#teaching issues

[friendlyorange]

The weirdest thing about going to college for teaching in the united states is the giant CANYON of disconnect between what we're taught and what we actually do in a classroom.

like we're taught how to diversify methods of instruction in order to most equitably reach the diverse populations of our classrooms and inspire them to do their best writing/reading/speaking (im an English teaching major) but then in reality the students in your classroom are insanely below the level they need to be at in order to engage with age-appropriate lessons for them

we're taught how to take common core standards and transform them into meaningful and deep lessons but we're only given 45-90 mins of planning per day (if we're lucky) and the rest needs to be done outside of school or after hours if you can't do it quickly enough, and teachers are always expected to do research outside of the classroom, as well as collaboration, tweaking of lesson plans, etc.

we're told that students crave learning and they crave fun projects and they crave kinesthetic exercises, but then when I try those things in the classroom everyone complains and halfasses their participation, and im lucky if half of them actually pass something in, whether its an assignment, a test, a project, or an assessment.

we're told that we need to have open communication not only between teachers but between teachers and admin and parents, but then im lucky if one of the ten parents I email about their kid failing emails me back, and im luckier if admin takes a behaviorally disturbed student out of my class for insulting me or other students.

like... i guess my point is that teaching education is so idyllic and utopian, and actual classrooms are a goddamn nightmare of behavioral issues, lack of time/resources, exhausting interactions with students who don't want to be there or participate, and insane expectations from students, parents, and admin alike.

Like... no wonder the teaching field is hemorrhaging teachers right now. How can ANYONE work under the insane conditions we're forced to try and teach in. I'm so tired and I'm not even out of school yet. It's actually psychotic.

[transjudas]

A world where roses bloom

[saltpepperbeard]

"...What was it again?"

[chawliekin]

and if I said that dennis’ insistence on being the breadwinner/provider despite literally being a pampered princess who dgaf about traditional roles of masculinity in every other regard (aside from ego) is because his mom only stayed with/chose frank for his wealth and dennis is highly aware that he’s difficult to love and unable to show his emotions openly so he has to be contributing something to the relationship materially in order to feel like he’s worth staying for… and mac grew up with parents who were extremely ambivalent to him and eachother so he has to overcompensate by proving his worth at every given moment and seeking praise/validation from people (and religious icons) who will never demonstrate the same amount of dedication to him but he has no idea how else to desperately keep himself close to those he loves other than by eroding himself into something they’ll approve of… dear god they’re both exactly what the other needs — someone who can’t and won’t leave them even if they try — and they don’t even see it…

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

growing up with a perpetually anxious primary caregiver is such a mindfuck. that shit will rewire your nervous system

[arsenicflame]

happy "our marriage is never gonna recover from this" day

[zhuletta]

It must have hurt so much seeing Archer, Olu, and Jim wanting to join Zheng. Like— I don’t feel like Stede’s reaction is fundamentally wrong. Ed literally left him once because he wasn’t pirate enough during the whole Calico Jack thing, and now left him because he’s too much of a pirate. Stede is in such a rough place, because he’s finally coming on his own, feeling worthy, respected when he had never felt like that before, and even though he’s everything he dreamed of, both the person he loves AND a significant part of his crew are leaving him for someone who tried to kill them. Like— are we all seeing the same scene? Of course he feels like he has to fight for them. Stede probably feels like his whole life he never fought back against anyone, he was bullied his whole life, bent for everyone’s wishes. He’s tired of it, maybe if he shows the people he loves his devotion to them maybe they’ll choose him.

Stede’s used to only being loved when he’s trying, after all.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

I've been thinking lately about how wonderfully intentional the OFMD team was at cutting the show to avoid paralleling Ed with his father.

Ed's father was awful and abusive, throwing things, drinking heavily, and hitting Ed's mother (and probably Ed as well, if we have to guess). He was cruel to Ed's mother about things out of her control, and created an atmosphere of absolute terror in their home.

And I think it was a very, very smart move for the show to be cut in such a way that it's impossible to look at it in good faith and argue that Ed is abusive or he can be paralleled with his father. There are some things that we know were cut from the final show that I think were very wise decisions - including Ed throwing a knife at Izzy (we could see that as late as the trailer), Ed using the cake topper he painted like himself to push around and hit the Stede figurine, and Ed drinking during darker moments at the start of s2.

To be very clear, I think even if they hadn't cut these things, there wouldn't be a leg to stand on with the "Ed is abusive" argument because Ed is always, always shown to be difficult to goad into anger, only becomes violent as self-defense, and will generally just let people stomp all over him for a while before he pushes back, but I still think it was a smart choice to make this stuff as clear as possible. They're even quite careful, especially in season 2, to make sure they only show Ed drinking socially, never on his own.

The really nice thing about this choice, too, is it makes it very clear who actually is being paralleled with Ed's dad. The composition of the shot where Ed's choking Izzy in s1e10 is already a masterpiece, it's such a clear parallel with the lighthouse painting in the background to the shot of Ed strangling his father with the lighthouse in the background. And when they're careful to avoid showing Ed drinking in s2, at the same time they're including quite a bit of Izzy drinking heavily and even show him being an angry drunk (now, admittedly, that's in s2e4 so Izzy has a lot of shit Going On there, but still). Even as Ed's trying so hard to be a proper pirate in s2e1, we're still shown that he's hiding things from Izzy and often feeling freaked out - Izzy's already realized at the start of the season that he has Fucked Up, but he's clearly still the one behind the shitty atmosphere. It's just very clever, how we're shown how clearly Izzy parallels Ed's dad in all these subtle little ways.

[paleoleigh]

Look. I'm tired of pretending Fang doesn't have Big Dad Energy (he literally took Ed fishing! That's a dad thing!!) and I think there's great potential for Ed to finally find a positive father figure (nvm that he and Fang are like 10 years apart max idk) especially with another man of Pacific Islander heritage which I think is huge.

The only potential downside is if Fang is also sleeping with Lucius....like then his boyfriend's best friend is hooking up with his dad. Idk I think this is funny.

[lesbianphobic]

I truly believe Stanley had the potential to be as smart and successful as Ford but because their parents designated Ford the smart one and Stan the "free-spirited" one, Stan never believed he had the same potential and still believes he doesn't

[fandomsandfeminism]

Is there anything more bone-chilling as a woman who teaches in a middle school than when a male coworker starts to complain about kids breaking the dress code? (Or not EVEN breaking the actual dress code since ours is really lax, but breaking the dress code in their mind)

It's never good.

It's never a good time.

[tending-the-hearth]

thinking abt tlt, som, and ttc era percy

percy who's still struggling to find his footing at camp, and every single time during those first three prophecies, he's seen as the outcast, and never once brought into the fold until he comes back after finishing the prophecy.

there's always something that pushes him to the outskirts, something that gives the other campers fodder to make fun of him or completely ignore him.

he thinks he's found his place after the minotaur? nope, turns out everyone sees him as a bad omen and he doesn't make any friends because the entire camp refuses to be around him.

he thinks he's found his place after lighting thief? restoring zeus' bolt? NOPE he finds out tyson is a cyclopes and his brother and now one of his closest friends + the campers are icing him out and grover's not around.

he thinks he's found his place after sea of monsters? restored thalia's tree and hey, now he's got a cousin? NOPE he's pushed aside in favor of her by the campers and chiron and is seen as incompetent and his best friend has been kidnapped and he's being blamed.

rereading those first three books now is so painful, because the way percy gets treated by the camp hurts so much, because literally all he wants is to be accepted by this group of people he should have so much in common with, but every single turn meets him with more people pushing him away.

and it isn't until battle of the labyrinth, until he's named as the child of the prophecy, that people actually start to treat him as one of them.

[saltpepperbeard]

gnawing on my arm because i think there's something to be said about how stede not only dreams about himself with a beard, but ed with his full beard back too. like, the dream seems to be riddled with imagery that he thinks ed would want.

and i say this especially because of how stede reacted when ed had to shave his beard. he freaked out on his behalf. he shrieked in horror whereas ed was entirely unbothered. he feared he had ruined him, had dragged him down to some despicable level, when in actuality, ed was completely content to shed that part of his persona.

and then there he is dreaming about ed with that part right on back.

so there's very clearly still a part of his mind that's convinced that's what ed wants. because why wouldn't he? everyone else seems to. and why would he want the softness and femininity stede had been bullied for his entire life?

which in turn plays into his own imagery too. bearded, masculine, fiercesome, rugged...

because how could someone love what everyone has hated him for? how could someone want what everyone has tried to quite literally beat out of him?

[emimii]

i luv drawing over things and making shit posts

[chamerionwrites]

Intellectually I understand where people are coming from, but personally I do THE biggest double take every time someone boils down conservative Christian ideology (and/or secularized cultural reflections thereof) to a kind of dour puritanism that proclaims happiness is sin/suffering is a moral good/everyone should be miserable all the time. Like I get it! I do. But also, institutionally, I have never met a group of more passionate worshippers and vicious defenders of their own comfort than evangelical Christians. There is a reason the common thread between my various weird triggers more or less boils down to "toxic positivity." There is a REASON my exvangelical tag is #walking away from omelas.

[sleepystede]

Something I spent way too long thinking about during my 56382944th rewatch, in regards to a very specific line that Ed says in episode 1 of S2:

I'm the fucking devil and these are the kids.

I've always casually thought it might be song lyrics that went over my head (we see Ed using lyrics a lot - like the whole, "here I go again on my own" sequence), but it's not--

Ed craves death. He wants the crew to kill him. And despite Ed never stepping as fully into a parental figure with his crew, he sees that modeled from Stede and no doubt he thought about it.

If the crew are Ed's kids, and if the first person Ed ever killed was HIS DAD for being horribly abusive (devilish behavior)--

Ed is embodying qualities he saw in his dad in hopes of the crew finally killing him.

This adds another layer of reasons Ed experiences so much guilt when he comes back from the gravy basket. He deeply UNDERSTANDS the pain the crew feels, the agony that led them to make that decision.

He gets it because he lived it.

Forgiving himself for these horrible deeds also means forgiving little Ed for what he did to protect himself and his mother.

There's also the more surface-level meaning of "son of the devil" archetype, with the crew being presented as just as devious as the devil himself. But this analysis doesn't sit with me as deeply as Ed=embodying his dad.