already pressed to help kids read fluently and write across disciplines. www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2026...
Maybe then Language & Literature (what IB calls it in HS)? ELA is def middle schoolβthe arts part feels like a feint, when district focus (for us at least) is on testing and HS placement. But in the abstract ideal, language arts could also work.
This graphic reminds me of artist Marc Lombardi's mapping of Bush-era entanglements; Trump's grift has exponentially magnified what were once "webs of scandal": curatorsintl.org/exhibitions/...
I think English for no real reason than an aversion to the Orwellian tinge of ELA but wish there were a better alternative since it uses the name of a language for a set of practices. Maybe we could replace English/ELA entirely with literacies or liteature or language and culture.
Honored to be nominated for a Pushcart by @terrainorg.bsky.social for my story βSea Minksβ www.terrain.org/2025/fiction...
Ok thanks! I guess I thought the scholarly and self aware practice communities were already on board with literacies and multi literacies. It seems like this maybe is about addressing gaps in classroom practices?
Iβm interested but donβt understand the fundamental distinction being made so donβt understand the call. Is that the point? Or is literacy being strictly construed as βlearning how to readβ? Or?
Did annual cocoa house reading with studentsβeveryone reads an excerpt from their work while I make hot cocoa or tea. Students said it felt weird and disrespectful . . . to have the teacher serve them. So they took tea&cocoa orders and mixed the cocoa for their peers. (I manned boiling water fwiw.)
There is a sampling bias in this article. They put out a survey and those who responded were more likely to be those who feel there are not enough full texts. Still most of the teachers interviewed say they do in fact assign full novels just as you do.
OMG this again. Most of the teachers interviewed actually say they ARE reading novels with students. Prepackaged curricula are a problem. So don't use them, like teachers quoted here. Where is the "rarely" coming from (other than self-selecting survey responders)? www.nytimes.com/2025/12/12/u...
This is amazing. Love it: www.artnews.com/art-news/new...
Such is an amazing list of authors; shocking that they havenβt won one of the major prizes, but one will now.
Itβs hard to go to? Wdym itβs hard to get toβjust take the PATH to Newark Penn then transfer to NJ Transit then get on the air train. π€·ββοΈ