The Wonder Philosophy workshop, which aims at helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds (mostly first-gen, but also financial hardship and women of colour) who are interested in applying to philosophy graduate schools to navigate the process, has just concluded this past weekend. (I wrote a post about it back when it was still in the planning…
Ready to Learn
I absolutely believe that teachers can and should learn from students. I’ve heard that sentiment expressed often throughout my teaching career and honestly, I never paused to think about it. It seemed uncontroversial, if not obvious, to me. But after some lively pushback and discussion among friends, I think it’s well worth an attempt to…
Not here to learn
I found a hilarious article on McSweeney’s making fun of the expression “students teach me as much as I teach them”, which teachers sometimes voice. I followed it up with a comment that I find it weird when teachers or presenters start the class or workshop with something like “I’m here to also learn from…
Positive feedback group (meeting 1)
One good thing about having friends is that they are usually happy to be free experimental subjects of random ideas (and if they’re not, they’re not real friends). I had this random idea of having a writing feedback group where you’re only allowed to give positive feedback. I floated the idea to my friend Will,…
Not a morning person
Some time ago, I read this blog post by a friend, Darby, about writing in the morning as a non-morning person. She has pointed out something that I’ve subconsciously noticed for a long time: most productivity/creativity articles & books are written by morning people, for morning people. Everywhere I’ve looked (and, apparently, that Darby has…
Some rants about climate surveys
For a very convoluted chain of events that have resulted in me having multiple near mental breakdowns, I decide to write a post about opinion surveys. In particular, surveys that aim at finding out whether a school or department has a climate problem. I’d like to talk about just what sort of thing they are: what…
Another gentle nudge to read another great book: Invisible Women
I just finished this wonderful book by Caroline Criado Perez on Audible and have been talking to everyone about it ever since. (As an added bonus, the audiobook is read by the author, and she’s a great reader!) This post provides some highlights and reflections. Overall, the book is a dense collection of data on…
Genetics of education (it’s not what you think! … no quite, at least)
I have been taking a somewhat long break from blogging. A lot has happened recently. Some good: my partner and I just had a wedding, yay! Some not so good, which I won’t talk about today. Maybe I will at a later time. It turns out that, surprise surprise, stress does kill both creativity and…
The entertainment of ideas
When I was an arrogant highschooler thinking I was smarter than everyone else, I used to subscribe to this false quote of Aristotle’s: it is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it. I have been thinking a lot about the entertainment of thoughts lately, drafting and deleting numerous blog…
Professionalism in Philosophy: Writing
I’ve not enjoyed substantial parts of my time as a graduate student, and I’ve finally decided to openly discuss it. These will all be posted under the title “Professionalism in Philosophy.” This first post is about writing evaluation. In particular, I’ll talk about writing instruction, including soliciting and understanding feedback as well as coursework-style instruction.…