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mrsmaddiebobaddie · 3 years

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MCYT High School Teacher AU

I don’t know if this has already been done but with student teaching on the brain this was invading my subconscious.

Phil: Principal

The most chill admin you’d ever find (He kind of has to be with the staff at the school)

Will let most things slide if you ask nicely

Has a quiet space in his office for students to take a moment to calm down after acting out. He’ll offer them candy and talk through the situation with them.

Started out as a counselor at the school, so he still holds a similar mentality when it come to talking with students and staff.

Always takes the side of his staff. The district is usually in the wrong anyway.

He knows the teachers are the experts, screw whatever requirements the state has, he lets them run their classrooms whichever way is best for the students’ learning

Technoblade: Literature & Composition

One of the most engaging teachers at the school

Most students love him because he’s real and he’ll tell it like it is.

Has a coffee machine in his room. It’s rare that he’s not holding a mug in his hand while he teaches

Has high expectations for his students

Rarely gets angry. Even when he’s upset he still comes across as calm.

Usually stays at the school late making sure to give the best possible feedback on papers and reports. He genuinely wants each kid to learn something from his class.

Tommy: Speech and Debate

It’s only his second year of teaching

The students would run the classroom if not for Tommy basically being a student himself

There’s a strong chance his class will be off topic at any given point. It’s always an adventure walking past his door, you never know what you’ll hear

Somehow still gets high scores on average from his students

Keeps students after class when he notices them struggling with school or life in general to talk with them. The conversations are always beneficial.

Will 100% fall asleep during professional development meetings.

Karl: Biology

Tries to act hip, fails most of the time.

Always has the most energy in his lessons, finds unique ways to teach the concepts other than slides and worksheets.

Usually the first one in the building each morning

Will give students different options for final projects so they can chose the best method of showing their evidence of learning.

Gets lower scores than he should on observations because he doesn’t do well under the pressure. One year Phil didn’t announce when he’d be coming in and watched from the door to give a more accurate review.

Wears a sweatshirt to class more often than he should

Quackity: Spanish

Hands on learning whenever possible

Uses the home ec. room to make authentic Mexican dishes with his students when they cover the food and restaurant unit

Will just forget that the kids don’t speak Spanish fluently and ramble on until someone interrupts him.

Slow grader, you get your scores when you get them.

Known to be a bit chaotic with his teaching style, it works for some kids but he does need to reteach certain sections every now and then

One time a kid feel asleep in his class so he had all the other students leave and they had class outside to freak the kid out (They were right outside the classroom window, he could still see the sleeper, he told Phil)

Skeppy: Algebra

Like’s his job, pretty much your average teacher

Can’t stand freshmen, but tolerates them since that’s half the students he has. He prefers teaching advanced algebra to upper classmen

His lessons are always formatted the same, starting with a lesson on how to do that days math, with the remainder of the period being free work time

Holds math challenges with his class and gives out prizes. It’s usually candy, though one time he gave out cash. He made his kids promise not to say a word about it.

Very good at teaching the same math concepts in different ways to help struggling learners

Always one minute away from being late for first period, but makes it just in time every morning.

Dream: Health/Football and Assistant Basketball Coach

Took the teaching job mainly to coach sports

Still cares about making connections with his students, he uses his class to teach life skills and promote positive social and mental health.

If any of his players are in his class he will pick on them. He has no mercy.

Dreads sex education because no one can be mature about it. He gets revenge by making the students film a “how to say no to sex” video with someone in the class.

His wheeze laugh is iconic. You can hear it from down the hall.

If you meet with him and are honest when you’re struggling, he’ll work with you to pass his class. He isn’t going to ruin your GPA over a project on the negative effects of smoking.

Wilbur: History & Geography/Theater

The teacher who sits on his desk when he lectures

Is very sarcastic with his students, but knows who can take the teasing and makes sure not to make anyone feel uncomfortable.

Prefers class discussion over solo work time, he likes hearing student’s perspectives and ideas.

Turtlenecks

One of the teachers most likely to be the crush of teenage girls.

Not afraid to mark you down for sloppy work. You use a black ink pen and draw precise lines when turning in maps and graphs or you redo it.

Speaks in musical references

George: Physics

The chillest teacher by far

Due dates? Don’t worry, he’ll accept an assignment literally months after it was supposed to be turned in

Makes difficult topics seems simple when he describes them

He doesn’t really care if you have your phone out in class as long as you’re paying attention and learning the material

The students straight up call him George, he doesn’t seem to care

Placing near the top for the most crushed on teacher

King of multiple choice questions

Eret: Economics & Government

Makes any student in his class feel welcome

One of few teachers who can lecture the entire period without students falling asleep. He always has interesting stories

Let’s kids chose where they sit

Freshmen are always caught off guard by his voice when they hear him for the first time

Spends too much of his own money on supplies for his students and classroom (Honestly most teachers have to spend their own money on necessary supplies, he just goes about and beyond.)

There’s always a group of students who eat lunch in his classroom

The Union Rep at their school, will fight tooth and nail for the staff members

Tubbo: Band Director

Super cheerful whenever he’s teaching

He rarely has any free time before or after school because he has so many one-on-one lessons and meetings with students

Likes to have practice outside when the weather is nice

Does his best to make his students feel comfortable and relaxed whenever he does performance based assessments.

He’s also a new teacher, but you honestly wouldn’t be able to tell

He will be in tik toks if you ask him to, and he’s familiar with all the pop culture trends

Let’s the students chose a song to play at the last band concert. Some years have been less chaotic than others, the worst (or best, depending on who you ask) being when the students voted to play Deja Vu from Initial D.

Fundy: Computer Science/Coding

Begins each class with a cheesy computer joke. Every class.

Everyone knows you can’t get anything past him technology wise. He can see that headphone in your ear from across the room.

Isn’t afraid to assign extra work when students are disrupting class

Once took up an entire class period showing his students how he coded different difficulties in Minecraft. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that he plays the game in his spare time.

About half the students in his class aren’t really interested in computers, they just want to have him as a teacher since everyone says he’s cool.

Known to hack school computers to bypass restrictions

Sucker for pizza parties. Has at least one per semester

Sapnap: PE/Basketball Coach

Hella competitive

Abuses his power of having a whistle. Someone should really take it away from him

Gyms shorts every day. Even in the winter. Sometimes he wears sweats, but never jeans.

Doesn’t let anyone sit out of activities

Tries to set up fun tournaments for each activity they do, makes sure to balance the teams so no one has too much of an upper hand.

He’s usually the teacher who mans detention, he tries to make it as positive as it can be though.

Keeps extra sets of gym clothes to give to students who forgot or can’t afford to buy them

Schlatt: Calculus and Stats/Business

You either love him or are terrified of him

One of the only teachers who can have an “aggressive” teaching style and still connect with students

You will learn something from his class, he makes sure of it.

Doesn’t accept late work unless you have a really good reason why you couldn’t turn it in

Wears a tie every day

If another teacher needs a last minute sub during his prep period he’ll cover them. Doesn’t matter what subject, he can wing it

He was the reason the school started offering business studies as an elective due to some vague threats towards the district

Niki: Art/German

Teaching voice is so soft

You can’t tell whether or not she’s giving you constructive criticism because everything she says sounds so positive

Let’s her students lead learning for the most part, she will cover topics that most interest them while still trying to hit the district required standards (luckily teaching electives gives her a bit more freedom with her curriculum)

Her classroom always smells lovely

Will bring in homemade goodies each Friday for the staff room

Holds art galleries at the end of each semester to show off the arts since they often go unappreciated. It has turned out to be a super popular event for students and staff.

Bad: Special Education

This man has endless patience. It’s crazy

Even after the longest days when none of the students are cooperating, he still has a smile on his face

If he hears cursing in the halls he will call you out in front of everyone. Teachers included.

Makes sure to keep a list of all his students favorites so he can surprise them with gifts on their birthdays or around holidays

He works closely with the other teachers to make sure his kids can be as involved in general education as possible.

Always wears something fun, be it a tie, socks, shirt, or even a full outfit. His students love seeing what new wacky garment he’ll be wearing that day.

More Head Cannons

If someone brings food for the staff room Tommy WILL take it. Sometimes he’ll come back for seconds, there will be none left by the end of the day. He’s not as bad as Skeppy though, who will literally pack it up to take home for later.

For the past few months the staff members have been receiving anonymous email chains with photoshopped pictures of each other. Everyone was sure Fundy was behind it, Eret thought he saw him teaching his students how to use the program by editing their favorite teachers into stupid situations (they’ve all been school appropriate of course). Fundy did in fact start it, but now so many other teachers have joined in that it can’t be traced back to one person anymore.

All the teachers love going to sporting events. They’ll join in with the student section to cheer on the teams. If they know there’s a kid who doesn’t have family that will come to watch them they’ll make shirts with that players number to show support for them.

Wilbur, Niki, and Tubbo work together on musicals. Niki does the sets and costuming, Wilbur directs, and Tubbo leads the pit. There are plenty of long nights during tech week that devolve into chaos (especially when Niki isn’t there)

Spirit week is very intense, to say the least. The teachers are assigned a grade to be advisors to, and they get into it. For the duration of the week they practically become rivals with whoever isn’t in their assigned grade. They’ll pull pranks on each other constantly, especially when the students can see. It’s all playful of course, but it gets the kids more excited about spirit week when they can support their teachers and watch the amicable rivalries carry out.

Technoblade once joked that he knew every detail about every classic novel. His students took this as a challenge, and tried to find the most obscure and specific trivia questions they could ask him. He has yet to be stumped.

Dream and Sapnap had a running streak of about four weeks where they made everything into a competition. Who could enter their grades into the computer fastest? How many cups of coffee did they drink that day? Who got to school first that morning? There was a tally board in the staff room and the teachers had a betting pool going. Phil finally ended it when they accidently broke the school’s copier trying to see who could scan the most documents in five minutes. Dream was ahead by three points, Sapnap never lived it down.

In service days are incredibly boring, so the staff tries to make those days a bit more entertaining. They order in pizza or sandwiches for lunch. Since there aren’t any kids in the school they’ll do everything they’re no supposed to, like racing office chairs down the hallways and blasting non-school-appropriate music in their classrooms.

Wilbur accidentally started a black market of sorts when he took all the new whiteboard pens from the supply closest. He used this to his advantage, getting people to do him favors in return for the good supplies. When Dream found out he not-so-jokingly threatened to slowly steal everything from Wilbur’s classroom until he released the pens. The next day the closet was replenished once more

Quackity and Tommy are co-emcees for the school assemblies. They hold class competitions between the grades, including spirit chants and ridiculous games. Think minute to win it style, but way crazier. Everyone gets super into it, the upperclassmen usually win. The two have good chemistry and a fun energy.

George has a unit where students make bottle rockets and launch them outside on the soccer field. And every year Karl brings his class out to watch claiming that “it’s science, I teach science, I’ll have them write a paragraph about what they learned”. Really he just wants to watch rockets go brrr

For Schlatt’s birthday one year, Wilbur and Techno printed off shirts with his face on it for all the staff to wear. Schlatt was super confused when he came into work and all his colleagues were walking around with his face plastered across their chest. He got back at Wilbur for it by putting salt in his coffee for a week straight, but Techno never got his comeuppance. It’s debatable whether Schlatt just didn’t know he was in on it, or if he knew better than to mess with Techno.

Lesson planning and curriculum building is quite the process. Some departments can stay on task better than others. Schlatt and Skeppy get in, plan out the term, and get out. The math department has everything on lock. Social studies are also pretty good at getting pre-planning done. They tend to spend most of their time having discussions that aren’t necessarily related to the tasks at hand though. The English department is a mess. It’s really Tommy who’s a mess, he just projects that onto everyone else. Karl and George work well together to map out science curriculum. Even though teachers who teach electives aren’t required to collaborate with each other, they still get together and bounce ideas off each other and get feedback.

I have plenty more if people want a second part. I also only listed the MCYTs that I’ve watched enough to know their personalities at least a little bit, but if you wanted to see another person I may expand the staff list!

#minecraft youtubers #dream team #sleepy bois inc #dream smp #high school teacher au #teacher au

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foreverlogical · 3 years

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It's not easy being a parent during the pandemic. On Tuesday afternoon, while I tried to do a phone interview for work, my 12-year-old son started practicing cello in the next room — not all that softly — for his public school's virtual orchestra class. Needless to say, it was a distraction. After a year of living, working, studying, and generally being on top of each other in a smallish living space, both he and I are ready for the public health crisis to end so he can go back to his classroom, his teachers, and his friends. But not quite yet — at least not until his teachers and, hopefully, his parents have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. Not everybody is so patient. In my home state of Kansas, Republican legislators this week introduced a bill that would require all public schools to fully reopen for full-time K-12 instruction starting next month, taking the decision out of the hands of local school boards. The bill is part of a broader national effort by the GOP to put Democrats and teachers unions on the defensive with an appeal to harried parents who understandably worry that their kids are falling behind. "It's the teachers unions that want to keep the schools closed," Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said last week. The desire to get kids back to class is bipartisan, though. President Biden has vowed to get at least 50 percent of the nation's schools reopened by the 100th day of his administration, though "reopening" in this case means students would be in the classroom a minimum of one day a week. In Michigan, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — who was once the target of "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" tweets from then-President Donald Trump — is pushing her schools to offer at least some in-person instruction by March 1. Even the American Federation of Teachers says its membership largely supports a return to in-person attendance. With COVID-19 infection rates and hospitalizations dropping across the country, the "back to school" train is picking up steam. On an intellectual level this makes a lot of sense to me. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that students' academic and social well-being has been harmed by the time away from the classroom. Some kids are falling behind who might never catch up, and those students will be disproportionately Black and brown. The evidence also suggests that in-person instruction can be safe — where schools have reopened with masking requirements, social distancing, and improved ventilation systems in place, the CDC has found, there has been "minimal" transmission of the virus. "Teachers are understandably scared. After all, school kids are not known for avoiding germs and following every rule. But fear is different from science," the conservative columnist Tim Carney wrote recently in The New York Times. "The science tells us that schools can be opened safely and that kids need in-person school." So why am I so hesitant to send my own son back to school? Honestly, some of it might be a little bit of Donald Trump hangover. Last spring, in the early days of the pandemic, Trump called for schools to reopen immediately — promising that it was safe for teachers and students. At the same time, he was refusing to mask up, while falsely promising that the end of the pandemic was right around the corner. He seemed to see school closures as a personal political attack rather than a rational response to a public health disaster. The current Republican campaign seems like more of the same. But that excuse can only go so far. Trump isn't president anymore, obviously, and "if Republicans want it, it must be bad" is a terrible way to make big life decisions. But if my fear of resuming school isn't entirely rational, perhaps it is at least understandable. More than half a million people have died from COVID-19, and a great many more have been sickened — perhaps for the long term. New variants of the virus continue to rear their heads. At least one study shows that in-person instruction has been most common in places where COVID cases have been highest, though the causation isn't clear. We

#covid 19 #coronavirus #pandemic #school #lockdown

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mrrodriguezvstheworld · 2 years

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A Hard Time Served

In the teacher’s lounge were the usual suspects. You had Mrs. Venus the social worker, Mr. K the 8th grade English teacher, Ms. Clippert the 8th grade Science teacher, Miss. Ortiz the parapro and Mrs. Gardner the social studies teacher. I said my hello’s to everyone as I placed my lunch into that god forsaken fridge. The goddamn coffee line was 6 people long. I was glad I quit that stuff a long time ago. It used to really irritate my face. From time to time, I get flushed very easily. It’s a real pain in the ass. Cutting that coffee crap out has kind of helped. What’s next is the dope, cigarettes, and booze.

“Good morning everyone.”, I said

“Good morning Rodriguez.” , said Mr. K with a smile.

“Good morning, how’d it go last night?” , said Ms. Clippert.

Ms. Clippert was my union rep so I obviously told her everything about me. She knew I went out on Wednesday nights to try and make a few couple bucks. She knew I was liable to come to work drunk.

“Eh could of been better. I didn’t even get a chance to play. The person who I was supposed to play didn’t even show . They got sick.”

“Tough luck.”

“I know right.”

Little did Ms. Clippert know that I watched an American Veteran pretty much keel over and die. I'm sure my grandpa would know if Jeff had died or not. I’m sure good ol’ Jeff tried to strangle the paramedics who stuck needles in him.

I could only imagine.

“Listen you goddamn bastards! Get your filthy hands off me! My peanuts went down the wrong pipe that’s all. Take me the fuck home to my goddamn wife! ”

As I stepped out of the teacher’s lounge I had to take my coat off in the faculty bathroom. I didn’t have my own classroom to set my things in. See, I haven’t told you yet, but I am what is called a “cart” teacher. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what a “cart” teacher does, is that they travel from classroom to classroom teaching in other teacher’s classrooms. It was a fucking degrading experience. I had to carry around this depressing milk crate with all of my day’s assignments and turned in work. I never had my own posters to hang, my own photos of my family to put up, no funny comic strips, no nothing. All I had was a fucking milk crate

When they hired me I thought I would have my own classroom. They suckered me into believing they created a special position just for me. Since I pretty much worked as a scientist when training to become a teacher. I had experience leading large sections of classes. They saw that I got an A in Calculus. The lady that hired me, Ms. Ramierez said, “My goodness, you got an A in Calculus. That’s really impressive!”

I’m sure she didn’t even notice that I took three levels of fucking Calculus. I was trained to be a science teacher, but since I had an aptitude for math they created a position for me called “Math Interventionist”.

All this pretty much meant was that I roamed from classroom to classroom with my depressing fucking milkcrate reveiwing crap these kids should’ve learned in elementary school. And for the first hour of the day, I had to co-teach with Mr. Dipshit. See he was a science teacher but he really was just a big loser. I really gave up helping this guy out and just used that hour to plan for my day. He was never really able to teach anyways.

As I walked up the stairs to put my coat away in the teacher’s lounge. I saw Mr. Waters slowly walking down the stairs. This guy was the special education teacher and he was as mysterious as god damn Bruce Wayne. He was a man of not too many words. He wasn’t married and would wear outfits designed for 20 year olds into his late 40s. He was notorious for wearing snapbacks that said DOPE on professional development days when there were no students. He once wore a shirt with a cat vomiting a rainbow. That’s when I kind of lost respect for him. I grew out of my snapback and cat shirt phase when I was fucking 11, but this guy kept it going. To each their own.

“How’s it going Waters?”

“Just waking up.”

That’s what he always fucking said, “Just waking up”. I’m sure this guy is always hungover or stoned, but he was pretty good at hiding it.. He wore tinted glasses so nobody could see his eyes.

As I was walking towards the staff bathroom I heard the roar of the cafeteria. God damn lunchroom duty. Since I didn’t have my own classroom, Mrs. Johnson decided to place me along with the paraprofessionals on lunchroom duty. I had to sit there and watch these kids be miserable and loud at 7:15 in the morning.

When students arrived at school, they weren’t allowed to take a piss, go to their lockers, or talk to their teacher’s. They had to sit in the fucking cafeteria in alphabetical order. That’s right, all the tables were labeled A through Z. This place was a goddamn prison I tell you! Say you wanted to talk to your bestfriend about your favorite TV show, or talk to that one girl who likes the same music as you, or ask that boy if he has an extra pencil, or take a fucking piss. Nope! Mrs. Johnson thought it was only appropriate if students sat at their lunchroom tables in assigned seats. Imagine if your mom always dropped you off a little early everyday because she worked two jobs and your last name started with a Z. You might be sitting by yourself for a half an hour. While kids who had last names with R’s and S’s would file in real quick and their table would be jumpin with kids laughing and playing.

Some kids devised a scheme where they would play cards in the morning. It was harmless. They were playing Go Fish. I liked to watch them play because at least once or twice somebody would be caught cheating. That shit always makes me laugh; the way kids ostracize each other for cheating in Go Fish. If you got caught cheating in Go Fish, you might as well just transfer schools and die because you'd never be trusted again.

I’ll never forget when Mrs. Johnson came into the lunchroom in the morning to make someone’s day miserable and she took the kids cards and got them all after school detention. I looked the other way because I didn’t want Shuge Knight to accuse me of supporting underground gambling or something. I’m sure they held their underground card games at the kid from Puerto Rico’s house after school. That kid always was hustlin’ playing a game.

I walked into the staff bathroom and it smelled like perfume. I wonder who was here before? I put my coat on the rack and took a big hard look at myself in the mirror and thought to myself, “Listen up you goddamn idiot! You will not lose your cool and you will not give a fuck about these kids because they do not give a fuck about you. Don’t ever forget that! It’s not worth stressing out over kids who don’t care to learn. Look out for the ones who are truly suffering and push the kids who need to be pushed. The dumb masses can figure it out for themselves!”

I fixed my hair and headed down to the cafeteria. It was 7:22. I still had 8 minutes to kill. So I decided to stop and admire a poster discussing the girls’ volleyball team. It would probably kill 30 seconds. Then I went down the stairs and walked… very… slowly. I made sure not to make any sort of quick movements because Mrs. Johnson was watching me. I casually strolled down the hallway towards the cafeteria. I looked at my watch it said 7:22. I thought, “Shit, I need to stop moving so damn fast.”. As I passed through the cafeteria doors the roar of the children erupted into my ear drums. Nothing made me remember my job more than when I walked into that cafeteria early in the morning. Nothing but a bunch of high pitched voices all wearing the same uniform talking to one another. The card sharks had started playing paper football. The popular R and S kids were laughing like no other. And the lonely X, Y, and Z table had about 4 kids. I got to my post and stared at a place on the wall making sure not to make any eye contact with any students. Once, I made eye contact with a student, it was an open invitation for them to talk to me. I’ve learned to not make any conversation before 8 am. It serves the students and I well if I just relax until 8 am and gather my composure.

I looked down at my watch and it was 7:28. I decided to head out of my lunchroom duty early. The paraprofessionals were also in the cafeteria and they knew I always left early to save myself from going deaf. It was going to be a long day. My head was still hurting from last night and my high was long gone.

As I stepped out of the lunchroom and walked down the hallway, I could see some more students walking into the school. If only their parents knew what was going on in the school. It seemed to me that many parents in today’s world are just as addicted to screens as young children. Parents are so addicted to their phones that they don’t even give the required attention to their children. It was going to lead to a disaster in a few years. Let me tell you.

Or parents are so wrapped up in working because they are barely making ends meet that they don’t have time to ask their child about their day or what they are learning in school. Both mom and dad work and the child is left home alone all day and required to walk back and forth to school. Some kids as young as 11 were required to wake themselves and walk to school.

Since I beat the bell ringing by two minutes I always already up the stairs heading towards Mr. Dipshit’s classroom. His name wasn’t Mr. Dipshit but in my mind he would always be Mr. Dipshit. This guy was obsessed with online video games and spent his free time recording himself playing video games and asking kids to follow him on YouTube. I refused to subscribe to his channel or even take a look. He reminds me of what I hate about this society. Spineless little dweebs who can’t ever seem to grow up.

His room number was 208 and he was sitting at his desk when I walked in. I had already changed my personality by the time I walked into his classroom.

“What’s going on Mr. Rivers.”

“Oh nothing.”

I hated this guy’s guts but I knew how to be a big fake. I should have become an actor or something like that because I can lie through my teeth about anything. I can convince anybody that I am anything. Though I can’t sell things worth a crap. I guess you win some and lose some.

I headed towards the back of the class where there was a separate desk that I used to do work on. I sat down and sort of stared off into space. I wonder what this guy had planned for the day. We never really collaborated because he never really had brought anything to the table to collaborate.

Teacher’s were required to have “Entry Tickets”. In teacher jargon this is where students walk in and are assigned a problem that either pertains to yesterday or today’s work. I found them useful because students would sit down and get to work right when they walked in. This kept the flow of the class going. However, Mr. Dipshit never seemed to use “Entry Tickets” and kids would always run rampant when they walked in because they had nothing to do.

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sinrau · 4 years

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President Trump has called many things hoaxes over the years — the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s dealings with Russia, his impeachment, global warming — but on Monday he called into question the existence of an epidemic that has killed more than 135,000 Americans.

During a flurry of activity on his Twitter account, Trump retweeted a message from game show host Chuck Woolery that claimed “everyone is lying” about the coronavirus as part of a plot to sabotage the economy and hurt Trump’s reelection campaign.

“The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19,” wrote Woolery in the message promoted by Trump. “Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most ,that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it.”

Asked about the retweet at a briefing later Monday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that the “notion of the tweet was to point out the fact that when we use science, we have to use it in a way that is not political.”

A key problem keeping the economy from coming back is the 135,000 Americans dead from the coronavirus , per tracking by Johns Hopkins University, which reported 61,352 new cases and 685 deaths on Saturday. Woolery didn’t say whether he thought the death toll was faked. Florida set a record for most single-day cases of any state so far with more than 15,000 reported Saturday, the same day Walt Disney World reopened in Orlando. Arizona, California, Florida, Mississippi and Texas have all set record highs for daily deaths over the last week.

Trump sometimes uses “hoax” as an all-purpose denigration of opinions — or facts — he doesn’t like. In February he called criticism of his administration’s response to the coronavirus the Democrats’ “new hoax,” but he didn’t quite deny the existence of the epidemic, as Woolery appeared to do in his tweet.

There is no obvious precedent for a president repeating criticism that a key agency in his own administration — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — is lying, except for Trump himself, and the many times he has accused the FBI and the intelligence services of intentionally undermining him.

President Trump at a “National Dialogue on Safely Reopening America’s Schools” event in the White House on July 7. (Alex Brandon/AP)

Around the same time, Trump’s former acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who belongs to none of the categories Woolery said were telling “outrageous lies” about COVID-19, signified that he took the pandemic seriously. In an op-ed published on the CNBC website, Mulvaney wrote: “I know it isn’t popular to talk about in some Republican circles, but we still have a testing problem in this country. My son was tested recently; we had to wait 5 to 7 days for results. My daughter wanted to get tested before visiting her grandparents, but was told she didn’t qualify. That is simply inexcusable at this point in the pandemic.”

Trump also retweeted Woolery’s statement “There is so much evidence, yes scientific evidence, that schools should open this fall. It’s worldwide and it’s overwhelming. BUT NO.”

The mortality rate in children is lower from the virus, but there’s still much researchers don’t know about COVID-19, including the potential long-term effects on children and their ability to spread it to older, more vulnerable relatives and caregivers. Teachers’ unions say their members are reluctant to return to classrooms until the epidemic is under control. On Friday , the American Academy of Pediatrics hedged its initial plan for in-person schooling by releasing a statement that said, “Public health agencies must make recommendations based on evidence, not politics” and “Science and community circumstances must guide decision-making.”

It’s accurate that other countries are planning to open schools in the fall, but they did a better job at suppressing the virus through testing, contact tracing and communicating the importance of masks than the U.S. government.

Trump has downplayed the deaths of Americans previously while in office, stating that the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria wasn’t as high as multiple studies concluded after the White House’s slow response to the natural disaster was criticized.

“3000 people did not die in the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico,” Trump said in September 2018, a year after the storm. “When I left the Island, AFTER the storm had hit, they had anywhere from 6 to 18 deaths. As time went by it did not go up by much. Then, a long time later, they started to report really large numbers, like 3000.”

The official Hurricane Maria death toll, according to the Puerto Rican government, is 2,975. That number, calculated by researchers with the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University, is lower than that of a Harvard study, which put the number at 4,645. Either number would make Maria the deadliest natural disaster in the United States in over a century.

The president has consistently called the investigation into Russia’s influence on the 2016 election a hoax, but special counsel Robert Mueller’s team found evidence there was foreign interference and contact between Trump adviser Roger Stone and Russian intelligence officers.

Trump ally Roger Stone in 2019. (Hoo-Me/MediaPunch /IPX via AP)

“We also identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign personnel — Stone among them,” Mueller wrote Saturday in a Washington Post op-ed. “We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities. The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”

Trump also called his impeachment over his attempts to pressure Ukraine into releasing damaging information on Joe Biden a hoax, although a majority of the House — nearly every Democrat and Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, a Republican turned independent — voted to impeach him on counts of abuse of power and obstructing Congress. Every Democratic senator along with Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah voted to convict on the abuse-of-power charge, but they fell short of the 67 votes needed to remove him from office, as the other 52 Republican senators supported the president.

Trump has repeatedly called global warming a hoax, at one point saying it “ was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” A vast majority of scientists believe that humans are causing climate change, and last month a Russian town within the Arctic Circle saw a record temperature of 100.4 degrees.

Cover thumbnail image: President Trump and hoaxes. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: AP, Getty Images [2])

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:

Trump identifies another hoax: The coronavirus

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gallusrostromegalus · 7 years

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Hi friend! I saw that you do scientific illustration and have a question on behalf of my partner. Is it possible for someone without a degree or who has an unorthodox background get into scientific illustration? My partner has taken undergrad courses but doesn't have a degree. They have practical science experience with a museum (dmns) and doing field studies for an internship. They are a good artist, and have had a show and done freelance for games. Thanks!

BRAH.Scientific Illustration is PERFECT for people with limited/strange education but who have the artisitc chops. When I say I have a Master’s what I have is a Master’s Certification, which is not an accredited degree, but is more respected in the field. Technically, what I have now is an AA, and am currently going to school for my BA, in graphic design, because i wanted to learn how to art on the computer. Most of the other people in the guild got into SI after they retired. From completely unrelated fields. Really, my last class had a Gold Mine Union Rep, a Park ranger, a computer programmer a lawyer and a housewife in it. Literally nobody cares if you’ve had a weird education.

WHAT MATTERS IS YOUR PORTFOLIO.

You gotta be able to deliver the goods, on time, and the standard of art is held very, very high. Like, stupidly high. but as long as you’ve got a decent portfolio and have the chops for the work, you’re golden. If I’ve read that right and your partner has been at Denver Museum of Nature and Science, they probably already know Marjorie Leggit, who did all the plant illustrations for the Dino exhibit, and a couple more around the museum. if you’re still living in CO, I cannot recommend the Denver Botanic Gardens School of Scientific Illustration ENOUGH. Great teachers, great courses, great price for the classes/certificate, fantastic community, no prerequisites to get in.

Career-wise, SI is pretty much entirely freelance commissions these days, which is a pain in the ASS but you can still make good money at it if you can handle that kind of aggressive advertising, and esp if you supplement it with gallery/festival tours and teaching.

#scientific illustration #if your partner decides to sign up tell me where you are I can probably find someone to carpool if you need it #zoe-of-the-veil

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alychampignon · 7 years

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i’m slowly trying to get back to my life.

recently i have become a first year teacher.

i love teaching and working with kids

but a lot of bad things have happened lately. I got in trouble and it looked like i was gonna get fired. the principal outright told me that the kids were not learning anything in my class.

I fell into a HUGE bout of depression since October when that happened. I felt like nothing that i was doing was good enough, since according to the principal, my kids were not learning anything. yet i just dived more and more into teaching. getting more organized and grading. because i wanted to prove to the principal that i was able to teach the kids something. i was in hell, i was depressed and i felt like everything i was doing was for nothing. i really dont have a lot of things to help me. i am lacking the following:

a book for science

a mentor teacher

support from admin when i send kids out for misbehaving

i didnt get a working phone until i got one from the supply closet myself

a set curriculum

supplies for labs

so yeah, i am literally making everything for every day, making lesson plans, worksheets, readings, and powerpoints. it is hella work. i am so tired. they told me to take care of myself and not get overwhelmed. well the thing is that i got overwhelmed in fucking October after they were blaming me for the incident when i literally tried everything and admin was not helping me with the misbehavior and i didnt have a phone to call home like they wanted me too. it was a big mess and i was highly depressed and scared that i would be fired at any minute. it was a dark time and that was from october to like december. i only got closure after the union rep told me that they couldnt fire me for that.

it truly is a hella dark time and since i was depressed i ignored all the things that i liked in order to focus on school stuff and chores. like if i had extra time, i would just do chores or sleep. it was a really dark time.

Now i am slowly trying to take myself out of that and try to enjoy more of the things that i love. slowly and surely i am trying to get out of this depression bout. i dont want to get fired, but if i do well, i can say good bye to the place that depressed me sooo much.

#alex's first year teaching

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thewebofslime · 5 years

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Kenyon Gibson is the author of Awkar al-sharr (Nest of Evil), which is an Arabic translation of his book Common Sense: A Study of the Bushes, the CIA, and the Suspicions Regarding 9/11. He is also coauthor of Hemp for Victory. [Woody Harrelson is a co-author]. Gibson has worked undercover for years, as an investigative reporter and in intelligence for the US Navy. By Ken Gibson The phone rang and I knew who it was even before I looked at the screen, which flashed the words IZMO MARINE; Mark Epstein’s former company. Earlier in the day, he had lost his only brother: Jeffrey. For weeks, I had been predicting Jeffrey’s demise. Mark, I reasoned, would be safe as long as Jeffrey lived. Certain people wanted Jeffrey cold in earth, and they wanted this done quietly. Getting rid of Mark would only make noise, making it harder to eliminate their main target: prisoner #76318-054 in the Manhattan Correctional Center. Mark Epstein is said to be concerned he might wind up dead like his brother, Jeffrey. According to Ken Gibson, Mark does not think his brother committed suicide but believes his brother is definitely deceased. [Photo Jan Benda.] Once that was accomplished, the secrets that Jeffrey had expressed a willingness to divulge in return for leniency, would be left to very few. His younger sibling, for instance. Those who secured Jeffrey’s omerta would have no qualms about ensuring their own liberty while creating a little business for undertakers. Mark claims to be an honest businessman; on the phone, he insisted that he had not spoken to his brother in 10 years. Mark Epstein claimed he had not spoken to brother Jeffrey in 10 years. Not only are there questions about that statement, but also questions about Mark’s financial empire. Questions which could lead Mark to occupy the same facility his brother did. He, too, could be faced with decisions about turning state’s evidence. These questions had been in my mind since the Spring of 2012. That was when we met, and at first, it looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. He would listen to my stories of infiltrating neo-Nazis in London and New York, allowing me into his Vandam Street apartment. For years I kept a file on him, updating it on occasion, as when he hosted a teacher from Horace Mann school who had sexually abused his students. This he did at an event at Cooper Union, his Alma-mater. Cooper Union is a school in lower Manhattan, known for its free tuition. Both brothers attended, benefiting from this policy, which Mark, as a director, tried to do away with. The students saw fit to do away with him; he is no longer a director. Tuition remains free. While Mark did not pay for his education, he thought it right that others pay for theirs. The same might be said of his housing. In 1992, he acquired, from Leslie Wexner, a close associate of Jeffrey’s, a large residential building at 301 East 66th Street. While some of the 220 apartments are privately owned, the majority are his. Documents relating to the transfer of the property show the amount paid: $0.00. Somehow Mark Epstein acquired property from Leslie Wexner – just like his brother Jeffrey did. What is the connection between Wexner and Mark Epstein? Mark Epstein owns most of the apartments at 301 East 66th Street It is not the only building he owns. 515 Greenwich Street belongs to him, where I rented an art studio he had listed in the Village Voice. As payment, he wanted the sum of $666 a month, which I amended to $667 – for obvious reasons. I stayed but seven weeks, as that is how long it took for me to make the mistake of letting him know that, in addition to investigating racist groups, I also worked on cases involving politicians and child sex abusers. The moment I did, I sensed a strange look on his face and a lull in the conversation. I tried not to let him see me looking at the playpens in his apartment, which had always seemed a bit out of place with the grand pianos in the home of a bachelor. That night, I heard a loud bang on the door. Mark was on the other side, yelling at me that I had to leave at that moment. He is not above performing an illegal eviction, for which a previous tenant challenged him in court and won substantial damages. Not wishing to spend long hours in a courtroom, I agreed to leave in a fortnight. We parted company at the end of April 2012. Until the day of Jeffrey’s death, I had not spoken to Mark. I resolved, however, to know just what Mark was up to, as I was not quite sure that his wealth was really generated from the silkscreen business. I took that story to be a smokescreen. It is oft-repeated on the internet, the name Izmo appearing in articles about him, but I have yet to see any credible record of it generating serious revenues. Did Mark Epstein really amass a fortune from the silkscreen business? Press Has Tread Lightly on Mark Epstein – Maybe That Will Change The press has been kind to Mark over the years; few questions of his source of income ever get into print. I contacted people at the New York Times whom I knew, having been a source of information to the Gray Lady for over a decade, but to no avail. James Stewart, its head financial reporter, heard me out but did nothing with the information I provided. Stewart had been privy to Jeffrey’s lifestyle, going so far as to visit him at his East 71st Street townhouse. Another of the NYT’s financial reporters, Landon Thomas Jr., had actually taken a $30,000 donation from Jeffrey. Then there is the inconvenient fact that the president of the NYT, Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, is in Jeffrey’s ‘black book’, the list of contacts that ended up published on the internet. And yet another, perhaps more inconvenient fact, is that Joicho Ito, who sat on the board at the Gray Lady, accepted $1.7 million from the felon. Joicho Ito is a Japanese activist, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the former director of the MIT Media Lab, and a former professor of the practice of media arts and sciences at MIT. Ito has received recognition for his role as an entrepreneur focused on Internet and technology companies and has founded PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan. Ito is a strategic advisor to Sony Corporation and general partner of Neoteny Labs. Ito resigned from his roles at MIT, Harvard, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Knight Foundation, PureTech Health and The New York Times Company on September 7, 2019, following allegations of financial ties to sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. My hopes of getting the press to take the story on Mark Epstein were slim. The Wall Street Journal seemed rabidly enthusiastic, calling me from their London offices and begging for an exclusive. Which I tried to grant, but on the condition that freelance writer Davis Richardson be involved. My contact at the WSJ sent me long texts and emails disapproving of his involvement. When they did do a story on him, I was not impressed. Freelance journalist Davis Richardson has written for the Observer, Vice, The Daily Beast, The Daily Caller and Wired. Gibson wanted him to help with the Mark Epstein story. But I was impressed with Richardson, a young journalist up from the Beltway area, who was then working for the Observer and contributing to both Daily Beast and Daily Caller. I took him with me to talk to people who knew the Epsteins, including Stuart Pivar, a founder of the New York Academy of Art. He, along with Andy Warhol, started that in 1982. Pivar talked at length about them to Richardson and me, stating: “I’ve seen Jeffrey do lots of bad things to lots of people.” I told Pivar that Jeffrey was not long for this world and that Mark would be a target as well. Pivar took it in stride, while his entourage looked happy to end the conversation. Richardson and I went to Mark’s downtown buildings and took notes, finding Mark’s car with Pennsylvania plates. A week later, Richardson called me, telling me to show up at the East 66th Street location [Epstein’s building], to which he was being granted inside access. We came, we saw, and we were overwhelmed. Mark Epstein’s apartments were fit for kings, with a doorman and a spacious entrance hall adorned with murals. From the roof, a view of the East Side commanded respect and demanded we take pictures. The residences were well worth the king’s ransom that neither of us could afford. Richardson continued to dig. In early August, he called me to ask me what I knew about the Humpty Dumpty Institute. “The what”?, I replied. The Humpty Dumpty Institute [HDI], with offices located on West 46th Street, was founded in 1988 by Constance Milstein, heiress to the Emigrant Savings Bank fortune and a major Clinton donor. On their website, Mark is listed as a director. The HDI Congressional Advisory Board lists some 30 or more Congress members. Affiliates had ties to Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey’s partner-in-deeds, and to her now-defunct charity, Terra Mar. On 5 August, I started to call some of the congressmen named on the ‘Humpty Dumpty’ list, telling their aides that I would like to pose some questions. Each time, I was given an email to follow up with, and I did so. I resumed this task on 9 August, but found that I was getting hostile receptions, and having to answer lots of questions from the aides about why I was asking questions. They seemed very sensitive to questions. I told them I was preparing a report for the Senate, which they did not like to hear. US Rep. Barbara Lee’s aide refused to give her name or that of anyone in Lee’s office. US Rep. Gregory Meeks’ staff asked lots of questions but gave no answers. Unbeknownst to me, Davis Richardson had published an article about the Humpty Dumpty Institute on the Daily Caller site. It went up on 7 August, and I was getting the fallout. To make matters worse, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez was calling for an investigation about Mark. However, when I called her office and left my contact details, I got no response. I did get excellent response from both her challenger, Miguel Hernandez in New York’s 14th congressional district, and a candidate in the 13th, Henry Grullon. Their support lifted my spirits, made low after hours of performing this unpleasant task with dozens of lawmakers’ staff. I expected that at least a few would answer the three simple questions: When did they join Humpty Dumpty’s advisory board, who introduced them, and how well did they know Mark Epstein? None did answer any of the questions. But the press seemed to be waking up. From England, I got a call from Tony Gosling, a controversial journalist with a weekly radio show. When he asked about what ‘Humpty Dumpty’ might be up to, I bluntly replied that it might be a front for child rapists going to Third World countries to find victims. Gosling touched on the suspicions that Jeffrey might have been an intel agent, possibly for Mossad, and I gave a dissenting opinion, pointing out that while the logic of associating a Jew with the Mossad was to a degree logical, it was illogical to conclude that he was an Israeli spy when it was found that most of the people he would be presumed to have spied on were Jews and Israelis. I did bring up a new angle to it all when I mentioned that I had information that China might be behind it. Could China Be Involved? Years ago, shortly before I met Mark, I had been introduced to a Chinese agent – or former agent, as he had fallen out with his handlers in Beijing over his relationship with an Uyghur woman. He had told me many things that I did not understand at the time about Chinese involvement in US politics, and their ability to use patsies to carry out their projects, thus hiding their hand. Spy uses spy. The great game can be quite deceptive. And it can be dangerous. In fact, I had been stabbed while arresting a drug dealer in 1994. I too could have been cold in earth, and this reality was not lost on me. Quite recently, a contact at the Department of Homeland Security reminded me to watch my back. The former Marine with this concern for my safety was also my confidante, privy to my infiltration of neo-Nazis for over a decade. While most in this neo-Nazi crowd do not have a lot going for them, some do, including a character recently named in the press as ‘X’. Based in London, ‘X’ had recently gotten in contact with Jason Jorjani, an Iranian dissident based in New York. Jorjani was told that he would be assisted in making changes in Iran if he joined forces with Michael Bagley, then head of Jellyfish. The two met a number of times, and Jorjani was told that Bagley had presented Donald Trump with a plan to make a revolution in Iran. Not only was Trump supposed to be involved, but so was Michael Flynn. Jorjani may have doubted the veracity of all this or realized that he was in over his head. He went to the press with his stories of Bagley, Flynn, and ‘X’, saying that there may have also been a ‘Y’ and a ‘Z’. It is possible that he was alluding to me in the latter references, as Jorjani had been put in touch with me by ‘X’, who wanted me to get Richard Spencer a place in the Trump victory party. Richard Bertrand Spencer is an American neo-Nazi and white supremacist. He is president of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank, as well as Washington Summit Publishers. Gibson went undercover to investigate and report on neo-Nazis. The Trump people wanted nothing to do with Spencer, and neither did I in reality. Far from being the right-wing, quasi-criminal that they took me for, I was feeding information on all of them to the press and to government agencies. And I did the latter as a precaution so that any misunderstandings that could result from my interactions with foreign governments and the flow of classified information that found its way into my hands might be quickly resolved with a phone call to people with top security clearances who knew what I was up to. ‘X’ had introduced me to a lot of people over the years – Rui Gabirro, Gary Krupp, and a former US Navy nuke with top security clearance who was working on a classified deal to give Egypt nuclear power: Robert Abtey. I was getting involved with government actors, and there were sometimes questions as to which government they might be acting for. People are not always who they say they are. Which could be the case in the press, where I met with strange resistance. One NYT reporter was initially enthusiastic about all the emails I had from Operations Intelligence and Jellyfish regarding Bagley, but then suddenly backed off. It was left to UK radio host Gosling to out some of my secret information, which he did a few days before the 2016 US election, hosting me on the air in the United Kingdom. I made public information about ‘X’ – aka Jonothon Boulter – and Bagley. At that time, Bagley was involved in Syria, having been granted secret US State Department waivers (which he showed to me a year earlier) to arm rebels and set up refugee camps, that he said would be used as cover. Enter Hillary Clinton The Hillary Clinton State Department had no objections. No surprise, I was also able to tell the listener, as she was well liked by the Iranians, whose agents I had access to in London. I got close to enough to them to be on Iran TV and Press TV with Yvonne Ridley, before the powers that be shut down their operations. Hillary was their woman in the US in 2012, backed by agents from Tehran, who hoped she would win the party nomination for president. Obama took that hope away from them, but she ended up as Secretary of State, and they were happy. With her there, and later with Kerry in as her replacement, Bagley’s escapades were kept under the radar. Boulter developed a plan to make more money from the camps, for which he expected to have UN backing. Hillary Clinton seems to have been favored by certain parties in Iran. Wars are good business, and Bagley went on tour with his ideas, going on the radio in NYC at one point. Bagley, rather than come off as a spook, looked more like a Wall Street executive and Jellyfish was presented more as a PR firm than an outfit with black ops in the Congo and Mexico. What I did not understand were the ties to Clinton and her democrats. I assumed, given the fact that Boulter worked with the New Right (aka the London Forum), that they would support the right-wing, and Trump along with it. Had I known more about Bagley’s background as an aide to senator Patty Murray, I would have known better. Not until Boulter told me that he was not concerned about Trump, and that he had Clinton support for his deals, did I revise my perception. Bagley, after my tip to the officer at the DHS, came under investigation. Shortly before Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest, Bagley was taken in by undercover FBI men for money laundering. Caught red-handed with the greenbacks, he was deemed a flight risk by prosecutors. Of concern to them was the allegation that he had told undercover agents: “I wanna let you know that I’m also moving for [Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada] in Mexico City as well, with his number one guy.” El Mayo is El Chapo’s replacement. It is not the first time that Bagley did not know who he was really talking to. He may have learned by now that people are not always who they say they are. Which brings me to some people who have been mentioned a number of times: The Clintons. Who are they really? Lawyers, governor and first lady, president and first lady… or spies? Drug dealers? Sexual predators? Murderers? I would say yes to all four and more. Not only would I suspect that Bill’s act of giving American technology to China in his White House days was espionage, or that he was a drug dealer in Arkansas or a sexual predator with many more flights on the Lolita Express than he or the Clinton friendly press want to admit, but that he personally gave the order to murder Jeffrey. Somehow, I doubt that Mrs. Clinton is unaware of his activities, making her in my mind an accomplice. Ghislaine Maxwell attends the wedding of Chelsea Clinton. Several weeks ago, Mr. Clinton had lunch at Nello’s on Madison Avenue. Joining him at this uptown eatery was one of the guests at his daughter’s wedding – Ghislaine Maxwell. Not with them was their mutual friend, Jeffrey. He was dining that day downtown, at the MCC. So just what did Clinton and Maxwell discuss? That was the last record of a sighting of Maxwell in the Big Apple, and quite possibly the last sighting of her in public since. Reports of her in Paris, London, Tribeca and Los Angeles all seem to be deliberately planted red herrings, the latter of which was debunked by the Frank Report and the Daily Mail. Both publications tied the Los Angeles pictures to Maxwell’s friend Leah Saffian, an American born lawyer who plies her trade in England, Wales and California. Frank Report broke the story that Leah Saffian may have been responsible for leaking the photoshopped pictures of Ghislaine Maxwell at the In-N-Out fast food restaurant in Los Angeles in August Saffian’s association with Maxwell may have begun in England, when working for the law firm Peters & Peters, which represented one of Maxwell’s brothers in a serious fraud case relating to the embezzlement of the pension funds that occurred when their father, Robert owned the Daily Mirror. Robert was never brought to trial, as he was found dead in the water before the crown prosecution services could make their case. His daughter might be on the run from process servers; one female plaintiff alleges that she acted like a ‘Nazi guard’ in her zeal to serve Jeffrey, and the entire #MeToo movement is on the lookout for her. But despite her zeal in her service to Jeffrey, her loyalty may well be more with Clinton, especially after it was reported that Jeffrey, in a bid to make a deal, was willing to name names. She also might not want her next meal to be in prison, where bad things happen to lots of people. Was Jeffrey Epstein really suicidal? Or was he looking to make a deal that would limit his prison time in return for a candid and robust disclosure of his co-conspirators? So, just who made a bad thing happen to her man? In naming a suspect, motive and opportunity must be examined. Motive here is strong. Suffice it to say that William and Hillary would rather lunch at Nello’s than lunch in the Big House. But the Clintons are not alone as suspects. An examination of opportunity narrows it down to a much shorter list, which still does not exclude a number of other parties, but does place them at the top. Robert Maxwell had an untimely death. Opportunity would only present itself to someone with friends in low places. The New York City prison and justice systems could well be described as low places, and one might say that they are not without people friendly to the Clintons. Given the history of corruption in New York, both city and state, it is not surprising that a prisoner might not make it to the courtroom. Curious Justice System in New York On top of which are the circumstances that surround Jeffrey’s demise; which, being so well known, are not necessary to repeat in this discourse. It might be more of interest to look at the wickedness in high places that supports the thesis that a Clinton might be able to get certain dirty jobs done, perhaps at a dirt-cheap rate. Starting at the top, the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, was himself recently under investigation, which led to the arrest and conviction of eight of his friends; and then stopped short. Andrew Cuomo, New York governor. This governor had nine lives – and eight of them were used up by the arrest of his eight top cronies. Somehow, the investigation stopped short of him. A previous governor, Elliot Spitzer, who was once Attorney General, had to resign in disgrace over his proclivities with prostitutes. Some say he liked to wear a dog collar, crawl on all fours and be whipped by his charges. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office might be expected to be stand above that, were it not for the ties between Cyrus Vance Jr., the DA, and one of Jeffrey’s business associates: Harvey Weinstein, whose prosecution seems to lag. Could it have something to do with the fact that one of the prosecutors on the case, Jennifer Gaffney, resigned her post from the sexual crimes division, taking a job in the private sector, as the Weinstein case made its way to her office? Taken by itself, this is not so suspicious; but taken along with the fact that Gaffney also consented, in 2016, to convicted sex offender Robert Hadden registering as a level 1 sex offender without having to serve any jail time; and that in 2011, she was willing to have another sex offender reduce his offender level from a level 3, the highest, to a level 1, the lowest. Who just happened to be Jeffrey. At the time, the judge, Justice Ruth Pickholz, denied Gaffney’s request and expressed bewilderment at such a motion. Jeffrey, although registered as a top-level sex offender under obligation to check in with the police regularly, never did so, and the DA’s office did not enforce the stipulations even when reminded of them by the police. The justice system here may be full of play-for-pay con artists posing as public servants, waiting to get kickbacks, either in the form of donations or as jobs in the private sector. Viewed from that perspective, it is not hard to see how a rich and powerful person could get a man dead. A counter-argument to that might be that the facility in which Jeffrey was held is under federal jurisdiction; the Justice Department. But that argument holds little weight, and, in fact, could add to the perception that the Clintons could have meddled in the case. It does not in the least ease suspicion, but rather exacerbates it, when it is remembered that the Justice Department once granted a sweetheart deal for a felon with the largest stash of child pornography and bestiality in American history which allowed him to stay out of jail. The prosecutors in New York are not the only ones with a soft spot for serious sex offenders. The one involving child pornography, which occurred in Los Angeles in 1998, was signed off on by Robert Mueller. For unknown reasons, Robert Mueller helped arrange the sweetest plea deal imaginable for David Asimov – son of the late author Isaac Asimov. David Asimov was the lucky perpetrator. But no surprise, as this same Justice Department kept four innocent men in jail for decades for crimes that Whitey Bulger was responsible for. One of these innocents was a WWII hero. Did Bill Clinton Order the Murder of Jeffrey Epstein? Having named the Clintons as suspects, the next step is to apply pressure, or, to use a better word, tension, to get this case cracked. This is not so easy to do with a slack press. But maybe I ought not to expect any support, given the historical record. Did the NYT put any pressure on Hitler back in the day when presented with reports of concentration camps? Did it put any on Stalin when reports of Ukrainians being starved emerged? Did it put any on the State Department when I gave them the inside scoop on Bagley? No, no, and no. In fact, the reporter that denied the Ukrainian starvation reports got a Pulitzer Prize. More recently, the Ed Buck case, which finally made it to the front page – was ignored for years as this wealthy donor to the Democrats was allowed to party on as young black men ended up dead at his house. Edward Bernard Peter Buck is an American businessman, LGBTQ political activist, and Democratic political fundraiser. Two African American men have been discovered dead in Buck’s West Hollywood home since 2017 due to drug overdoses. On September 17, 2019, Buck was arrested and charged with three counts of battery causing serious injury, administering methamphetamine and maintaining a drug house. Buck is awaiting trial. Outraged, one young man’s mother publicly lobbied the Democrat Los Angeles DA to have him arrested but was rudely ignored. A similar case in the 1980s is even more harrowing: that of John Wayne Gacy. Then the parents of a victim made 100 attempts to get the police to investigate. They did so only when the stench of his victims seeped out from under the floorboards, by which time, he had tortured dozens to death. He laughed about it, wearing a clown costume that he used for fundraising. He, too, was a donor to the Democrat party, a candidate for the same, and a ward leader in Illinois. By saying all this, and naming the Clintons as suspects in Jeffrey’s death, it might seem that I am taking aim at that party. I am not, I am in no political party, and am not paid by any party. I would hope that Democrats join me, though I am sure that party loyalists will refuse, just as they did with Buck and Gacy. I would hope that ALL Americans would join me. I would hope that ALL Democrats see through Clinton and his allies, and investigate the Humpty Dumpty congressmen. It is not that I have concern for either of the Epsteins, but that what is going on is of national concern. Everyone needs not just to take a look at it, but to apply real pressure – again – tension is a better word. That word was once used as the title of a film made in 1949, in which Barry Sullivan played Police Lieutenant Collier Bonnabel, who explains that he only knows one way to solve a case: by applying pressure to all the suspects, playing on their strengths and weaknesses, until one of them snaps under the tension. Quite recently, this tactic was proven a success when Frank Parlato exposed Keith Raniere and his NXIVM sex cult. Not surprisingly, its members were donors to Hillary Clinton. It was not easy to get the investigation to go forward. Parlato ended up writing thousands of articles and contacting both major press and government agencies. Tension worked, and now Raniere is in prison and Allison Mack and others are headed there soon. And soon to join them, I hope, will be the Clintons, Mark Epstein, and the Humpty Dumpty congress members.

#TheWebOfSlime

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evnoweb · 5 years

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OTR Links 01/25/2019

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The best of ontario-educators daily is out! https://t.co/FJtO8bXF0N Stories via @miggylino @gweiler @mcguirp #onpoli #personality

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Google hails Chromebook impact on schools | TechRadar

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Arduino Blog » Arduino and Google launch new Arduino Education Science Kit!

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Local Teachers Union Rep Worried About Larger Class Sizes

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The Best of Ontario-Educators 5 Daily

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Google steals senior Mac OS engineer from Apple to work on Fuchsia OS

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Microsoft web browser now warns of sites with fake news: how it works – Business Insider

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Microsoft’s mobile Edge browser begins issuing fake news warnings

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Microsoft warns users ‘Daily Mail’ UK site ‘an unreliable news source’ – Independent.ie

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Canada recognizes new, self-declared leader of Venezuela | CTV News

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Dell’s new 75-inch 4K touchscreen for education is meant to replace the blackboard – The Verge

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Canada ranked 3rd best country to live in – National | Globalnews.ca

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Ontario considers removing caps on kindergarten, primary class sizes – The Globe and Mail

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New ransomware poses as games and software to trick you into downloading it | ZDNet

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Vancouver Is the Second-Least Affordable Place to Live on the Planet, Study Says – VICE

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Think Your Data Is Private Because You’re Not On Social Media? Think Again.

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The current state of Microsoft’s Fluent Design – TechRepublic

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How to Sell Amazon Liquidation Pallets – The Atlantic

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‘We can’t let education fall victim to edtech’ | Tes News

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Apple MacBook Pro owners cry foul: ‘$6 problem costs $600 to fix’ | ZDNet

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Google Chrome Has A Nasty Surprise

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24 Hilariously Accurate College Memes

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A Chinese phone you can’t buy packs features the iPhone XS and Galaxy S10 can only dream of – BGR

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What to Do When You Want to Delete Yourself From the Internet | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

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Gone phishing – doug — off the record

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Twitter

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OTR Links 01/24/2019 – doug — off the record

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

OTR Links 01/25/2019 published first on https://medium.com/@DigitalDLCourse

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theconservativebrief · 5 years

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The epicenter of 2018’s version of conservatism, and of American Trumpism, isn’t Washington, DC. It’s California.

Breitbart News was founded in Los Angeles, and its headquarters remains in the city’s Brentwood Heights neighborhood. Its founder, Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012, met former White House adviser Steve Bannon in LA. Ben Shapiro, whom Breitbart mentored and who worked at his eponymous publication, now runs his own conservative media empire, DailyWire.com, out of a nondescript office building in LA.

Claremont McKenna College, located on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, was the birthplace of intellectual Trumpism and the “Flight 93 Election” — an influential essay published in the Claremont Review of Books that stated that electing Trump was the only way to save the country. The author of that missive, Michael Anton, went to the University of California Berkeley and Claremont, and then went on to work in the Trump White House, alongside White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, a native of Santa Monica, and Trumpist trade adviser Peter Navarro, who taught at the UC Irvine.

In September, I traveled the length of the Golden State, stopping at conservative outpost after conservative outpost, to try to understand how one of the most liberal states in the union had become the intellectual engine of contemporary conservatism.

In these conversations, one common theme emerged: Conservatives living and working in California view themselves as philosophically, culturally, and demographically under siege, and the political movement they are ideating, advocating, and building reflects that fully.

Conservative demonstrators gather at an America First rally on August 20, 2017, in Laguna Beach California. David McNew/Getty Images

This strain of conservatism takes its spirit from Andrew Breitbart’s saying that “politics is downstream of culture.” Conservative podcast host Michael Knowles — a trained actor and native New Yorker who got his start in politics working on a Republican campaign his sophomore year at Yale, and who wrote a best-selling book called Reasons to Vote for Democrats: A Comprehensive Guide (the pages inside the book are largely blank) — told me that California conservatism was more of an “anti-ideology,” one largely based on kulturkampf, not policy.

Southern California-style conservatism is a conservatism that fights. On its face, it doesn’t care much for the specific nuances of tax policy, but it does like to trigger the libs. As we spoke in a conference room in DailyWire’s office, Knowles was drinking out of a tumbler emblazoned with the words “LEFTIST TEARS” (available for sale on DailyWire.com). “I think I’m contractually obligated to use this every moment I’m in the office,” he said.

California conservatives also have the mentality, and the unanimity, of a people under threat. In California, and across much of the country, conservatives view themselves — despite a massive and constant media presence and nationwide control over all three branches of the federal government — as isolated, comparatively weak, and always chasing power, never in power. By and large, conservatives behave as if they are always on the cusp of real influence over the direction of American politics. As Ben Domenech wrote in the Federalist:

If the right really did have overwhelming political power, it would be running roughshod. Outside of the realm of taxes and regulation, it’s hard to see that. Obamacare is still mostly the law of the land. Planned Parenthood is still mostly funded. Education policy is still nibbling at the edges of reform. Curbing public sector unions is limited to a few states. Republican success in New England and Maryland and elsewhere has led to the election of quite a few governors, but where’s their big achievements besides managing things a little more cheaply?

In Domenech’s view, conservatives, including the California-style right, aren’t “tired of winning”; they haven’t won anything real yet.

But now the conservatism of California — the conservatism of isolation and powerlessness, the discourse that comes from people who believe their views will never become the view — is one of the most powerful forces in American politics. Now California conservatism is simply conservatism writ large.

More recently, California-style conservatism landed Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court with the mentality of “march or die,” fight to the last and insult your enemies lest kindness be viewed as weakness. (As the right-leaning aggregation site Twitchy put it, “We know this fight for Brett Kavanaugh is about so much more than owning the libs … but we’d have to be heartless not to relish [a left-leaning pundit’s] Kavanaugh-induced breakdown.”)

And most importantly, Donald Trump — a man who talks of the “hellhole” country of which he is president as if he is merely an observer — holds the most powerful office in the world.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

So what happens when a strain of conservatism built around the experience of powerlessness gains real political power?`

Getting to Daily Wire’s office, about 20 miles from downtown Los Angeles, requires a 40-minute drive through the hills and, at the time, very hot and sunburnt pavement-encased valleys of Los Angeles County. Inside the office are photographs of Daily Wire’s biggest stars: conservative commentator and novelist Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles, and, of course, Ben Shapiro, the site’s owner and editor-in-chief and one of the biggest names in the world of conservative media.

Daily Wire, which has grown to have more than 50 full-time staff members, is now one of the most visited conservative websites, with 100 million pageviews per month, according to a representative for the site. And Shapiro, who had his first syndicated column at the age of 17, has established his own media domain, with a daily podcast that gets 20 million downloads per month, a video series, and, as of October, his own midterm election special on Fox News.

While a significant amount of Shapiro’s writing and daily podcasts covers the political events of the day, much of his work is focused on culture: on marriage, for example, and “political correctness” (he is virulently opposed to the concept), and the mainstream media, especially how the mainstream media covers culture and politics.

Shapiro told me there’s a reason for that. “All we do all day is talk about ideas because we lose,” he said. “We’re living in an area where no policy prescription that you have will ever be implemented in this state.”

A little under 90 minutes east of Los Angeles sits the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank established in 1979. There, Charles Kesler, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College, edits the Claremont Review of Books, which published Michael Anton’s “The Flight 93 Election” in 2016.

The essay posited that like Flight 93, where passengers and crew forced a plane hijacked on 9/11 to crash in a field rather than into the US Capitol, the 2016 presidential election was a life-or-death scenario requiring Americans to elect Trump, “crashing the plane” rather than allowing Hillary Clinton to win the White House, because “A Hillary presidency will be pedal-to-the-metal on the entire Progressive-left agenda, plus items few of us have yet imagined in our darkest moments.”

To understand this apocalyptic approach to politics, you need to understand the recent history of California conservatives. As Kesler told me, “The experience of seeing California go from a solidly Republican, Reaganite state to a very solidly Democratic state — so solid that the Republicans are virtually an endangered species in statewide offices — that experience has been very sobering for a whole generation of California conservatives, and that has helped, I think, to create a separate consciousness.”

Supporters of Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher watch the primary election results at his campaign headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, on June 5, 2018. David McNew/Getty Images

Again and again in my conversations with California-based conservatives, the sense of “apartness” from the world of politics, both nationally and statewide, was palpable. And in Kesler’s view, that sensibility has helped create not just the belief system of California-style conservatism but its intense focus on its own opposition — “the Left,” which includes not only leftists but also Hollywood and the overarching media establishment.

“Losing badly, as Republicans have done in California for so long, is a very educational experience, or ought to be a very educational experience,” Kesler says.

Behind those losses lies the changing composition of the California electorate — and the construction of a conservatism anxiously attuned to the changing composition of the country as a whole.

“The role of demographic change in turning California from a safe Republican into a safe Democratic state … has made immigration a very sensitive issue for California Republicans, more so than conservatives in other states, who really didn’t see any substantial negative effects of immigration, politically, for a very long time,” says Kesler.

Kesler, and many people I spoke to in California, view themselves as the canaries in the coal mine for what they worry is the future of not just the state of California, but America — an America that will grow increasingly browner over coming decades, and perhaps, to the angst of many on the right, increasingly further left.

The story of conservative fears over demographic change in California began long before Trump.

Take Proposition 187, a bill proposed in November 1994 that would have cut off undocumented Californians from public education and health care services and require teachers and health care providers to turn over the names of undocumented people to authorities (it was known as the “Save Our State” initiative), and to efforts to end bilingual education and establish “three strikes” laws.

Professor Ian Haney López of UC Berkeley directed me to this 1994 campaign ad from Wilson:

[embedded content]

Proposition 187, which was fomented by concerns over perceived white conservative isolation, would ultimately go a long way in turning the California Republican Party into an increasingly irrelevant power in the state, as Latino Californians enraged by the bill and its backers became increasingly politically active.

“In the 20 years since Pete Wilson’s successful anti-Latino dog whistling,” Haney López told me, “California has turned out state-level office Republicans all across the state. There is no Republican who holds a state-level office in California anymore. The Republicans in California are in areas of the state in which their jurisdiction is overwhelmingly white, [and] even they are increasingly endangered.”

Since 1984, when former California Republican Gov. Ronald Reagan won Los Angeles County on his way to a landslide victory over Walter Mondale, no Republican presidential candidate has won the county, or even cracked 47 percent of the total vote. Even when George H.W. Bush won the state of California in 1988 (the last Republican to do so), he still lost Los Angeles County.

While the number of registered Democratic voters in California hasn’t changed much in recent years, the number of registered Republicans has dropped by 10 percent, and might be surpassed by the number of registered independents by the November midterms. Currently, Democrats hold a 19 percent advantage over Republicans in California.

In 2018, in Orange County, a conservative epicenter and birthplace of the anti-tax movement, a Democrat defeated 15-term incumbent Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who had won all but one of his elections by double digits dating back to 1988. Democrats now control the governor’s mansion and have the numbers to override vetos in the state legislature without a single Republican vote.

Democratic Candidate Harley Rouda speaks to his supporters at his midterm election night party after unseating GOP incumbent Rep. Dana Rohrabacher for California’s 48th District on November 6, 2018. Barbara Davidson/Getty Images

This, to conservatives — and particularly to California conservatives — is the nightmare scenario: an America in which they are powerless, demographically swamped, where the particular virtues and ideas that made America great for so long are uprooted by a surging left. Trump speaks for, and to, this conservative movement, the one that sees demographic changes as a “national emergency.” As Fox News host Laura Ingraham put it in August:

“In some parts of the country, it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people and they’re changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like. From Virginia to California, we see stark examples of how radically in some ways the country has changed. Now, much of this is related to both illegal and in some cases, legal immigration that, of course, progressives love.”

This is a conservatism divorced from policy disagreements about taxes but embracing of Flight 93 apocalypticism — why not charge the cockpit, seize the controls, elect Donald Trump? For many on the right who believe they are faced with demographic “annihilation” that would push them to the edge of a political cliff, Trumpism was their last stand.

This is not National Review conservatism; it is far more potent and powerful, because it’s not a conservatism for something, but against something else. It’s a conservatism for anyone who didn’t like where America was going under Obama and the Democrats, and it marks its wins in their defeats, rather than in the more divisive space of policymaking.

Trump’s role as an outsider to mainstream conservatism was made explicit when National Review dedicated an entire issue to opposing his run for office. The editors wrote that though Trump had taken on more traditionally conservative viewpoints during his presidential run, he was a liberal at heart:

Trump’s political opinions have wobbled all over the lot. The real-estate mogul and reality-TV star has supported abortion, gun control, single-payer health care à la Canada, and punitive taxes on the wealthy. (He and Bernie Sanders have shared more than funky outer-borough accents.)

As the conservative intellectual Yuval Levin wrote in Politico in the fall of 2016, “En route to the nomination, [Trump] paid nearly no heed to the usual litmus tests [for conservatives]; he seemed to have no idea they existed.”

The conventional wisdom, up until then, was that for a candidate attempting to run as a Republican, rejecting the conservatism of William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan would have marked the death knell of their political campaign. Who can forget Mitt Romney, the moderate former governor of Massachusetts, standing before CPAC and proclaiming himself “severely conservative”?

But Trump alone seemed to recognize that for his base, his voters — isolated and holding on for dear life against an endless attack from a culture and a demography — the old litmus tests didn’t apply. Trump was going to build a wall, end political correctness, and win so much that his base was going to tire of winning; who cared whether he had a policy paper on Medicare?

Donald Trump speaks at the California Republican Party Convention during his presidential campaign on April 29, 2016, in Burlingame, California. Ramin Talaie/Getty Images

In this approach, Trump took a page from the ideological openness of California-style conservatism, where the focus on common enemies and cultural preferences widens the potential for coalition. It’s that tendency that has led to the alliance of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” a loosely constructed group of thinkers that ranges from Shapiro, a traditional conservative and orthodox Jew, to Eric Weinstein and his brother, Brett, both vocal supporters of Bernie Sanders. Here, many possible views are acceptable on health care so long as everyone is united against social justice warriors.

Conservatism has often seen itself as standing athwart history and yelling, “Stop!” But where National Review conservatism saw the growth of the government as the key threat, California conservatism sees America’s demographic changes, and the cultural and political powerlessness that can come with them, as the real danger.

The California conservatives are enjoying themselves. When we spoke, Knowles told me, “for the first time in my lifetime, these days, conservatives are the ones who are having fun. Conservatives kind of seem like the cool guys, and the left kind of seems like the scolds.”

His viewpoint matches much of what I heard and saw from conservatives in California — because no state-level votes or congressional seats depend on them, they can say whatever they want with aplomb. There’s no nostalgia for the past; the good times are now.

But what the future holds for a movement that appears largely united by its opposition is anyone’s guess. The California-style politics — in short, a laser focus on culture, immigration, and race — that helped Trump win the White House have not healed the schisms within the Republican Party, nor have they defanged their liberal opponents.

Perhaps that’s the real strength of California-style conservatives: By feeling like a besieged minority lacking in real power, they can enjoy the best of both worlds, shirking the responsibilities of governance while still wielding real power.

Because conservatives do, in fact, hold considerable political sway. Republicans currently hold the White House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, and with voter ID laws in dozens of states aiming to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision,” Republicans remain in a strong position to keep control of local and state elections for years to come. California-style conservatism hasn’t just seized power; it’s taken over the entire country, including areas that aren’t going to see the same rapid demographic changes of California or Texas.

And California-style conservatism has now seemingly supplanted conservative ideology itself, leaving people who think of themselves as conservatives wondering what to do next. “This is one of the hazards of a coalition built on being anti-left,” Shapiro told me in a phone call a few weeks after I flew home to Washington. “As opposed to agreeing on central principles, there is still massive disagreement on what you actually do with the car once you [catch it].”

“The kind of typical Republican solidarity” we’re seeing now, he added, is based on “a continuing ire against the left, which people on the right, I think correctly, feel has become even more radicalized in the age of Trump. As far as sort of a deep and abiding conservative program, those divisions are exposed every time you win, and they are obscured every time you lose.”

Those divisions will come into focus more and more, particularly — and ironically — as California-style conservatism continues to gain sway within the conservative movement and the GOP. The siege mentality merely requires a common foe, a force to be besieged by, and during a siege, the questions of governing — the ticky-tack arguments over tax rates and Medicare that make up a significant amount of what real politics is — can be left for another day.

Trump supporters protest outside the CNN offices in Hollywood, California, on October 22, 2016. Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

Original Source -> How California conservatives became the intellectual engine of Trumpism

via The Conservative Brief

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sallysklar · 6 years

Text

Living in Dialogue: Will the Teacher Rebellion Bring Educators from High Poverty Schools to Office?

An important result of the teacher walkouts in Oklahoma and elsewhere was unexpected, at least by this former inner city teacher. Even though the majority of Oklahoma students are low-income (eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch), only a small percentage of educators teach in high-poverty schools serving extreme concentrations of kids from generational poverty who have disproportionately survived multiple traumas.

In my experience, few teacher-leaders come from the highest-challenge inner city schools. I’ve always half-joked about educators with the personalities to stick it out in the most disadvantaged schools that, “You can dress us up, but you can’t take us out.” But could the recent wave of teacher activism begin to change this pattern?

Seriously, it is no surprise that high-performing teachers in high-performing schools are more likely to earn the respect of more affluent patrons with more political power. But I was wrestling with a way to properly explain why there is an even greater shortage of teacher-legislators with experience in the highest-challenge schools. Then I spoke with teacher/candidate Mary Boren, who articulated the dynamic that I was wrestling with. Inner city teachers, she says, are exhausted from continually wrestling with the worst of the bubble-in mandates and they are “battle scarred.”

Boren offered insights on both sides of the tragedy known as corporate school reform. She had taught in the poor small town of Little Axe and been a counselor at Adams Elementary School in Norman. It was a school where 25% of the students were English Language Learners and where 1/3rd of the students lived in a trailer park. Boren served on the union bargaining team and, like so many teachers, had dropped of clothes, food, and Christmas presents at the children’s homes. Unlike most policy-makers, she’d had the experiences of intervening in mental health emergencies.

Boren finally changed careers (becoming an attorney) when test prep took precedence over counselors’ meaningful responsibilities. She became horrified by the “bar coding” of kids, as testing turned children into numbers, demoralizing students and teachers. And this experience allowed her to volunteer insights that I have long tried to explain to administrators and policy makers. She explained how teaching to benchmark tests was just as destructive as teaching to high-stakes tests. Boren knew firsthand how this led to nonstop instructional malpractice mandates, especially in poor schools.

Boren also lived much of the institutional history of the State Department of Education Sandy Garrett and saw reform shift from standards-based to standardized test-driven instruction. Boren had written administrative rules for the PASS curriculum objectives and saw the way that Garrett had served as “an airbag between schools and legislators.” For instance, when the 1990s SDE had to write rules for reading remediation, it offered and promoted the option of parent involvement, a still-neglected best practice.

In the 1990s, it was tough enough keeping data-driven reforms from damaging students. Now she asks: Oklahoma doesn’t even empower teachers so how would we empower poor parents?

Finally, Boren knows the qualitative research that is so often ignored by today’s policy makers. Being both an administrator and a teacher and counselor, she learned to read social science like she was an anthropologist, as opposed to today’s “top down, father knows best” reform micromanagers.

I’ve loved the same type of conversations in Oklahoma City with two members of the “teachers’ caucus” who were elected to the House. Rep. Mickey Dollens taught in the 91% low-income, 89% non-white Grant High School. Rep. Jacob Rosecrants taught at the 93% low-income, 89% Hispanic Webster Middle School, as well as teaching in my old classroom at the 97% low-income, 90% black and brown Centennial Mid-High.

All three of those schools were School Improvement Grant (SIG) schools that received $5 million federal grants in return for implementing the full corporate reform agenda. The SIG was a notorious failure which embodied the technocratic reformers belief that veteran teachers – who had ”low expectations” and made “excuses” – were the problem with high-poverty schools. The grant was used to replace Baby Boomers, and their higher salaries, with 23-year-olds, often Teach for America teachers, so that they wouldn’t interfere with bubble-in instruction. This means that Dollens and Rosecrants have firsthand experience with the effects of the teacher-bashing experiment, known as “reform.”

Now, Sherrie Conley, an assistant principal at Greystone Elementary is running for the legislature. Greystone serves the second census tract, identified by the Brookings Institute as being an “extreme poverty” tract, that fed my old school. In addition to learning why such a school needs “wraparound,” socio-emotional student services, she has seen what happens when reformers take the shortcut of trying to deputize teachers as the individuals who are supposed to overcome the legacies of concentrated poverty, extreme trauma, and segregation. Those policies are a major reason why 15 of the 28 Greystone teachers are emergency certified.

Another Oklahoma City teacher/candidate, Carri Hicks, began her career at the high-poverty Tulakes Elementary school, where she learned a different story. Tulakes has shown great success by becoming a full-service community school. Hicks has seen the ways that children from the projects can meet high standards when teaching becomes a team effort, where social service providers help lay the socio-emotional foundation necessary before holistic and meaningful learning can occur.

I must emphasize a point that I’m confident that veteran educators like Boren, Dollens, Rosecrans, Conley, and Hicks would agree with. It is no insult to teachers or political leaders to say that it is hard for people who lack experience in the inner city to understand what it takes to turn around schools serving entire neighborhoods with extreme concentrations of generational poverty. Legislators without such experience are more likely to believe the claims that “high-poverty, high-performing” charters serve the “same” kids as we do in high-poverty neighborhood schools.

Also in my experience, it was the highest-poverty schools with the lowest test scores that were first subjected to bubble-in accountability, and more likely to be required to practice teach-to-the-test malpractice.

By 2014, however, all types of schools were oppressed by mandates to impose drill-and-kill. In Oklahoma, at least, it was educators in more affluent schools that led the Save Our Schools (SOS) anti-test-and-punish revolt. In 2014, when 25,000 teachers rallied at the Capitol and protested high stakes testing (as well as budget cuts), I don’t believe I saw another inner city teacher from my district. It was teachers in the suburbs, small towns, and magnet schools, who tended to be treated with more respect by the political system, who took the lead. Now, we who signed up for the toughest teaching jobs are joining, and sometimes leading, the political battle.

What do you think? How many citizens and political leaders have firsthand experience with schools serving extreme poverty? Have educators in the highest-challenge schools been adequately represented? Will inner city teachers be able to tell a fuller story about education policy?

elaine August 28, 2018

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Living in Dialogue: Will the Teacher Rebellion Bring Educators from High Poverty Schools to Office? published first on https://buyessayscheapservice.tumblr.com/

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ixvyupdates · 6 years

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It’s Not Real School Accountability If No One Is Held Accountable

What do voters consider most important when it comes to public education? According to a recent poll commissioned by the largest teachers union in my home state of Oklahoma, it’s not money. It’s “accountability.”

Now many Americans are under the impression that our public schools are in fact accountable. After all, schools are subject to a dizzying array of laws and regulations—on matters ranging from curriculum and testing to fire drills and administering epinephrine. (Researchers at the 1889 Institute pored over Oklahoma’s school administrative code and found roughly 640 mandates.)

But here’s the thing: “Bureaucratic compliance” is not synonymous with “accountability.” Far from it.

The dictionary definition of “accountable” is basically “answerable.” Webster gives this example: “held her accountable for the damage.”

“Holding people accountable requires that they face significant consequences as a result of their actions,” says University of Arkansas education professor Jay P. Greene.

“Despite years of ‘high stakes’ student testing, very few of the nation’s 3.14 million public-school teachers have ever lost a job, had their pay reduced or otherwise faced meaningful consequences because of these test results.”

Here in Oklahoma, the majority of students lack proficiency in math, science and English language arts. So how many schools have been closed? How many grown-ups have lost their jobs or had their pay reduced? Who’s being held accountable for the damage?

One former local superintendent once remarked that it’s heartbreaking to “see a student who is valedictorian from a school and they made a 14 on the ACT.”

He’s absolutely right. So who got fired?

When I reminded one teacher that Oklahoma has 400,000 school-produced illiterates, he chose to look on the bright side. “I would be willing to bet they still had teachers that cared for and about them,” he replied.

Well, sure. Even so, their lives have been altered forever. Vast sums of money and God-given potential were wasted. Who’s being held accountable for the damage?

It’s not just student performance. Consider the problem of bullying. It persists year after year—despite numerous rules and regulations on the books—sometimes with tragic and heart-rending consequences.

Sexual harassment, too. “Based on what I heard from my constituents,” former state Rep. Rebecca Hamilton (D-Oklahoma City) observed in 2014, “sexual harassment of girls in our public schools is close to being pro forma.”

Consequences For Adults

Do the adults face meaningful consequences for failing to build a healthy school culture?

“In reality, there is no entity in America that is less accountable than a government-run school system,” says retired public-school teacher Larry Sand. “They exist only because of taxpayer largess, and virtually no one gets fired when they screw up.”

As a matter of fact, “there’s a tradition in education,” former New York City school chancellor Frank Macchiarola and his co-author Thomas Hauser once wrote, “that if you spend a dollar and it doesn’t work, you should spend two dollars; and not only that, you should give those two dollars to the same person who couldn’t do the job with only one.”

Alas, that’s been the experience here. Oklahoma’s public education problems “are not due to underfunding,” says Oklahoma State University entrepreneurship professor emeritus Vance Fried. “Since 1972, per pupil spending has almost doubled in real terms with no improvement in academic outcomes.”

Don’t misunderstand—I’ve long argued that great teachers should be rewarded. Hats off to Oklahoma’s Epic Charter School where, thanks to merit pay, the highest-paid teacher earns $106,324.

But in our traditional public schools, we typically see across-the-board pay increases for great teachers, good teachers, mediocre teachers and bad teachers. Teachers who deserve pink slips get pay raises. That’s not accountability.

Same goes for government regulation—it’s not “accountability.” Corey DeAngelis of the Cato Institute points out that “according to the QuantGov database, the number of K-12 education restrictions has increased by almost 1,200 percent since 1970, while student achievement hasn’t budged.”

Encouragingly, a plurality of voters in my home state understand that public schools lack accountability.

True accountability is accountability not to bureaucrats but rather to parents. Happily, we’re now seeing examples of this voting-with-their-feet accountability. The Oklahoman reported this year that “41 percent of students who attend a virtual charter school in Oklahoma left their previous school because they were victims of bullying.”

Bullied students (including some who contemplated suicide) are also utilizing Oklahoma’s private-school voucher program.

Parental choice isn’t just a Milton Friedman thing or a conservative talking point. As Ron Matus recently pointed out over at redefinED, Great Society social-justice warriors pushing for private-school vouchers 50 years ago understood that “the poor have no means by which to make the education system more responsive.”

War on Poverty bureaucrats in the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity thus sought “a means to introduce greater accountability” through school choice.

We need more of it. Rules and regulations—whether 640 or 6,400 of them—are but a pale imitation of this genuine accountability. As many a beleaguered mall retailer can tell you, true accountability is an empty parking lot.

It’s not accountability if no one is held accountable.

Photo by jamie naragon, Twenty20-licensed.

It’s Not Real School Accountability If No One Is Held Accountable syndicated from https://sapsnkraguide.wordpress.com

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investmart007 · 6 years

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OKLAHOMA CITY | Teacher rebellion puts red-state Republicans on defensive

New Post has been published on https://goo.gl/VRhBi9

OKLAHOMA CITY | Teacher rebellion puts red-state Republicans on defensive

OKLAHOMA CITY|April 3, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) A teacher rebellion in red states from West Virginia to Arizona has put Republicans on the defensive, forcing them to walk a fine line in the months before midterm elections between placating constituents who are angry over education cuts and conservative supporters who want a smaller government and low taxes.

In Oklahoma, most Republicans last week broke with the party orthodoxy and endorsed hundreds of millions of dollars in tax increases to fund public schools and give teachers a raise of 15 to 18 percent.

They acted after Oklahoma teachers demanded action, inspired by a nine-day strike in West Virginia, where they won a 5 percent raise. The rebellion also has spread to Kentucky where teachers thronged the state Capitol Monday to protest cuts in pensions. And in Arizona, restive teachers also are demanding a 20 percent pay raise.

But the epicenter of the revolt now is Oklahoma, where lawmakers got little praise for approving major tax increases and instead caught flak from both sides of the political divide. Thousands of teachers converged on the state Capitol for a second day Tuesday demanding even more money, while anti-tax conservatives vowed to challenge incumbents who supported the plan.

“I’ve had some political blowback, people saying this will be my last term in office,” said Rep. Kyle Hilbert, a Republican from rural northeast Oklahoma, who has gotten an earful from conservatives. “I’d rather serve one term and know I did what was best for my district.”

The Oklahoma strike showed no signs of ending, with many of the largest school districts in the state planning to close for a third consecutive day on Wednesday to honor the walkout.

Some Republicans are trying to express their sympathy for the teachers. Three weeks before a closely watched special election for an open congressional seat in Arizona, Republican hopeful Debbie Lesko is running a TV ad that shows her reading a book to children as she vows to “fix our schools and give our teachers the raise they deserve.”

As he runs for a second term, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey in Arizona epitomizes the dilemma for GOP candidates in 2018. He refuses to raise taxes and finds himself on the defensive amid growing frustration with education funding in a state where the budget was decimated during the recession and where he and other leaders have dramatically expanded voucher programs. Teachers have been filling the Capitol to protest a Ducey plan to provide a 2 percent raise for teachers, and they have been joined by the two Democrats trying to unseat him.

The protests also have emboldened teachers across the country to run for office. In Kentucky, teachers bruised by their fight over education pensions are preparing to mobilize to support legislative candidates they see as passing a key test: support for education. About two dozen educators or former educators are running for office this year, most of them as Democrats.

For the Democratic Party, which has been losing legislative seats in many of these red states for years, the intensity of the education movement is an opportunity. The Oklahoma Democratic Party set up a tent outside the Capitol during the teacher protests and urged demonstrators to register to vote.

“I think the people who will be held responsible at the end of the day are the people in power,” said Party Chairwoman Anna Langthorn. “I think we have a lot of momentum.”

Xavier Turner, 17, the student body president at Del City High School in suburban Oklahoma City, held a sign at the protest Tuesday saying: “I’d take KD back before Mary Fallin,” showing his preference for NBA superstar Kevin Durant, who left the Oklahoma City Thunder for the Golden State Warriors, over the Oklahoma governor who is term-limited and not running in 2018. He’s not quite old enough to vote, but Turner said that as young people register, they will remember who stood with their teachers.

“We just need to do better as far as the Legislature and who we vote in,” Turner said Tuesday after joining the protest outside the Oklahoma Capitol. “The national spotlight is on Oklahoma. Hopefully it goes well.”

Democrats already have made some gains in Oklahoma, winning four seats from Republicans in special elections in the past year, including two teachers elected to office after campaigning on improving school funding. But they are still deep in the minority in the Legislature.

Recent U.S. history is mixed on whether such grassroots movements can translate into victories at the ballot box. Teachers were at the heart of massive protests at the Wisconsin state Capitol in 2011, fighting a proposal from then-newly elected Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Despite the closure of schools for four days as part of a coordinated sick-out among teachers, a bill that placed severe restrictions on unions passed anyway. An attempted recall of Walker in 2012 led to an even wider margin of victory than he enjoyed in the regular election in 2010.

Kansas is a more encouraging example for teachers. After Republicans there approved massive personal income tax cuts beginning in 2012, budget shortfalls put a lid on education funding increases. A backlash against the tax cuts led to the defeat of about two dozen conservative state lawmakers, and the Legislature last year reversed many of the cuts.

Pat McFerron, a Republican strategist and pollster in Oklahoma, said for many GOP incumbents who voted for the tax-hike plan to fund teacher pay raises, their greatest concern is a right-wing primary challenge. Former U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, a hero of the anti-tax movement, urged citizens to challenge their Republican legislators who voted for the plan.

But Carri Hicks, a fourth-grade math and science teacher in the Oklahoma City suburb of Deer Creek, said she decided to run as a Democrat for a state Senate seat this year in part because of the declines in funding for public schools.

“I want to be a voice for the teachers at the state Capitol,” Hicks said, saying the raise for teachers and more money for education was a good first step. “My campaign continues to finish the job.”

___

This version of the story corrects the day Xavier Turner was holding the sign to Tuesday instead of Wednesday.

___

Associated Press writers Melissa Daniels in Phoenix, Bruce Schreiner in Frankfort, Kentucky, Tim Talley and Adam Kealoha Causey in Oklahoma City, John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.

By SEAN MURPHY, By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (Z.S)

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#My campaign continues to finish the job #Oklahoma city #Republicans on defensive #Teacher rebellion in red states #The national spotlight

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melindarowens · 6 years

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Senators grumble over Trump backing Moore

With Scott Bland, Zach Montellaro and Elena Schneider

The following newsletter is an abridged version of Campaign Pro’s Morning Score. For an earlier morning read on exponentially more races — and for a more comprehensive aggregation of the day’s most important campaign news — sign up for Campaign Pro today. (http://www.politicopro.com/proinfo)

Story Continued Below

ONE WEEK TO GO — “GOP senators grumble over Trump, RNC backing Moore,” by POLITICO’s Seung Min Kim and Kevin Robillard: “Senate Republicans are still trying to keep their distance from Alabama Republican Roy Moore, creating a fresh break with President Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee, which have re-embraced Moore less than a week before a key special Senate election despite accusations of child molestation against the GOP candidate. Both the National Republican Senatorial Committee and Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC controlled by allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said they planned on staying out of the contest. Several Republican senators protested the RNC’s decision furiously on Tuesday.” Full story.

— “Bannon welcomes Moore back to GOP fold at Alabama rally,” by POLITICO’s Kevin Robillard: “At a rally here Tuesday in a barn at Oak Hollow Farm, in an affluent suburb on the eastern shore of the Mobile Bay, Bannon, Moore and a host of other staunch backers of the president took turns taking shots at the media, the GOP establishment, and Moore’s Democratic opponent, former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones. The rally here was a replay of a rally Bannon and a host of other conservative figures held for Moore on the eve of the September runoff. Both men delivered their standard pitches: Bannon’s speech, heavy on talk about rolling back free trade and restricting immigration, told the crowd they were leading a revolution. Moore delivered a speech heavy on religious rhetoric and social conservatism.” Full story.

— “In major speech, Doug Jones portrays election as referendum on decency,” by AL.com’s Howard Koplowitz: “‘We need to look at this as parents, not voters. Will we tell our daughters that if you are abused and if you speak out, you will be believed, and Alabama will stand with you regardless of when you come forward?’ Jones said in a speech live streamed on his Facebook page. “Or will we tell our young sons this behavior, this disturbing behavior is O.K.? If you’re powerful enough or important enough, Alabama will simply look the other way. … By any objective standard… It is crystal clear that these women are telling the truth and Roy Moore is not.” Full story.

— “Republican Flake tweets check made out to Alabama Democrat’s campaign,” by POLITICO’s Nolan D. McCaskill: “A Republican senator on Tuesday posted a picture of a check made out to the campaign of Democratic Alabama Senate candidate Doug Jones. Sen. Jeff Flake tweeted an image of a completed check for $100 for Jones’ Senate campaign. The check to Jones’ campaign … is for ‘Country over Party,’ Flake wrote on Twitter.” Full story.

— “Pro-Jones super PAC hits Moore on charity spending,” by Campaign Pro’s Daniel Strauss: “The latest ad from a super PAC supporting Democrat Doug Jones in the Alabama Senate race frames Republican Roy Moore as a candidate that isn’t actually ‘for us.’ The 30-second statewide TV ad comes a week before the special election between Jones and Moore. The ad will be aired by Highway 31, a recently formed super PAC backing Jones. ‘Roy Moore says he’s for us … but what he does says otherwise,’ the narrator in the ad says. ‘Moore got paid $180,000 a year from his personal charity. A health care plan, a bodyguard and a private jet for part-time work.’” Full story.

MEANWHILE, A RESIGNATION — “Conyers vs. Conyers? Congressman backs son for seat,” by The Detroit News’ Jonathan Oosting, Michael Gerstein, and Melissa Nann Burke: “As the longest-serving member of Congress effectively resigned Tuesday amid sexual harassment allegations, U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr. tried to keep his legacy alive by endorsing his oldest son, John Conyers III, to succeed him in Congress. It was an unexpected move by the Detroit Democrat in what promises to be a heavily contested primary in the heavily Democratic 13th District. State Sen. Ian Conyers of Detroit — the 88-year-old congressman’s great-nephew who has been in the state Legislature for a little over a year — has already announced plans to run. … Other names circulating Tuesday as potential candidates included state Sens. David Knezek of Dearborn Heights and Coleman Young II of Detroit, former state Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, Westland Mayor Bill Wild, Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones and Councilwoman Mary Sheffield.” Full story.

NOT RESIGNING — “Nevada Democrat accused of sexual misconduct says he won’t resign,” by ABC’s John Parkinson and Mary Bruce: “Amid allegations of sexual harassment, embattled freshman Democratic Rep. Ruben Kihuen vowed he will not resign from his post, despite calls from Democratic leaders that he step aside. Instead, Kihuen is digging in with a shocking allegation of his own, taking aim at the leaders of his own party, [saying they] knew last year about a former campaign staffer’s allegations of misconduct but stood by his campaign nonetheless. Kihuen questioned why they are calling for his resignation now. … ‘I do find it interesting that the DCCC, Leader [Nancy] Pelosi and Chairman Ben Ray Lujan — they knew about these allegations last year,’ Kihuen said. ‘They looked into them. They didn’t find anything, and they continued investing millions of dollars in my campaign. They went out there and campaigned for me.’ House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who are both demanding Kihuen’s resignation, adamantly deny knowing about the allegations against Kihuen before BuzzFeed published a report last week.” Full story.

Days until the 2018 election: 335

Thanks for joining us! You can email tips to the Campaign Pro team at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].

You can also follow us on Twitter: @politicoscott, @ec_schneider, @politicokevin, @danielstrauss4 and @maggieseverns.

HE’S RUNNING — “Ex-Ohio AG, CFPB leader Richard Cordray announces run for Ohio governor,” by the Cincinnati Enquirer’s Jessie Balmert: “Touting support from former President Barack Obama and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau leader Richard Cordray announced he would run for Ohio governor. ‘I’m announcing today that I’m running to be the next governor for the state of Ohio,’ Cordray said Tuesday at a packed Lilly’s Kitchen Table, a diner in his hometown of Grove City.” Full story.

BIG GET — “Lexington Mayor Jim Gray running for Congress,” by The Lexington Herald-Leader: “After months of will-he, won’t-he whispering among Kentucky Democrats, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray made it official early Tuesday: He’s running for Congress. … Gray enters the race as the presumed favorite in a Democratic field that includes former Marine Corps fighter pilot Amy McGrath, state Sen. Reggie Thomas and perennial candidate Geoff Young. … Gray has the ability to self-finance a campaign, having spent $2.5 million of his own money over the course of his Senate campaign, but he’s playing catch-up.” Full story.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN 2018 CAMPAIGNS — “Wisconsin Republicans say Tony Evers ‘bowed to union pressure’ in Middleton teacher case,” by the Madison Capital Times’ Jessie Opoien: “The Republican Party of Wisconsin says state Superintendent Tony Evers ‘bowed to union pressure’ and did not do all he could to keep a teacher accused of harassing a colleague and watching pornography out of the classroom. But a Department of Public Instruction spokesman says the agency had no legal authority to do so at the time, and only in rare cases would the agency have the authority to revoke a license because of sexual harassment. Evers is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2018. A spokesman for his campaign said Republicans are rehashing old news to avoid their own weaknesses on the issue of sexual misconduct. The Republican Party of Wisconsin has gone after Evers relentlessly for the 2009 case, in which DPI and Evers did not revoke the license of Middleton-Cross Plains middle school science teacher Andrew Harris after he viewed sexually explicit images on his school computer.” Full story.

— Expect this to be a big part of the 2018 governor’s race in Wisconsin, says one Republican with knowledge of party plans: “It’s a fair bet that this attack will be a central component of Republicans’ messaging strategy over the long haul. From the day-to-day knife fight to the long arc of paid advertising if it becomes necessary, Tony Evers will be facing this question as long as needed.”

STAFFING UP — The Democratic National Committee has hired Robin Curran as its new email director. According to DNC spokeswoman Xochi Hinojosa, “The email director oversees our communications with grass-roots supporters, donors, and volunteers. As part of their role, they determine our overall strategy, testing, and optimization of the DNC email program.” Curran comes from Revolution Messaging and previously served as the digital production director for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

DEPT. OF BIO VIDEOS — Pat Ryan releases video on military career: Democrat Pat Ryan, who’s vying to challenge New York Rep. John Faso, is out with a biography video that describes his military career and criticizes Faso for his position on health care. “I remember the commander of this unit looking at me and saying, ‘Pat, this is going to save lives,'” Ryan says, explaining a technology company he started. Watch the video here.

CODA – QUOTE OF THE DAY: “When it happens to one of us, we’re guilty until proven innocent.” — Rep. Marcia Fudge on the difference in how Congress handles sexual misconduct allegations against black lawmakers compared with white lawmakers.

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everettwilkinson · 6 years

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Senators grumble over Trump backing Moore

With Scott Bland, Zach Montellaro and Elena Schneider

Story Continued Below

Days until the 2018 election: 335

Thanks for joining us! You can email tips to the Campaign Pro team at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].

You can also follow us on Twitter: @politicoscott, @ec_schneider, @politicokevin, @danielstrauss4 and @maggieseverns.

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from CapitalistHQ.com https://capitalisthq.com/senators-grumble-over-trump-backing-moore/

#TrumpNews #CapitalistHQ.com

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