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Jamie

@itsthejam.bsky.social

530 followers 1.4K following 1.4K posts

Middle school US history teacher, lover of public schools, proud union member, expert in Real Housewives and the extended 90 Day Universe and also I do like some other stuff I just don’t talk about it as much.

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Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 6h

There’s plenty of room for commentary about Hamilton, but there’s just no arguing re: its impact on student interest in US History and I present as evidence the ridiculous number of student papers I have received with lyrics scribbled all over them while we analyze the Declaration of Independence.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 9h

“What’s wrong with having an elf on the shelf/Santa Claus/Christmas tree in the classroom? It’s just fun! Everyone likes fun!” 😒

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 22h

“Oh I’m not just rude, it’s an actual thing? Amazing!”- me when I learned about this

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 22h

HIGH OF 64 TOMORROW FINALLY 🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂🍂

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 22h

There’s actually a word for this conversation style! It’s called cooperative overlapping and I can only speak for my culture, but it’s very Jewish. It’s how we show we’re engaging, if someone just listens quietly to me I feel like they aren’t paying attention.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 23h

Had a very good day at a training with my union. Dreading seeing what my classroom looks like tomorrow after my first day out this year, but that’s a 7:30am me problem.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 1d

How is the cell phone ban going, you ask? Well today I found a real actual paper love note on the floor and a kid was making a cootie catcher in class so honestly it’s fantastic and I love it.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 2d

The Potomac women are so stunning. Hands down most beautiful Housewives city.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 3d

It’s giving me “schools should teach kids how to do their taxes.” No. We should teach math and reading and then kids will become adults who can do taxes. Let us teach reading and thinking and logic and history and you guys work on keeping the media from losing its last grips on reality.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 3d

So anyway “schools should teach media literacy” is really missing the forest for the trees and just fund public schools and get the edtech companies out so we can actually teach please and thank you.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 3d

And verify things. Which is what children don’t have and we are trying to teach them to be able to do. But *everyone* is trying to prevent them from having critical thinking skills by handing them AI “tools” straight out of the womb…

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 3d

We can’t teach them how to figure out if something is AI because every day it gets harder and the tech companies are actively working to make it that way. “Media literacy” right now is dependent on having the background knowledge and critical thinking skills to (ugh) “do your own research”…

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 3d

I see a lot of people talk about how “schools should be teaching media literacy” and I genuinely think that is pretty naive right now. We can’t teach them “you can trust .gov or .org or .edu” we can’t teach them “trust established orgs like the Washington post or New York Times”…

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 3d

I’ve never seen The Notebook

Hannah Fearn @hannahfearn.bsky.social · 4d

Inspired by a post I just saw in which someone admitted they hadn’t seen a single episode of Friends nor the film Love Actually… what cultural hole do you have that’s a bit weird for your generation?

I’ll go first: I haven’t seen Dirty Dancing.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 4d

Seeing the Baltimorons and then getting stuck in traffic with the sad Ravens fans feels right. Great movie though!

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 4d

Easily 50% of kids I teach use a name that is not their legal given first name, for a wide variety of reasons, and the vast majority of those reasons have nothing to do with gender. Is that also “medical” for me to call them by the name they go by? It’s literally just respect, whatever the reason.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 4d

So excited to have RHOSLC and Potomac airing at the same time again. Bravo is really making up for that summer lull they gave us.

Reposted by Jamie

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 4d

“AI is not invited into schools through a process of adoption, like buying a desktop computer or smartboard – it crashes the party and then starts rearranging the furniture.”

What Past Education Tech Failures Can Teach Us About the Future of AI in Schools

Teachers need to be scientists themselves, experimenting and measuring the impact of powerful AI products on education.

Reposted by Jamie

Mychal Threets @mychal3ts.bsky.social · 5d

Reading Rainbow… is back! 🥹

This LeVar Burton/Reading Rainbow raised human is feeling all of the library joy. We hope your kids believe they belong in books, just like you ✨

Take a look, it’s in a book 📚🌈🦋🌌
youtu.be/gHAIjSkmnYI?...

No Cats In The Library 🐱📚 | Reading Rainbow 📖 🌈 | Full Episode | @Kidzuko

YouTube video by Kidzuko

Reposted by Jamie

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 5d

🫡

How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More - Consumer Reports

AI features are crowding into Google search, Gmail, iPhones, Windows laptops, and other products. If you're suffering from AI overload, these settings can help.

www.consumerreports.org

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 5d

Everyone is shouting numbers about how much teachers are using it, but they literally forced it into all of the programs apps and services we use to do our job so we literally can’t avoid it. But most of us aren’t actually using it, it’s just there in our way and we’re working around it.

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 5d

I hate this. I hate that when I walk my dog in my neighborhood I’m constantly being recorded. I hate that everyone I know has one of these and is blinded by the convenience of seeing packages delivered, choosing to ignore the harms and letting themselves turn into paranoid anxious bad neighbors.

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 6d

Not “now.” Sooo, tomorrow, or…

While most people will happily help someone find their lost dog, there is a concern about where this could lead. This week, the company also announced it’s bringing facial recognition to its cameras for the first time. Familiar Faces lets you register images of family and friends in the app so you can get specific alerts about who your cameras see.
The combination of Search Party and facial recognition raises the question of whether the Ring cloud could one day be used to search for specific individuals. Ring spokesperson Yassi Yarger told me that there are no plans around this for now. “Search Party was designed to match images of dogs to dogs captured in Ring videos,” she said. “It is not designed to process human biometrics.”

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 5d

“So my mom has to go to work without getting paid, AND the zoo is closed? This is messed up.”

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 6d

“Actually there are a lot of people who think AI can replace me and you guys can just learn from computers”

“That would never work. We do stuff on computers all the time but I don’t actually learn unless we’re like interacting with the actual teacher in class.”

Jamie @itsthejam.bsky.social · 6d

A completely unprompted conversation with a student-

“We read this article in ELA class about jobs that AI might take soon.”

“Oh how did you feel about that?”

“It’s kind of weird and also AI could never do the job of like a teacher or something.”