“Like That” – The Beef Starts in Earnest

[This post is part 6 of a series on teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – click here for part 5 –“First Person Shooter – Rap Beef as Socratic Dialogue”] Introduction This post is really, really long. I hope you’ll go on the journey with me. This is one of those rabbit holes that got deeper and … Continue reading “Like That” – The Beef Starts in Earnest →

Teaching the Drake/Kendrick Beef – First Person Shooter – Rap Beef as Socratic Dialogue

[This post is part 5 of a series on teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – click here for part 4 –“Poetic Justice” – Even When They Were Friends There Were Issues]] For about the first two weeks of the unit, the class had now listened to and analyzed several songs - “Ab-Soul’s Outro” (Ab-Soul featuring Kendrick … Continue reading Teaching the Drake/Kendrick Beef – First Person Shooter – Rap Beef as Socratic Dialogue →

Teaching the Drake/Kendrick Beef – Last Prequel – “Poetic Justice” – Even When They Were Friends There Were Issues

[This post is part 4 of a series on teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – click here for part 3 – “Hiiipower” and “So Appalled” – How Kendrick Signifies on Kanye] A final lesson I did leading up to my students studying the beef itself was about Kendrick Lamar and Drake co-performing on the 2012 song … Continue reading Teaching the Drake/Kendrick Beef – Last Prequel – “Poetic Justice” – Even When They Were Friends There Were Issues →

Teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – Prequel 2 – “Hiiipower” and “So Appalled” – How Kendrick Signifies on Kanye

[This post is part 3 of a series on teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – click here for part 2 – “Ab Soul’s Outro” – Purpose in a Larger Context] Here’s a question - a literal AP Lang question - that Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 song “Hiiipower” could have been answering, from the 2010 exam: In his … Continue reading Teaching the Kendrick/Drake Beef – Prequel 2 – “Hiiipower” and “So Appalled” – How Kendrick Signifies on Kanye →

Military Madness Board Game Project – Version 0

I used to love this game back in the day. I have fond memories of playing it on my NEC Turbographx 16. The Turbographx was sort of niche even back then - Genesis and then the SNES were much more popular, and to be honest I eventually sold my TG16 and moved on to those … Continue reading Military Madness Board Game Project – Version 0 →

How This Really Ends (please, prove me wrong)

"You can be angry, you an be outraged, but you need to stop being surprised." That is what a retired coworker said to me one day when I was debriefing with her about a particularly frustrating discussion about racial equity in our classrooms. I had told her I was just so surprised how often so … Continue reading How This Really Ends (please, prove me wrong) →

It’s a Perfect Time to Update My Blog

So this has been an on-again, off-again thing since sometime around 2003. There used to be several of us writing - then just a couple - then just me, 17 years later. There's a lot hidden within the archives at this point, especially some multi-part projects that I really did put a lot of time … Continue reading It’s a Perfect Time to Update My Blog →

Something Nelson Mandela Taught Me about The United States

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher Growing up in white suburban America in the 80's, I thought I knew some things about South Africa. Mostly I was taught that there was something called "apartheid" there and that it was bad (though I was not taught that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher both did what they could … Continue reading Something Nelson Mandela Taught Me about The United States →

The Overstory – A Study in White Environmentalism

White environmentalism is a thing. I know I'm not the first to say that, but as I read over The Overstory, Richard Powers' in some ways majestic, and in other ways, deeply problematic 2018 environmental epic of trees, I got a clearer and clearer picture of what white environmentalism is and what some of its problems are. … Continue reading The Overstory – A Study in White Environmentalism →

James Baldwin – The Evidence of Things Not Seen

This is - I believe anyway - the last book James Baldwin wrote and published before his death. There are lots of other incomplete manuscripts and unpublished materials, but this is a full essay. It's about a series of murders of black children in Atlanta in the early 1980's. Its foremost project is to problematize … Continue reading James Baldwin – The Evidence of Things Not Seen →