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To Those Teachers…

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Photo by  Kenny Eliason  on  Unsplash This is for  those  teachers. You know the ones. This is for the teachers who create classrooms that feel like cozy nooks of acceptance. The ones who create immersive lessons that make learning feel like an adventure. The ones who can’t make it through the Dollar Spot at Target without purchasing the tiny flower pots or the neon pencil pouches that will  definitely  come in handy at some point. Hopefully. This is for the teachers who keep granola bars and tampons and band-aids on hand — even when the school district says that the responsibility rests with the parents. The ones who make students feel genuinely liked. The ones who treat their students as whole individuals — as people with strengths, weakness, hopes, fears, traumas, and triumphs that shape their actions from day to day. You see, I am a high school English teacher. I teach seniors. Lately I find myself awash in the copious amounts of apathy that can...
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It’s a Quandary. And a Nightmare For Moderators.

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  Trying to avoid Facebook tagging comments as spam. But how? Photo by Birger Strahl on Unsplash Creating Interaction, Not Disputes We want better interaction and more members reading each other’s stories, especially in the Facebook groups We can read, clap, and follow directly from Facebook, and it’s triggering more and more comments in Medium Facebook groups, where everyone is a Medium member. We can read using the built-in browser, and then drop our own story link under it, using a copy/paste comment including our story link. Directly from Facebook, the view/read and claps count to create benefits for the writer when a story is monetised. This is a screen shot of a new member posting one link up to 52 times in one day. And saying they have read 52 other stories. With exactly the same text, these comments trigger Facebook The Quandry For Group Moderators Facebook gets triggered by repetitive comments. This is what sets Facebook's triggers off. The same copy/paste c...
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Children and Family Recovery Plan: One-Year Update

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  As someone who grew up in San Francisco, I know what an amazing City this is to be a kid in. I benefitted from our public schools and the strong community networks that helped lift me out of poverty and set me on the path of going to college. I also saw where our City too often falls short, by failing to connect people in need with programs or providing the basics to support our families. We must be a city that puts children and families first. Of course, that starts with public education, but it also requires us to make investments in early education and services. The pandemic was devastating for our kids. We will be dealing with the fallout from learning loss, socioeconomic impacts, and mental health trauma for years. In February of last year, I published my  Children and Family Recovery Plan . My goal was to identify how the City can support children and families in recovering from the impacts of the pandemic. We created this plan by working with the community. Thousands ...
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If You Want to Be a Creator, Delete All (But Two) Social Media Platforms

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  Pixel art, woman, NetWorker, social  — @Deleted User (fast). Image created on Midjourney. In October 2022, during the whole Elon Musk debacle, I finally deleted Twitter from my phone. Around the same time, I also logged out of Instagram and Facebook. I had wanted to remove these distractions from my life for a while, and thanks to Elon’s shenanigans, I got the push to do so. Six months later, I realized something that runs in direct opposition to almost every single piece of creator advice out there:  I don’t miss having social profiles. I’m not surprised that I don’t miss them from a  personal  perspective. It’s conventional wisdom nowadays: social media =/= connections. Without Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and so on, I have more time, more energy, and deeper connections with my actual friends. I read more. I write in my novel more. But I also don’t miss them from a  professional  perspective. I’m not missing out on business opportunities. I’m not ...
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