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mulberrydays.bsky.social
Mal
@mulberrydays.bsky.social
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mulberrydays.bsky.social
screenshot of Michel from Gilmore Girls, sighing behind his desk, ignoring a ringing phone, head in his hands. subtitle reads, "Today, I am suffering from ennui."
August 26, 2025 at 7:19 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
classic shot of Scotty from Star Trek IV trying to speak to a computer by holding up the mouse like a microphone
July 26, 2025 at 5:12 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
Friday July 18th, at about 6:30pm EST: Alfie Kohn!

i almost went with the Deming lecture but now i'm leaning towards Symposium on our Youngest Citizens. it maps really well to Grow Up from the day before, not to mention Uncle Alfie being prominently features in Zoe Bee's essay on motivation.
image features Alfie Kohn in a businesslike shirt and tie, leaning over the podium at the Deming Institute and pulling a silly face as he exaggerated the word RIGOR! which i have stamped over the picture in bright red like a teacher's note. (Uncle Alfie talks a lot about the dangerous proliferation of the term "rigor" in describing rigid, inflexible, cold dead curriculum.)
July 14, 2025 at 1:25 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
Thursday July 17th, at about 6:30 EST: Grow Up!

Why does everyone hate children?

a deeply compelling exploration of the phrase "grow up" and a society in need of an overhaul in all the frameworks we use to think about children.

(if we're extraordinarily lucky, Neilly or Sarah might even pop by!)
an evocative image explained in the essay, which will very likely stick with me the rest of my life: Neilly standing outside of a hospital somewhere in Ireland, holding a burrito in each hand. she's looking rather contemplatively into the middle distance, back towards the shop she just came from (a place which sells food for market value currency) which is so different from the place in front of her, where her baby is about to be born (a place which offers care, free at the point of service, to anyone who needs it) and it's such an ordinary day, and it's such an ordinary parking lot, with some ordinary trees and houses in the background. how many times has Neilly bought a couple of burritos in her life, and not had to pause to wonder at the fundamentally different structures of these worlds? a world of care, and a world of profit. i don't know. i think about that a lot lately, anyway.
July 14, 2025 at 1:25 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
Wednesday July 16th, at about 6:30pm EST: Race To Nowhere

this 2009 documentary gets a little bleak in places (CW teen suicide) but i value it for, among other things, spending a significant amount of time listening to the actual kids it's talking about.
image features the back of a child walking down a potentially endless school corridor lined with golden lockers, a blinding light at the end of the tunnel. the kid is wearing a blue hoodie and green backpack, in a very grounding and earthly central focus.
July 14, 2025 at 1:25 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
Tuesday July 14th, at about 6:30pm EST, Grading is a Scam (and Motivation is a Myth) | A Professor Explains

Zoe Bee is my actual hero

honestly such a profoundly fundamental essay that i consider this to be the basic 101 primer that was never present in my undergrad.
image features the essayist, Zoe Bee, sitting in front of a book case pulling a 'yeesh' sorta face and making air quotes while a text overlay remarks that grades neither reflect nor communicate students' learning.
July 14, 2025 at 1:25 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
starting tomorrow, Monday July 13th, at about 6:30pm EST, we'll be watching classic 2015 documentary Most Likely To Succeed, featuring the students of High Tech High in their unconventionally progressive classrooms!

(reruns available in other time slots for folks on different schedules! just ask 😉)
image features a close-up on some wooden clockwork project, as students from High Tech High watch and gesture towards one of the final exhibitions we see taking shape over the course of the film.
July 14, 2025 at 1:25 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
this monday evening in in the @humrespro.bsky.social discord server we're gonna be watching @munecatmusic.bsky.social debunk a bunch of body language experts, with style and flair which i will not be reading too much into!
musical sensation münecat, standing in front of a close-up shot of a bright orange player board from classic 90s game Guess Who (i do not remember them being orange - was that a British thing? how did Nickelodeon not sue them for that color?) the game of Guess Who consists of 24 little cartoon portraits on hinges, which players flick face-down with a satisfying little *clack* as they try to narrow down which one their opponent is describing. münecat is holding a microphone in one hand and gesticulating with the other, offering one of the many justifiably snark-laden criticisms found in this video. across the bottom of the screen there's also a tab of facebook reaction icons, mirroring the nonsense limitation of 'six basic emotions' being criticized in this bit of the essay. if forced to select one of those six basic emotions put forth by Paul Ekman, to describe münecat in this shot or throughout the video, i would have to say Disgust? of course Anger is a contender, but i'm more concerned that there wasn't an option for the aforementioned Snark. clearly Ekman was not a millennial. (more to the point, none of these emotions could be instantly read from the screenshot)
April 11, 2025 at 12:04 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
for EdTube next Monday in the HRP discord server i think we're gonna be watching the classic Leftist Cooks essay Journalism and Bias
black-and-white image of Neil from the Leftist Cooks, rocking crisp white shirtsleeves a dark waistcoat, very disheveled-academic-chic. their hands raised to their forehead, running through long hair in what might be described as frustration, or dismay, or grasping at a thin thread of remaining sanity...but their eyes are on us, the camera, either daring or begging us to share in this feeling. against the wall to the side is a conspiracy-board, classic cork and pushpins, yarn (presumably red if this weren't in greyscale) and paper clippings - some read "islamaphobia" or "immigrants," others read "2011 phone hacking scandal" or show logos for Fox News and NPR. it isn't a tight, organized web of connections, though - this board has had a bad day. clippings are curling loose, yarn falling off the bottom of the screen... the overall impression is that the absolute mess of attempting to sort through events and make sense of the world has driven Neil to something perhaps Lovecraftian in its incoherence. rage? exhaustion? desperation? i do share these feelings, Neil. stop looking at me like that.
March 13, 2025 at 2:02 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
i think next Monday's showing in the HRP discord is gonna be something classic, like an @alfiekohn.bsky.social lecture. maybe the Deming one? that was the first one of his i saw when i was losing my mind as a teaching student.

do we think this image is too silly or low-res to be the event banner?
screencapture of Alfie Kohn, distinguished gentleman in a nice striped button shirt, tie, glasses, gripping a podium and shouting "RIGOR!" to which i have helpfully added a cheap WordArt in large bright red Copperplate Gothic font. the reasoning behind this image is that i have, over the years, come to share in Uncle Alfie's disdain for the term "rigor" as it seems to be applied everywhere in education, and now i cannot hear the word without this image shouting into my head.
March 7, 2025 at 1:53 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
tomorrow evening, 7pm EST in the Human Restoration Project discord server, we're gonna be watching the Carlos Maza exposé on critical race theory and moral panics!
image of Carlos Maza, extremely attractive latino nerd in glasses and an ironically worn American flag bathrobe, sitting on a red couch in front of a conspiracy-board of a wall. his head is framed in the center of all the clippings and webs of red yarn. a half-crazed smile on his face shows gritted teeth. the classic 'bisexual lighting' of leftist youtubers is distinctly redder, an offputting warm purple to light the set full of red couch and red yarn. the tension in his expression is also at odds with the couch and the robe. while the yarn matches the couch in color, it matches his expression in tension. and what is a couch doing in front of a conspiracy board anyway? the whole image is stressing itself out.
March 2, 2025 at 3:31 PM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
thinking a lot about this lately, and how closely it resembles every college discussion post on Blackboard. "I really like how you said progress is moving things forward, Jeremy! That's such a good point, I agree."

and they both get full credit for checking that box on the rubric, 10/10 Good Job!
image of a post by user stillorangecrushed from February 15, 2023. text reads: "three suited men in my coffeeshop. one of them just said, 'my personal idea of progress is moving things forward,' which is actually just the definition. everyone's nodding. guys like this are in charge of every industry and it's clearly why trains explode."
February 23, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
i don't know much else about this educator - of course unschoolers can vary pretty wildly - but hot damn i am here for this take!
image of a post from another platform, user Leah McDermott, known as Your Natural Learner post reads: "Adults who compare a child's school to a job are deeply wounded from their school years and need to heal. It is not a child's job to sit at a desk all day. And dooming them to a life of that by 'preparing them early' is indicative of a broken system."
January 10, 2025 at 5:10 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
i don't know if this one is true or if it's ragebait but it is certainly illustrative

consider how early and often we train kids to care more about Correct Answers than about thorough comprehension, or perspective

but it's harder to *measure* comprehension and perspective, isn't it?
photo, presumably cropped directly from a children's school worksheet: Question Number Eight reads, "Reasonableness - Marty ate four sixths of his pizza and Luis ate five sixths of his pizza. Marty ate more pizza than Luis. How is that possible?" on the line below the question, a child's handwriting penciled in: "Marty's pizza is bigger than Luis's pizza." the question is marked with a big X and a note, presumably from the teacher, correcting: "That is NOT possible because five sixths is greater than four sixths, so Luis ate more."
December 26, 2024 at 3:41 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
"First they said they needed data about the children to find out what they're learning. Then they said they needed data about the children to make sure they are learning.

Then the children only learnt
What could be turned into data.

Then the children became data."

~Michael Rosen
sketched illustration by Chris Riddell depicting a towering teacher figure, eyes hidden behind blank glasses, looming over two small children, and pointing to a scantron test sheet. across the page, a quote is written in sort of loose/spidery capital lettering: "The data have landed First they said they needed data about the children To find out what they're learning. Then they said they needed data about the children To make sure they are learning. Then the children only learnt What could be turned into data. Then the children became data." - Michael Rosen
December 10, 2024 at 11:53 AM
mulberrydays.bsky.social
me in my Eiko chamber
screen capture from the turn-of-the-millennium classic Final Fantasy Nine, showing the character of Eiko saying "Welcome home!" to her friends Dagger and Zidane, standing in front of the Eidolon Wall
November 21, 2024 at 10:45 PM