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Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

3 Jun

As a mid-level administrator, at several institutions, I constantly heard the word "optics." Too many times it didn't matter what work we did, only how that work *looked, and usually only how that work looked to people not directly impacted by the work.

At too many institutions, "innovation" is rarely about asking hard questions. "Inclusion" is too often about "metrics," and not about people. "Hard work" is often less about the quality of the work and more about supporting and reenforcing a culture of busy-ness.

I once talked about "doing less with less" in front of my provost--arguing for more carefully deploying resources to make them more effective, assuring staff were properly compensated for their labor, etc. I was glared at and told we should all "do the work of two people."

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Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

19 Mar

I’ve never been a fan of backwards design, learning objectives, or outcomes. Humans are idiosyncratic. You can’t plan for someone else’s learning. What you can plan for is how you’ll respond when someone surprises you.

Traditional approaches to backwards design start with the questions, “what do I want students to know or be able to do? how will I measure whether they know or can do those things by the end of a course?” The course is structured to bring students to that moment of measurement.

This sounds a lot like the “banking model” of education, which Paulo Freire critiques, the idea that there is content or skills in a teacher’s brain that can (or should) be delivered into a student’s brain. Backwards design flips how that work is structured.

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Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

9 Mar

@readywriting

“‘You don’t behave enough like staff,’ I was told derisively by the tenured professor who was then my supervisor.” A devastating and important read by @readywriting. chronicle.com/article/stop-i…

In my last admin role, the staff on my team were treated in deeply problematic and patronizing ways. (Lee was on that team. Her voice matters.) I saw, not only what was said about them and about me (also staff), but heard some of what got said about them behind their backs.

I remember far too many meetings where I had to relay the contents of those conversations to the members of my team. It was devastating to morale and did direct harm to even the very positive relationships we had with many faculty.

Read 16 tweets

Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

20 Dec 20

Educational institutions are incredibly attached to the power they hold over students. Sadly, some teachers are also incredibly attached to that power. So much of the student experience of education crashes upon the rocks of their own systemic disempowerment.

In response to my student advocacy, I’ve been told I’m “pandering,” “naive,” “teacher-shaming,” that faculty development should be “ideologically neutral.” I’ve been called a “gumdrop unicorn” and worse. Because of my calls for compassionate pedagogies, I’ve been bullied myself.

In the last year, I’ve watched educational institutions make decisions that leave students flailing, all without adequately consulting those students about what they need to be successful — what they need to be safe.

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Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

6 Dec 20

In the last week, I played marathon sessions of The Last of Us and The Last of Us II. I usually play/finish about one video game per year. I finished two in the last week. If catharsis helps you deal with trauma (it does help me), these are two of the best games ever made.

But they are also incredibly heartbreaking, violent, and disturbing, from the very first moments. I cried several times, just short of sobbing at one point. I used to regularly write about horror (alongside and intermingling with pedagogy). These games made me miss that work.

One of the strengths of the horror genre is its ability to deal directly with issues that would be taboo in other genres. Politics, race, religion, gender, sexuality, grief, loss. All of those are in The Last of Us with an incredible nuance I’ve not seen in other games.

Read 4 tweets

Jesse Stommel

@Jessifer

21 Oct 20

@HybridPed

“Proctorio requested retraction of an article by Shea Swauger critical of algorithmic proctoring in the peer-reviewed journal @HybridPed. When the journal refused, Proctorio CEO Mike Olsen and the journal’s editor, Jesse Stommel, got into a Twitter spat.” vice.com/en/article/7k9…

Thoughts drawn from threads referenced here. For many reasons, it’s nearly impossible to publicly critique edtech companies without repercussions. As I’ve said before, these companies deliberately market themselves to the least knowledgeable, most powerful people at institutions.

The monetization strategies for most edtech companies aim for university-wide adoption. When an institution requires all its teachers/students to use a particular tool, they create an environment that inhibits or silences critics.

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