Larry Ferlazzo
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larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Larry Ferlazzo
@larryferlazzo.bsky.social
8.5K followers 2K following 5K posts
A high school teacher for 23 years to ELL & English-proficient students, community organizer for previous 19 years, author or editor of 13 books on education, Ed Week teacher advice columnist, committed - though mediocre - basketball and Pickleball player.
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larryferlazzo.bsky.social
The Biggest Problem With Air Travel: Pajamas? www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
Sometimes I wish I did not know the difference between correlation and causation. I think I would be happier. I would certainly have a lot more suggestions for solving problems. And I could tell people, with a straight face, to wear suits to the airport to usher back in a golden age. If somebody forced me to identify the problem with air travel today (this happened to lots of comics in the 1980s!), the dress code would be the last thing I would suggest. To recover the conviviality of a time when you had enough elbow room to eat a meal on board the plane, you need the elbow room. You do not need the elbow pads. Simply putting on the garments of an era when sardines did not walk around the plane and mock your travel conditions (“Look at that loser!” “Packed like that and not even in a tasty, aromatic oil!”) is not enough. If anything, you will be more enraged than before because you are in a suit and you don’t understand what the change of outfit is supposed to accomplish, like my baby whenever I try to put him in a festive hat.
November 26, 2025 at 10:45 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
You can get this here a.co/d/6AAU1cO and look for our next one, The Better Teacher’s Toolbox, in July!
November 26, 2025 at 10:33 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
School Groups Sue to Stop Dismantling of the Education Department www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/u...
A coalition of educators, school districts, unions and an advocacy organization for people with disabilities sued the Trump administration in federal court on Tuesday, arguing that the government’s latest attempt to dismantle the Education Department was unlawful. The lawsuit challenges the far-reaching changes announced last week by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who signed agreements to effectively offload the management of some of her department’s important functions to other federal agencies. The education coalition argues in its lawsuit that the annual appropriations law approved by Congress requires the Education Department to carry out its programs and that Ms. McMahon lacks the authority to shift these functions to other federal agencies.
November 26, 2025 at 12:51 AM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
I’m a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/m... gift link
An A.I.-resistant English course has three main elements: pen-and-paper and oral testing; teaching the process of writing rather than just assigning papers; and greater emphasis on what happens in the classroom. Such a course, which can’t be A.I.-proof because that would mean students do no writing or reading except under a teacher’s direct supervision, also obliges us to make the case to students that it’s in their self-interest to do their own work. Colleagues I’ve talked to around the country do discuss A.I. with their students, and some have found creative ways to bring it into the curriculum, but few have turned to high-tech solutions like A.I.-detecting software or monitoring keystroke histories.
November 25, 2025 at 10:59 AM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
The Boomers Are Protesting Trump. Where Is Gen Z? www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/o...
Young people also no doubt notice the cowardice of many individuals and institutions that have the most at stake from Mr. Trump’s attacks against democracy. Some prominent universities and law firms have struck lopsided deals with the Trump administration; several media organizations and tech companies have likewise reached dubious settlements that involve paying the president in some form. Most recently, many companies have been solicited by Mr. Trump to make donations for the new ballroom he is building after tearing down the East Wing of the White House. He has reportedly expressed amazement at how easily he bullied these law firms and donors. Even Congress is quiescent, with the former Trump strategist Steve Bannon comparing it to the Duma, the rubber-stamp Russian parliament.
November 24, 2025 at 6:42 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Fearless turkeys four days before the big day
November 23, 2025 at 9:17 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
How many of us often receive an over abundance of this kind of gift?
November 23, 2025 at 5:21 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Now, THIS is AI use I can get behind. I do wonder, though, do whales really want to talk to US?——-I’m a Marine Biologist. This Is How I Talk to Whales. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/o...
Several years ago, A.I. technologies like large language models (the systems that power tools like ChatGPT) began to demonstrate an ability to predict word patterns and formulate new sentences on their own. I started to connect with computer science colleagues who wondered if these models could be applied to sperm whale codas. The whale biologist Shane Gero, who has been studying sperm whale families for two decades in the eastern Caribbean, had an annotated sperm whale data set featuring thousands of codas. In a pilot study we ran, A.I. that was fed the data was able to accurately predict the type of coda, the whale’s vocal clan and the individual whale with over 90 percent accuracy. We then realized it might be possible to use A.I. to study even larger swaths of whale codas, find patterns within the vocal data, and eventually translate what whales were saying to each other.
November 23, 2025 at 4:17 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
This seems like an especially astute analysis———Trump Is Mired in a War of Attrition www.nytimes.com/2025/11/22/o... gift link. By @jamellebouie.net
Trump entered office as popular as he had ever been, with an average approval rating of just under 51 percent and average disapproval around 39 percent. Now, more than 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the president and just over 40 percent approve. Recent individual polls conducted for Reuters, NPR and The Associated Press show Trump with approval as low as 36 percent and disapproval as high as 62 percent. On Tuesday, Congress almost unanimously passed a bill forcing the Department of Justice to release its files on Epstein. And MAGA stalwarts like Representative Majorie Taylor Greene are breaking from the fold to pursue their own interests. My Civil War analogy is not precise. It mostly reflects the fact that I spend a lot of time reading about the American Civil War, so it is often top of mind. And yet, if you will indulge me, it does feel as if November 2025 is to Trump what April and September 1862 were to the Confederacy. Not the beginning of the end, but the beginning of the beginning of the end.
November 22, 2025 at 5:48 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...
The military service, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has drafted a new policy that classifies such items “potentially divisive.”
November 20, 2025 at 9:34 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Democrats holding their largest advantage, 14 points, since 2017 on the question of who respondents would vote for if the midterm elections were held today;
November 19, 2025 at 12:23 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
And if corruption and authoritarianism are tied together — if they are two acts in the same story — then the struggle against Trump’s authoritarian designs must also be a struggle against his personal corruption as well as the corruption of the political system. “Just as good customs require laws in order to be maintained,” Machiavelli observed in his commentaries on the Roman historian Livy, “so laws require good customs in order to be observed.” When either laws or customs degrade, when the body politic begins to drift toward corruption, the only recourse — if the people hope to preserve a republic — is to build new institutions and with them new ways of political life.
November 19, 2025 at 12:21 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Trump administration to announce dismantling of much of Education Dept. wapo.st/4i6ZRr5 gift link
The Education Department plans to announce Tuesday that it will move multiple parts of the agency to other federal departments, an unprecedented and unilateral effort to dismantle an agency created by Congress to ensure all Americans have equal access to educational opportunity and better coordinate federal programs.
November 18, 2025 at 4:27 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
The Lesson We Teach Schoolchildren About the Holocaust Is Wrong www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/o...
That’s the authoritarian playbook: Promise safety through vigilance, unity through fear; describe aggression as preservation. Senator Joseph McCarthy did it when he turned the Cold War into a hunt for invisible enemies at home. Vladimir Putin does it when he brands dissenters as foreign agents. Donald Trump does it when he says that America is under attack “from within” and immigrants are a poison in the nation’s blood.
November 17, 2025 at 1:05 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Tell Students the Truth About American History www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...
But the more complex version of the story is not all negative. Jefferson did a lot of good for many people, even as he also did a lot of harm to many people. America itself has helped many millions of people, even as it has also enacted violence on many millions of people. This duality made intuitive sense to the students. They understood that their country and its heroes, like all of us, aren’t perfect—that everyone makes mistakes, even if we don’t immediately understand them as such. What we do is try to learn from our mistakes to become better versions of ourselves. “Doesn’t seem that hard,” an eighth grader in Memphis said, shrugging her shoulders. “Just say both things.”
November 16, 2025 at 2:04 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
I hardly ever used laptops in my ELL classes, & finally made the same decision for my IB classes. It was the right one 4 my students, tho created more work for me——-The Screen That Ate Your Child’s Education www.nytimes.com/2025/11/16/o...
Districts and teachers should also consider scaling back on the number of assignments that require a device to complete in the first place. A paper math worksheet or a handwritten response to a reading assignment is one less opportunity for kids to use a device chock-full of digital distractions, and one less opportunity to cut and paste an essay written by ChatGPT.
November 16, 2025 at 1:51 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
What Could Have Stopped Hitler — and Didn’t www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/b...
Still, though the main players may remain psychologically opaque, the road map to authoritarian disaster is laid out here in gleamingly sinister detail by a historian who knows the period as well as anyone could. And the playbook is only too familiar. One of the Nazis’ first targets was school curriculums. They managed to ban the antiwar classic “All Quiet on the Western Front” three years before Hitler was installed as chancellor in the Reichstag. The parallels to our own moment aren’t perfect, but they are resonant enough to make us ask, once again, who or what it will take for us to save ourselves.
November 15, 2025 at 12:44 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Democrats Sure Taught Trump a Lesson www.nytimes.com/2025/11/12/o...
If they win next year, Democrats will need to treat the next Congress not as a return to the status quo ante but as the beginning of a new era in which the principal task is to roll back the president’s effort to create and consolidate a personalist dictatorship. They’ll need to fortify the American political system against future attempts to play dictator and lay out a project of genuine democratic renewal. None of this is possible without a willingness to use power rather than just hold it. What we’ve seen this week is that there are still too many Democrats whose instinct is to retreat to normalcy rather than face the conflict at hand.
November 14, 2025 at 6:18 AM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Every week I think The Wapo editorial section can’t get worse but, then …..
November 13, 2025 at 2:30 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
The truth is, Latino voters expect their leaders to deliver not just on economic opportunities and messaging related to the economy, but also on safety, also on fairness, also on opportunities that create acceptance as Americans. And failure to do so — we’ve seen time and time again how it ultimately leads to harsher, discriminatory immigration policies that alienate voters and miss out the opportunities for both trust and trust converting into turnout and engagement. Which is why as opposed to accepting that false choice, we ran through it.
November 12, 2025 at 2:53 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
There’s gotta be more than this - could the Dems have private guarantees that The GOP and Trump would approve an extension? Even if they do, why would they trust them?
As part of Democrats’ agreement to end the shutdown, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is promising Senate Democrats a vote in December to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies that are due to expire at the end of the year short of Congressional action. Democrats will also get to determine what extension bill gets a vote. The government-opening agreement also guarantees that federal employees laid off during the shutdown are re-hired and gives federal employees backpay.
November 10, 2025 at 12:08 AM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Families in Limbo After Supreme Court Order Interrupts Food Stamp Payments www.nytimes.com/2025/11/08/u...
By its own admission, the Trump administration can access tens of billions in leftover funds to finance full SNAP benefits in November. But Mr. Trump has declined to use the money, and his aides have claimed they cannot help, despite the fact that they have reworked other parts of the federal budget to sustain their priorities during the shutdown — including to pay officers conducting mass deportations.
November 8, 2025 at 4:41 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
From The New Yorker
November 8, 2025 at 1:11 PM
larryferlazzo.bsky.social
Judge sharply condemns federal use of force in Chicago immigration operation www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
CHICAGO — A federal judge on Thursday delivered a damning condemnation of the use of force in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement campaign in this city, saying officers have unnecessarily terrorized local residents who have sought to peacefully protest or document their actions.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis cited several examples of what she said was evidence of excessive force that contradicted statements from federal authorities who defended the actions of immigration officers who used tear gas, pepper spray or other nonlethal crowd control devices.
The incidents came after the judge last month issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting officers from using chemical munitions on nonviolent demonstrators and journalists.
“I find the defendants’ evidence simply not credible,” Ellis said. “Overall, this calls into question everything the defendants are doing.”
She added the government is using force “untethered” to any specific threat. “I see little reason for the use of force that the federal agents are currently using,” Ellis said. “I would find the use of force shocks the conscience.
November 6, 2025 at 6:13 PM
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Armed ICE officers chase teacher into preschool in Chicago www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...
Immigration officers arrested a teacher early Wednesday in Chicago after chasing her into the grounds of a private preschool and grabbing her as parents and students looked on, according to a local official, witnesses and video footage of the incident.
Several parents said they were waiting to drop off their children around 7 a.m. at Rayito de Sol, a Spanish immersion day care and school, when they saw armed officers in black vests with the words “POLICE ICE” run behind the woman and into the lobby of the building. Witnesses and school employees told The Washington Post they thought the school was under attack and scrambled into rooms and vehicles outside in search of safety.
The arrest appears to be one of the first instances during Trump’s second administration in which immigration officers entered school grounds to make an arrest. During the Biden and Obama administrations, schools were considered “sensitive locations,” and agents were barred from entering with few exceptions. But the Trump administration eliminated those policies in January, allowing agents to make arrests at schools, hospitals and churches. There have been few such arrests, and the Department of Homeland Security has said it did not plan to raid or target schools.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin disputed that the woman was arrested inside the school, saying she was detained in “a vestibule.” The outer doors to the school are open to the public but to enter through a second set of double doors, staff must buzz in parents and faculty through a lobby after verifying their identity. Bystander video of the arrest shows agents in both the lobby area and deeper inside the school.

November 5, 2025 at 8:54 PM