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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1m

Sometimes miss the days when I was okay with teaching the same 2 essays all year and drilling kids/seeing if I could just keep them awake

John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 5m

Can also tell you everyone hates it—so at least in my experience (a) standardized tests make school easier for kids and (b) it makes them enjoy school less. Not ideal!

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 5m

Every class I’ve taught for the past 12 years has had a high-stakes English test attached to it, and one fun fact I can tell you is that it’s actually far easier for everyone involved—students, teachers—to throw in the towel and just make the class straight up test prep.

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 11h

Obviously the ability to read matters if you want to get kids to care, but extremely low skills are not actually the only, or even the main thing that needs fixing in most HS classrooms

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 11h

This is why HS classrooms so often become contentless literacy workshops—even when they do not have to. There can be more than one reading-related problem to solve.

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 11h

“K-12” as a category leads to claims like the one that solutions to problems with 3rd grade literacy are on a clear, coherent continuum with solutions to problems facing most high school English teachers. “Can kids read” and “How do we make kids care about books” are actually two different things.

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 15h

I love this!

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 16h

Teaching transcendentalists makes you say some kind of wild things to kids. Ending of my lesson today included me saying, roughly, “Remember kids, Emerson would argue that each of you is an expression of a divine force, almost like you’re each little gods.” They were like, Okay man thanks.

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Just read in the intro that she said in a letter to her friend that she was inclined to just call the book “People Growing Old” and I’m honestly hooked

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Did not know about this podcast—very cool. Thanks for the tip!

John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Excited to read this

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Ish

John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Final 1/6 of a book usually sucks

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 1d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

So much bad stuff stemming from a childish refusal to acknowledge that all of our time is limited here. I sincerely don’t think these people value life in any serious, adult way.

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Do you ever think about the fact that people responsible for this are presumably conscious of the fact that they have one life to live here, that this whole thing is a precious blip—and they choose to live lives that result in this sort of thing?

NPR @npr.org · 2d

A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down.

This 4-year-old's heart is failing. A federal grant that might help him was canceled

A Cornell University researcher has been developing an artificial heart for children for more than 20 years. Now, his research is on hold and his lab is shut down.

n.pr

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

I learned this from a kid who loves immortal technique and doesn’t like musicals, btw

John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Do sometimes think about the fact that Immortal Technique bullied Lin Manuel Miranda at Hunter College HS. People from NYC who know that school will appreciate how funny and weird that is. Also they were that close in age? Whole thing is wild.

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Funny that when writing feedback I recycle the note style of my favorite teachers. It’s like expressing a tic inherited from a parent. “V. interesting”

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 1d

Fall: making a little butternut squash soop and grading papers

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 2d

Also just trying to get to know them well enough so that they can’t sneak cheating in—and so they don’t feel like that’s something they have to do for me

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 2d

The journal thing has been one step! Trying to get them to think of writing as a thinking process. For longer research papers I’ve been trying to include a kind of autobiographical piece to it. So, kids wrote oral history papers—or wrote about how Du Bois could help them think about their identity

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 2d

Definitely sharing this w the kids

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 2d

It’s like, yes, but not like this

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 2d

Interesting that in both cases we see good, progressive ideas gone bad: standardization is motivated, in part, by a belief in student abilities to achieve equally; student led stuff is motivated by some decent progressive ideas.

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John Downes-Angus @johndownesangus.bsky.social · 2d

Gonna read this Thoreau journal entry with the kids to frame our journaling for the week Tuesday—standardization can help but writing is more interesting than all that

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