Nerd Farmer Podcast

Cast of Characters

• James Miller: Director of Admission, Seattle University
• Kim Thomas: Equity facilitator, freelance college admissions consultant (First of Her Name)
• Carinna Lee Tarvin: AP World History Teacher, Lincoln High School

The Covid-19 outbreak has impacted us all. In the US, at least 89,932 people (as of 5/18) have lost their lives. Millions of people are out of work. Teachers across the nation are working with cobbled together online systems with varied (at best) results.

But one population who we don’t hear much about are high school seniors. For many members of the Class of 2020, school closed right in the midst of their planning for next year. Imagine facing this dilemma: you worked hard for 13 years, got into your dream school, and now you don’t even know if the school is going to be open in the fall. Now, imagine navigating that as a low-income student with limited access to your school counselors, mentors, and advisers.

In addition, millions of other students are currently being dealt a brutal hand by the College Board, the multi-million dollar not-for-private that administers AP Exams, the SAT, and the PSAT, who has decided to administer this year’s high-stakes AP exams online.

Questions We Tackle:

• University tuition is expensive, is it worth paying full price for your dream school if you’re likely to be online? Are you better or going to a community college?
• Is it possible to have an equitable online standardized test during a pandemic (spoiler: hell no, it’s not).

It’s a rough time to be a high school senior and this episode is for them and the people that love them.

The Socials

• James Miller
• Kim Thomas 
• Carinna Lee Tarvin

Coming Up

• Next Nerd Farm Reads: Know My Name by Chanel Miller
• Watch: How to Fix a Drug Scandal

Going Further

• Open Letter to the College Board in the Washington Post (Nate is a signatory)
• Kaleigh Brendle, the visually impaired student who challenged the College Board on equity grounds

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines and TAPCO Credit Union

Please consider supporting the podcast by joining Channel 253 as a member

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In September, on NF Episode #73 we discussed the book “How Democracies Die” by Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky as part of our Nerd Farm Reads Book Club (#nerdfarmreads). This week in light of events in the news from Wisconsin and elsewhere, we decided to revisit the text and examine the further degradation of US democracy since we discussed the book.

Cast of Characters

• Andrew Hammond: Tacoma News Tribune
• Ingrid Walker: Professor University of Washington Tacoma (the Bad Academic)
• Halley Knigge: Mistress of Books, Runner, and Rad Human

The Rundown

4:00: The ways our guests are watching democracy die

8:00: Why voting (and non-voting) and politics in a pandemic (and always) are so frustrating

25:00: Pre-Trump moments that led us to where we are today

35:00: The role of political violence in the decline of US democracy

45:00: Can informed-consumerism really replace democracy (spoiler: no)? Are we really voting with our dollars? What are actual impactful political acts?

50:00: The media obsession with “neutrality” will be the death of us all

57:00: Closing thoughts

The Wind Down

Guests have homework!! “How to Fix A Drug Scandal”

The Socials

Andrew Hammond: @ahammTNT

Ingrid Walker: @badacademic

Halley Knigge: @halleyrebecca

Coming Up

Next Nerd Farm Reads: Know My Name by Chanel Miller

Going Further

Stolen Justice by Lawrence Goldstone

The Red and the Blue by Steve Kornacki

“How to Fix A Drug Scandal”

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines and TAPCO Credit Union

Please consider supporting the podcast by joining Channel 253 as a member

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This week Channel 253 is launching a new show called Gimme the Mic. They’re six-pack podcasts from folks in Tacoma sharing their unique stories and points of view on matters that impact all of us. Our first host is Stella Keating, a student in Tacoma Schools and a student activist. We’ll be back on Monday with our regularly scheduled episode chopping up “How Democracies Die” for the second time, looking at the further degradation in US democracy.

—————-

In this episode, Stella kicks off the series talking with Collin, Arizona, and Kellz about consent, youth led initiatives, the marginalization of queer youth, impact vs. intent, and the ways PEEL is empowering youth.

Guests: Collin Veenstra, Founder & Program Director, PEEL leaders Arizona and Kellz.

Intergenerational Community Organizing: Youth-Led, Adult Staff and & Volunteer Supported

As a volunteer-run organization with an anti-oppression framework, PEEL works differently than a lot of traditional youth programs.

Our staff team are 100% volunteer and include adult community members who serve the Tacoma area as teachers, youth advocates, school resource support, teen librarians and more in their day jobs, and support PEEL youth programming in their lives beyond.

Our adult staff team work collectively with PEEL youth leaders in planning meetings, organizing events, and leading trainings on trauma-informed topics both within the group and at area youth programs. We host a monthly PEEL Planning Session, which includes both youth leaders and volunteer staff to ensure programming is as youth-centered as possible.

Links

• www.tacomapeel.com
• https://www.facebook.com/TacomaPEEL/
• Tacoma Peel on Instagram
• Channel 253 membership

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Tom Rademacher is loudmouth and I love him for it.

An author and activist, Rademacher is an outspoken, anti-racist educator, who was named the State Teacher of the Year a few years back. This bio should sound familiar. Tom is a writer and the author of “It Won’t Be Easy” one of the more vulnerable memoirs I’ve ever read. He is the 2014-2015 Minnesota Teacher of the Year and currently teaches middle school outside of Minneapolis.

“I sometimes feel like I’d be way more popular and have three times the Twitter followers, if I didn’t talk about race.”

We discussed what it’s like to be a teacher and an activist while the world (feels like it) is burning, to what extent do we think we’re making a difference as advocates in the profession, and Tom’s (loud) public anti-racist work.

The Wind Down

The Case of the Missing Hit, Reply-all Podcast

The Socials

@MrTomRad

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines

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Man, we really picked a helluva year to move twelve timezones away…

I am amazed watching the various efforts to confront Covid-19 in the US. In particular, I am blown away watching people I care about on social media forced to jerry-rig masks, after being told for months by the CDC that they weren’t necessary or helpful. The toilet paper shortages, the lack of PPE for medical professionals, the inability of the President to articulate a coherent strategy about any it… 

It’s also really jarring to look homeward in contrast to what we’re seeing from leaders elsewhere, who are having more success combatting the virus (shouts to NZ, South Korea, and Singapore). The dire situation in the US could and should have been prevented. This irregular episode is a pandemic-centric conversation with IWL host (and my wife) Hope Bowling.

By the way, don’t worry about us. We are safe here in Abu Dhabi but we definitely are anxious about friends and family back home. So we decided to record some personal observations, takes, and reflections from here. 

Stay safe and stay home, if you can. 

The Socials

@Espionfire

IWL Podcast

Extra Credit 

@Crsailor’s Thread (get well, Craig)

@ConnMc Thread

Coverage of the Rona from UAE

The Dr. Drew heel turn mentioned on the episode

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines

Please consider supporting the podcast by joining Channel 253 as a member

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The Census, redistricting, reapportionment, gerrymandering — it is all up to you.

This week’s guest is Managing Director at the Washington Census Alliance, Kamau Chege. We discussed the 2020 Census and why everyone who listens to this show should make sure that everyone they know fills it out.

Undercounts among marginalized communities lead to reduced federal funding and reduced representation at the federal, state, county, and municipal levels. When socially and economically marginalized populations decline to complete the Census, they gift political power to the people responsible for their marginalization.

You can’t have a democracy without representation, you can’t have representation without the census — that’s it.

That’s the show.

The Socials

Kamau on Twitter

Extra Credit 

Kamau profiled in the NYT

Complete the Census online

Redistricting and Reapportionment

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines

Please consider supporting the podcast by joining Channel 253 as a member

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Fact, everyday black women in the US are simultaneously under assault from the forces of institutional racism and institutional sexism. 

They are the most educated demographic group: when measuring degrees earned, black women are the most educated demographic group in the US.

They are underpaid: black women in the US earn 61 cents on the dollar for the same job in comparison to men, with the gap not projected to close for literally 100 years. 

They are often taken for granted in the workplace: all over social media black women are reporting feeling burned-out or taken for granted in unhealthy workplaces. 

I recently came across a post on Medium by author, school counselor, and my friend, Christina McDade, on the tropes and narratives surrounding black women in our culture. The post begins “It’s 5 am, Wednesday morning, and I am exhausted.” Man, I want to use that to teach students about writing “a hook.”

Here’s a passage from the essay that really stuck with me:

It’s the narrative of the constant realization of the many roles that black women find themselves in, and the constant shifting that we have to do to simply be ourselves and who we are every single day. No black woman is immune to this struggle. For every Oprah and Michelle who can manage to be everyone’s best friend, you have the Gabrielle Union’s and Jenifer Lewis’ of the world who are a little too much and aggressive. Your star and proximity determine how varied the narrative majority spaces allow you to be.

Exhausting, right?

Obviously, I know what it’s like to deal with US racism. But I can’t imagine what it’s like to have to face sexism as well. It feels exhausting to even ponder and you can hear it in Christina’s interview. I hope you enjoy listening to her as much as I did.

 The Socials

Christina on Medium

@mscdmcdade – Twitter

The Wind Down

This is Love Podcast

Your College-Bound Kid

Bonus Listening

Burnout Hits Different When You’re Black — At the Intersection Podcast

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines

Please consider supporting the podcast by joining Channel 253 as a member

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In late January, I happened to be in Shanghai at a Model UN Conference when the Corona Outbreak began in Wuhan Province. Since then I have been watching events unfold in China and elsewhere. Throughout the last two months, I’ve been struck by two things:

• The comprehensive nature of the response in China: tens of millions of people were literally cut off from the world — imposed social distancing, mass in home quarantine, large scale deployment of chemical disinfectants, etc.
• The immediate closure of schools in China and how teachers were continuing to meet the needs of their students.

I’ve tweeted a bit about the former and I took careful notes on the latter, knowing that sooner or later our time would (likely) come. On Thursday, March 4, while we were out of the country on spring break, we were notified that school would not reopen and would remain closed — for at least four weeks. Moreover, we were told that we’d commence teaching online the following Monday… WOOF. That was a three day turnaround and I was ten hours away over in Indonesia… WOOF x2.

In a matter of days, our school leadership spun up a schedule based on learnings from elsewhere and we dug into the work of teaching online. We are now in week two and I decided to sit down with a couple of colleagues and share our thoughts and learnings so far. This episode is about the whats and hows of our online teaching experiences. The IWL Podcast will have an episode about equity issues related to online teaching this Thursday.

Cast of Characters

Jordan Moog, US History and Global Studies, Lute

Michele Curley, French, tri-lingual Canadian: English, French, and Swahili (yeah, she’s that dude)

Going Further

I’ve been cataloguing my experience teaching online thus far in this thread

Socials

Jordan Moog – Twitter

Michele Curley – Twitter

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines

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The Rundown

She describes herself as a “Dreamer, Blerd, Educator, Disruptor of Ridiculousness, STEM & Digital Access Advocate.” Rafranz is a former math teacher, former district director of professional and digital learning, and the author of “The Missing Voices in EdTech: Bringing Diversity Into EdTech.” She came on the pod to talk about the use of technology in today’s classrooms and all the ways teachers and school systems drop the ball when it comes to implementing educational technology in an effective and equitable manner.

The Wind Down

Rafranz is a BTS aficionado; she recommends you cop their latest album: Map of the Soul: 7

Going Further

Rafranz’s 2018 CUE Keyonte

The Socials

Rafranz on Medium

@RafranzDavis

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines

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Two-time show guest Claudia Rowe is the author of Time Out, an e-book about Willard Jimerson. Jimerson was a young black man for South Seattle who was charged as an adult, convicted of murder, and sentenced to 23 years in prison in 1994 at the age of 13. 

The Rundown

5:00: What was life like for Jimerson at Maple Lane Juvenile Detention Center. What is it like for children in juvenile detention?

10:00: Adolescent brains aren’t fully formed yet, why do we prosecute them as adults? Who does this serve? How much time is “enough?” Is race a contributing factor in sentencing? (spoiler, yes)

16:00: Day to day life in lockup…

“We send more foster children to prison than to college.”

29:00: Seattle as the second most important character in Claudia’s book, how has it changed?

36:00: Real numbers about OUR children who are in the system.

40:00: Claudia’s current projects

The Wind Down

48:00 Who should we listen to?

Going Further

Time Out (Missing Collection) by Claudia Rowe

Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett by Jennifer Gonnerman 

The Socials

@RoweReport (Twitter)  

The Nerd Farmer Podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play and is brought to you by Alaska Airlines

Please consider supporting the podcast by joining Channel 253 as a member

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