It's the Mileage: Featuring Tyler Stafford
Rebooting the newsletter with educator turned Education Industry Professional Tyler Stafford!! It's the Mileage, baby!
What’s up cool people! Welcome to the first real edition of It’s the Mileage, a newsletter I started because I got laid off — a story that will no doubt inspire millions of young people to do something sick, like an ollie or mix incompatible Slurpee flavors.
I’ll be firing these suckers off on Mondays (the first day of the week in godless, European countries) and including interviews with cool people! Sound like an idea I stole from a hotter, more successful friend? Kinda! I’m hoping to write about What We Can Do to make the world a little better after a week of reading about how screwed up it is. Think of it as a leftist blog that ends with action items instead of shoulder shrugs.
If you know me (you probably do if you’re reading this), you know I do a lot of reading. So, I’ll include a reading list after the interview… and then hopefully something fun at the end! Won’t that be exciting! It’ll probably be something about sports or movies or theme parks because I don’t do anything else fun. I’m sorry in advance. We’ve already spent too much time up here, so just remember two things: It’s all politics and it’s not the years honey, it’s the mileage.
Let’s chat
I caught up with Tyler Stafford, a very cool Internet dude who (until literally a few days ago) taught 7th-grade social studies in the Houston area. You probably know him as that funny Astros fan on the Internet. He shared a very good piece on The Alamo you should read and I hit him up to talk about all things teaching while totally forgetting to ask him about baseball. Sick! Edited for clarity and concision.
Jake Sundstrom
I actually don’t know — you were teaching in high school?
Tyler Stafford
I was in junior high. Yeah, six through eighth grade.
Jake
What did you find was, other than obviously just not having money for things, what was the most regular challenge you were facing?
Tyler
Yeah, yeah. So I taught in the same school for six years, I taught at various times, sixth, seventh and eighth grade, social studies, the World Geography and culture, Texas history. And then eighth grade is US history through reconstruction.
And so I taught all of those various parts of the year but I mean there's a lot of challenges, man, like, you know, first off, I can only speak for myself. So, the goods and the bads are so dependent on the people in your like, immediate surrounding at your school, right, like even on campus, if you're on a different grade level team, your experience can be just vastly different. You know, like, my department head, you know, I love my department head.
I would say there's just a lot of things pulling you in different directions. And every parent, every student and every organization all believes that their thing needs and deserves your full attention immediately. And that like if you are not doing that, the second that you hear about it, you know, you're letting them down. I would regularly have parents call me or email me, and would be upset that I wouldn't respond immediately. And I mean, I have 185 students. Sometimes parents just don't understand that. They rightfully want the best for their kids, but they don't always do the best job of understanding the amount of stuff that's on teachers’ plates.
Not every kid but a lot of kids have accommodations that you have to have memorized. And so like, this kid gets a highlighter for every assignment, this kid gets a shortened assignment. So when I make a 10 question quiz, I need to go back and eliminate three of those questions for this kid, because their accommodation says that they get shortened assignments, this kid gets extra time.
So, you're just juggling a million things all at once. And if you don't do that, if a kid has read all on their accommodation, and you don't do that, that parent gets very upset with you, because they're like, my kid needs this. And you're like, you're absolutely right, I should have done that. That's my fault. But they again, they're also correct to call and be concerned when you don't do what their accommodation says because that's what they and the state and whoever else has decided that their kid needs to succeed. So you're just constantly being pulled in a lot of directions and there's just zero, time to catch up very much, let alone get ahead.
So a lot of it is just like treading water, trying to find any resources that you possibly can to improve your class, which is kind of where this company that I'm working for comes in. Because there were so many days man where I finished the day at school. And you know, we were learning about Andrew Jackson and I just went through, you know, his inauguration and the drunken party on the White House lawn. But tomorrow, we got to learn about the Trail of Tears. And I'm like, it's the end of the day. And I'm like, I don't have anything on this. You know, like, I am obviously aware of what the Trail of Tears is. There are two paragraphs in our textbook on this. That's it. So then I gotta go find ‘Okay, let me see if I can find a video on it.’ Let me see, you know, and then it's like, am I gonna do that every day? Am I gonna put that much effort in all the time? Like, no, is the truth. A lot of times, I'm going to type into YouTube Trail of Tears, and I'm gonna find the first video that's on there, then we're gonna watch that, you know, so like, you're just constantly like, just trying to make it through the end of the day, you know, and to have something to fill your time.
You just very rarely, at least in my experience, feel not just prepared to make it through the day, but like, oh, man, I'm so excited for this lesson I put an effort for this is really good. Because you have 187 days that you have to fill throughout the year, you're not going to have 187 great lessons.
Jake
Yeah, there is a very weird thing that we do with certain high-profile jobs, where we expect the people in those jobs whether they’re teachers or athletes or servers to give a level of commitment that we do not do in any other job. Right? Like, the idea that like you're going to try at a 100% level in a way that you're never gonna do anywhere else ever in your life, not because of any moral failing, but because you know, you'll die, right?
Tyler
Yeah, you know, I've had a conversation about this before, but my whole first year of teaching. I threw up every single morning, every single morning, I woke up, and I threw up. And I thought that I was like, sick, I went to the doctor, we were testing for like iron deficiencies, all this stuff. And then the summer came, and I stopped throwing up. And we figured out that I was just so stressed and panicked for an entire year and I could never unwind that I literally woke up and vomited every single morning. And it's because the job of teaching is unique in that in every other job in every other office, maybe not every other. But you know, in most other jobs, you can have a bad night, the night before you can stay up too late finishing a movie. And you can really fake it until the coffee, then, and you get your lunch break, and you get to come back and you go like okay, now I'm ready. Let's get to work.
Jake
So, the article you shared about the Alamo, I think is very interesting. Because I think the Alamo, it's always been kind of like Godzilla. It's like this thing that everybody knows about, but nobody knows anything about right. So, what was your experience as a kid like learning about the Alamo in history class and then how did you square that with learning the actual history and needing to teach that in a classroom?
Tyler
Yeah. So as a kid, man, I mean, I remember so little of like specifics as a kid. I mean, I definitely just remember the Alamo as like, I mean, specific. I just remember that and then the Remember the Goliad chant being at the Battle of San Jacinto, which is where Texas won its independence. I knew that like all of these brave soldiers held off this invading army, you know that and they were protecting their city and Santa Anna came in and killed them all and but he got his comeuppance that kind of stuff, right?
Jake
Can you actually talk about what the chant is? Because like that, I don't even know what that is. Outside of the borders of Texas. I don't know how much that's going to resonate.
Tyler
Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah. So the battle of San Jacinto is the like, the final battle. It's a wild battle. So it's down actually, like 20 minutes from where I live outside of Houston. And there's this huge monument you should look at the San Jacinto monument. I believe it is as tall or perhaps taller than the Washington Monument. It is this massive, massive monument. So, the Texan army and the Mexican army are, you know, half a mile away from each other kind of separated by this hill? And I mean, I guess the Texas army just knows that the Mexican army takes a siesta in the middle of the afternoon. They all just like rest and take a nap. And the Texas army just goes like well, we'll just attack them then. And we'll sneak up on them and so the battles over in like 20 minutes even though they're outnumbered.
They find and capture Santa Anna who is the general slash president slash dictator of Mexico at the time, who is his own crazy figure, and I mean crazy in an interesting way, figure in Mexican history because he goes from like liberator to oppressor back to liberator then to like exile. But we never touched on that in Texas history. We just know him as, evil dictator man who murdered all the Texans. Let's capture him. But as they're running as the people are sleeping, you know, taking their siestas, they're chanting, remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad. So Goliad was another battle. All of the Texans were captured and then killed by a firing squad of the Mexican army. So, those were like the two massacres that Texas use is like a rallying cry at the final battle there.
Jake
So when this is actually taught it's very much a broad strokes things and mostly about the heroism of the fallen soldiers and winning their "independence" and then Texas becomes a state.
Tyler
Right, so so the hardest part of teaching at least social studies. Now again, this is like, this is just going to be a different experience than like a math teacher or whatever. But in social studies in general, you're typically given a textbook, and 95% over by McGraw Hill, who makes all the textbooks are like California and New York, and Texas. And then all of the like, Middle States. They just kind of tweak them to make them align to those standards. But California, New York and Texas are one of the only states that have their own specific state standards, most other states are aligned to like national standards. But so anyway, McGraw Hill makes all of these textbooks. And that is like, literally the only thing on day one that you are given, that is like, use this resource. But the hardest part, man is that the like, stereotype of a bad history teacher is what?
What is like the first thing that everyone says like, the boring history teacher, is the guy that just says like, okay, everyone open up to page, you know what I mean? Yeah, so then you're like, well, I don't want to use this the one resource that I have, I do not want to rely on this heavily, because I don't want to be the boring history teacher, right? Like, I don't want to just, I don't want my class to be like, Alright, guys, for the next eight months, we're gonna read pages one through 450 of the textbook, right? Like, I don't want to do that.
But for some reason, there's pressure on social studies teachers to not only know the content that they're supposed to teach, but know it to a depth that is just unreadable, like, there's no way that you would be able to know and then present all sides of an argument and present all of the, you know, different ways that the world could have changed if we'd gone in this direction, or this direction, and you don't have time.
Jake
So, is that a matter of there being too much information being put into each grade? Is it too much information? Just in general? I mean, I, like I don't want to say it's like, well, there's just too much history or whatever. And that's, you know, tough luck. But is there a solution to that problem?
Tyler
Man, That's a really good question. So I think the solution is you have to decide, what is the goal of a history class? Is the goal, to teach a kid how to research and learn history for their own to come to their own conclusions? Or is the goal to teach them the established narrative of history? So that they're caught up on like, how the world interprets history? Right?
Jake
I have a theory.
Tyler
I mean, I definitely know what I would like to do, right. But then you get into gray areas of Okay, well, do you want every teacher doing that? Because there are teachers like me, but there are teachers that have very different views. And when you're sending your kid to school, you don't get to pick which teacher you get, right? And so do you want somebody preaching to your kid?
And a lot of that is just the symptom of the assembly-line approach of education that we have in America, where, you just have this very rigid structure, you've got all this stuff that you're trying to teach, and then you don't have enough time throughout the year to get into the depth that you would like.
Whenever people talk about increasing the education budget, the easiest way to solve or alleviate a lot of the problem is to just double the staff. If you didn't add any new technology, any new resources, but you just got it to where teachers were teaching like 10 to 15 kids per class, if you could do that, I think that the gains that you would see in our life depth of knowledge and understanding would be, you know, significantly higher than whatever technology you could, you could put in there, because you're just able to facilitate a lot more.
Jake
So what is the thing that you think people should be doing whether it's you know, calling people or doing things generally communally, like what is the thing people can do to make the situation for teachers better whether it's in Texas or nationally?
Tyler
Yeah, so there's, there are some easy answers. And there are some hard answers. The single biggest indicator of failure rate in students, whether it's behavior or classroom, whatever, is the poverty level. So, if a kid comes from poverty, they are so much more likely behind in school, that there's just not that we can do in education until a kid knows that they have three meals a day, and a mom or dad or both, or whoever is at home, and is going to read to them every night, and they're safe, and they have a roof over their head. And so we get to the point that every kid has that you're not fixing education, you're not fixing anything, in the world, whatever like that. That is the issue, the singular issue in education is, I have students.
I'll tell you a story. A couple of years ago, I had a kid who Friday afternoon after school, was playing basketball at a park and broke his ankle, like, you know, just rolled his ankle broke it, they did not go to the doctor, they waited until Monday morning to come to the school nurse, who was free to confirm that they needed to go to the doctor because they were nervous to go and not be broken and waste. whatever amount of money it was going to be. Until we solve that problem. There is no point in talking about, you know, well, here's these little things we can tweak for teachers to fix it, right. So obviously, as I said, if you're an individual, you are at the mercy of the winds around you, right, like, you're not gonna be able to fix that overnight. But I would say individually.
Giving your time your resources, your money to early childhood literacy programs, is going to help a teacher, way more than anything else that you can do, if a kid is reading at grade level, by the end of third grade, their, their graduation rate is like something insane, like seven or eight times higher than a student who is not at grade-level reading by the end of third grade. So if you can get a kid reading at grade level, early on in their life, you are setting them up for success like that. That is the indication.
And again, most of the times when that when they're not able to do that it's from a, you know, socioeconomic issue and not, oh, well, we haven't tried hard enough or whatever. But that is the way that you can help a teacher because if I had kids if I had 100% of my kids coming into seventh grade, who could read at a seventh-grade reading level, we could do all of the things that we just discussed like getting into the depths of you know, all of these things, really exploring things from multiple points of views.
But I regularly have seventh-grade students who read at a first or second-grade reading level. And by the time they get there, I don't have the time or resources to help them improve their reading. Teachers don't have the time or they're too far gone at that point, right. Like, there are always success stories that you can find where something clicks or whatever. But the truth is, once they get that far into their life, and they're not reading
Well, there, there's just nothing you can do. Like you're just gone at that point. And so for me, that's where I would say if you're an individual without a student at home, that's where your time and resources need to be going is, is funneling things into early childhood literacy. If you do have a student, man, just send an email to a teacher and just randomly and just say, thank you for teaching my kid this year. They talk about you all the time at the dinner table, even if it's a lie, I don't even care, right.
Just that man like that, that lifts spirit so much. And when you do have an issue, you know, be cordial about it, like understand that. Teachers have a lot on their plate, and no one is coming into school and going like god, today is the day that I make Johnny's life miserable. Like, that's why I woke up and came to school today. That's not what we're doing. But like, if you're approaching it from the standpoint of like, this person is trying their best 99% of the time. Then, you know, that's, that's gonna help you but yeah, man, like, early childhood literacy programs, and just a pat on the back would be amazing.
Intermission
Thanks to Tyler for stopping by! Here are some resources for childhood literacy:
https://readingtokids.org/AboutUs/AboutProgram.php
https://www.readingfoundation.org/donate
Concerned about the general wealth stratification in this country? Me too! Not sure yet? Here’s a fun, informative video! Ready to do something about it? Sick! Find your representatives in Congress and tell them about it! If that doesn’t feel like enough, then I don’t need to tell you what to do next. Join DSA, march on that shit! Go do something. I’m not your parent!
I read this and you can, too!
It certainly has been a week on planet Earth, huh folks? Let’s see what happened.
From Diplomatic:
“The United States and Iran are unlikely to overcome remaining gaps in their positions to finalize an agreement on mutually returning to full compliance with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal at the next round of international talks set to get underway in Vienna this weekend, US officials and experts they consult with said.
Iranian demands on sanctions relief remain unrealistic, from the US perspective, a U.S. official indicated. And a plan for how to sequence steps has also not progressed very much.
‘They are still far from bridging the remaining gaps,’ Ali Vaez, director of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, told me Tuesday. ‘Doing so requires both sides to demonstrate more flexibility.’
‘It is unlikely that they could finalize a deal in the next round,’ Vaez continued. ‘There is still a long distance to travel on sequencing and verification as well.’”
Can you believe it wasn’t just Donald Trump that screwed everything up with every nation-state in the known world?
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From Jacobin:
And the third group are the cyber operators, the people who work online, whether they’re collecting intelligence or monitoring everyone from Al Qaeda and ISIS to the Russians, or are engaged in what are called “influence operations” — propaganda, psychological operations. That’s the fastest-growing group, from utilizing false personas and the very techniques we accuse Russians of using during the 2016 elections, to operating under misdirection or non-attribution, where their identity or their origins as US government cyber operators is obscured. There are more than ten thousand people throughout the NSA and the military who utilize the techniques of signature reduction in this way.
You know all the cloak and dagger bullshit Americans love to scream about Russia doing? It stands to reason the United States does it as well.
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“On Friday February 19th, someone drove past the Lake Merced Golf Club, along freeway 280, and were outside the Dignity Health-GoHealth Urgent Care facility. But their car was most frequently parked outside a specific address in the fancy Noe Valley area of San Francisco.
I know this because a company called Otonomo sells the granular location data of vehicles across the United States and the rest of the world. Otonomo also makes some of its location data available as part of a free trial. The data is supposed to be pseudonymous, linked only to a non-descript identifier for the car, but Motherboard found it is relatively easy to find who a car potentially belongs to and follow their movements. A source pulled data from Otonomo en masse and provided Motherboard with GPS coordinates of drivers in California, Berlin, and other cities, and that data can be mapped to track unsuspecting drivers wherever they go, and to determine their likely home addresses and identities.
The news highlights the nascent market of vehicle location data, tapped into by insurance firms, advertisers, and others who can obtain it. Government contractors have also offered to sell such data to the U.S. military for surveillance purposes. The experiment shows how fragile the anonymity of location data can be, with one of the few barriers being an agreement in Otonomo's terms of use to not try and unmask real people in the data.”
The data in your car is probably being tracked! Someone should look into that!
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Two weeks ago, Uber drivers mistakenly received an email from Uber offering to help cover their health insurance—a benefit the company has refused to provide its drivers everywhere besides California since its founding in 2009.
"Uber can help cover your healthcare costs," the email read. "If you need health coverage, there’s no better time to apply for a healthcare plan."But the offer turned out to be too good to be true.
Sick.
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Right to repair legislation is set to pass in New York after clearing the Senate. We can only hope this is the first of many as auto manufacturers increasingly try to clamp down on customers repairing their cars at home by installing shitty software in their vehicles.
Do you work on your car? This rules! Do you take your car to someone to work on it? This rules! Do you hate Elon Musk? Good.
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From The New York Times
The Met, which has some 160 items from Benin City, including a renowned ivory mask, in its collection, said it initiated the return after conducting research in partnership with the British Museum over the past year. The works in the Met’s collection “were largely given to the institution in the 1970s and 1990s by individuals who acquired them on the art market,” a spokesman told The New York Times in April.
Kenneth Weine, a spokesman for the Met, said the mask was not being considered for return, though he did not provide a reason.
There’s more to say than I have expertise on, but what feels like A Nice Story unravels a bit if you apply even the slightest skepticism. The museum is returning two of 160 pieces, ah, acquired from Benin over the years. Why just those? Or, why not all the others?
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From the LA Times: Apprehensions at the United States / Mexico border are five times higher than they were a year ago. This is no doubt due to a variety of factors, including, you know, the pandemic.
It’s a great sign that Kindness Is Back In The White House 😇
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And finally, here’s some perspective from Jacobin on all the frantic shrieks you’ve heard about Chipotle, an odious company, raising its prices.
Mama, I Wanna Go Surfing
Well, I’m a little exhausted. Let’s do something fun.
Would you like me to be the 10,000th person to recommend the new Lorde song to you? No??? How about this sick bop from *mumbles* years ago?? The Beths rule.
Universal Studios Orlando opened a new roller coaster this week! It looks sick! It’s called Velocicoaster! My childhood dreams are all coming true!
The 2020 Euros started on Friday in Azerbaijan and there were goals! Here is one of my favorites.
I’ll see you gorgeous humans next week!
Have a tip? Want to talk about something cool and important? Shoot me an email! jacobasundstrom[at]gmail.com
Made it this far? May as well subscribe! It’s free! You can give me money monthly through the subscribe feature or send United States currency directly to me so I can pay bills and whatnot directly to my Cash App! $jacobsundstrom