An educated mind is an opened mind. An opened mind is a liberal mind. Teachers don't have to intend to create liberals, it happens naturally. |
On the inside:
- The 101st consecutive weekly edition
- You say it's your birthday...
- Plenty of links to educationally-related diaries from the past week
- As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss.
Door's Open...
You say it's your birthday...
Best laid plans sometimes get derailed. I know I had a topic somewhere I was planning to write about. But stuff has been looming for the past couple of weeks and now it is past the looming stage.
So I've decided to start writing about it here. Whenever I write more personal stuff at Teacher's Lounge, reader participation is low. Maybe that will be a blessing in disguise and I can get the diary I feel obligated to write done so I can post it tomorrow and it can be resoundingly ignored. Or maybe this time I'll be pleasantly surprised. Given the lesson of yesterday, I'll not count on the latter.
I've had this huge meeting (from my perspective) with the academic dean approaching over the past couple of weeks. The purpose was an attempt to solicit some aid in trying to get my words published into book form.
I wrestled with how to prepare all week...or maybe all 2.5 weeks that this meeting was on the schedule. In so doing it also came to my attention that 15 years ago tomorrow is the day I came out/was outed. In Teacher's Lounge #49, I believe (Answers in Search of Questions, I posted a bit about that. But that was one of those TL's which people avoided in droves. I did include links to coming out stuff at the time:
...my two "coming out letters", to the Chair and to my colleagues.
It also occurs to me that it is now two years since I became a member of DailyKos. In the first diary From the Heart on September 25, I laid out my purpose for being here. Here I am, 194 diaries later (101 weeks of Teacher's Lounge and 4 other diaries about it) and in all of the diaries about our exclusion from ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act), I have seen something akin to this:
I think dKos could use some trans education
from folks in the know.
It makes me wonder why I have wasted so much effort. Because that effort was made so that we wouldn't get dumped from legislation like ENDA.
If I don't get so disgusted with some of the people here that I leave DK forever, you may see more about that particular birthday tomorrow.
So what spoiled everything? First inkling that we were being dumped from ENDA was Wednesday...or maybe it was years ago when we started getting dumped from any sort of protective legislation for gays and lesbians that was put forward anywhere. It got worse over the next couple of days.
Being discarded from the society as not important enough to worry about is never a good feeling, for an individual or a group. Fortunately we transfolk have plenty of practice. We will survive. Well, at least some of us will survive. Many don't.
But that should be withheld for tomorrow, I suppose.
I gave the short report of my meeting with the dean in Happy Stories last night:
Okay, so I met with the Dean. Marion was very interested in helping me make this publishing thing happen. She has some connections with some alternate press people. Well see if maybe we can do a book that is more biography and one that is more philosophy and politics.
She also was interested in the concept of trying to get the three collections of poetry (An Opened Mind, State of the Onion, and A Transition through Poetry published into chapbooks. Or maybe more. The faculty member who would have the most information about the process is on sabbatical, but we're going to try to get this done, perhaps using our state of the art printing facilities (our Creative Arts and Technology division is top-flight).
She also asked if it would be easier for me going forward if my faculty line was changed in order to facilitate my creative work. I'm not positive what that exactly means, but I am, as always, open to change.
How's that for an understatement.
Robyn
I'm really going to have to find out what that faculty line change thing is about. When she said that, I was as stunned as a carp in a pond someone threw an M-80 into. Maybe you can help me flesh out what this might mean in the comments.
--Robyn Elaine Serven
--Bloomfield College, NJ
Education Round-up: I've categorized.
For examples of People Teaching, please visitPhilosophy and PoliticsStories: Ourselves and OthersFreedom on CampusNCLB/Department of Education/Standardized Testing/AssessmentMoneyAction, Advocacy and InformationSpecial section: Ahmadinejad and Columbia |
I'll be hanging around most of the day, actively waiting for your comments (actually, I'll be working in another program, but I'm close by), so at least one person will be here to discuss whatever anyone wants to discuss.
The Not-so-many Rules
- No general bashing of administrators, politicians, etc, just on general principles. If you want to bash them, have a point and a plan.
- No bitching about students unless you're talking about what you are going to do to alleviate the problems you think the students have.
- Introductions are encouraged, but not essential.
- I have no investment in hosting the Teacher's Lounge. If someone else thinks they can and wants to do it better, cool. I just want the space. And not for teachers only, but respecting the general theme of teaching and learning.
- Teacher's Lounge can be "slow blogging" if you want it to be. You don't get quality writing if you demand velocity. It doesn't have to be the case that something posted today is dead by tomorrow. I would like it to eventually be up and active 24/7, but that may have to wait until I have developed an independent blog site.
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Every Saturday I'll post a clean slate, around 12 noon EST.