ROOTED Weekly: 29 August 2020

In the Hurricane

Wednesday afternoon, I left my classroom shortly after my last class of the day. The skies to the south and east looked ominous and gray. Houston—along with all of East Texas and most of Louisiana—was bracing for the impact of Hurricane Laura.

That night, my little family braced for the storm that, fortunately, never really hit us. We dealt with a few power outages, but we were lucky to be spared any real consequences. These outages caused us to cancel our online learning programs for Thursday and Friday, so I've ended up with a four-day weekend, a welcome respite from the challenges of this new school year.

It reminded me that it's a good thing to take a step back every now and then, to be thankful for this moment.

We were lucky, but that's not the case for everyone. A pandemic, civil unrest, and a hurricane have all conspired to make this past week a trying one, to be sure.

• Our thoughts and prayers go out to those impacted by Hurricane Laura.
• Our thoughts and prayers go out to Kenosha, Wisconsin.
• Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of you.

May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you be safe.

This Week on ROOTED

Do Not Hurry; Do Not Rest

We cannot rush into a new school year, and, yet, we also cannot rest. We constantly work to make things a little better today than they were the day before.

ROOTEDStephen Hebert

From Around the Web

• Cynthia Overton wrote about strategies for valuing and retaining Black talent. Thank you so much for this! This wisdom is very much needed in schools, both public and independent.
• Patrick Cook-Deegan of Project Wayfinder wrote about the leadership challenges of running an education startup in the COVID era. The bottom-line: transparency, adaptability, teamwork.
• Back in June, economics and geography teacher (and friend of ROOTED) Donielle Albrecht discussed how she approaches race in the classroom on her podcast, Independent Educator.
• David A. Price at The Wall Street Journal writes about GPT-3, the artificial intelligence capable of actual writing. You can put it through its paces at simplify.so. What can this mean for education?
• Looking to develop asynchronous tasks for students? Eric Sheninger has you covered with this roadmap and these thoughts.
• In his keynote for the Digital Pedagogy Lab, José Vilson talks about justice AND gets nerdy about, of all things, roots! Quote: "My journey of understanding has any number of folks calling me a radical, but in math, all that means is that I’m finding the root of that which prevents our society from doing right by them." Stay radical!
• Managing digital classrooms just isn't the same as the old analog days—remember those?!?!? Here are some handy strategies. Most of them feel like common sense, but we all need reminders from time to time.
• If you're in an ISAS school, you may be interested in the upcoming series of eSeminars on racial literacy and anti-racism.

Favorite Tweet This Week

David Redmond (@MrDRedmond) tweeted an illustration of the benefits of student agency. Love the visual! I see some posters coming to classrooms near me.