Carols for this #Christmas Eve...Mr Magoo's & a #college version

...with thanks to +George Station for the seasonally appropriate and timely reminder about Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol. You'll be back to regular schedules all too soon. I cannot say the same for myself despite (or due to) Janus posts due on multiple blogs. Until then, I and my sundry personae will be out and about on social media and re-blogging elsewhere. The college version Carol from the archives, covers routine topical posting and is as timely now as it was in 2012. If you need more post-season caroling about the state of education, check out Ken Previti's 2014 Christmas Carol post on Reclaim Education, another Education Blogger Network blog. [Ed note: opening paragraph edited/updated 1/2/2015]

...from the archives, Saturday, December 29, 2012: A College Christmas Carol

Crowdsourcing: Taylorism, tech, online temp work, #adjunct labor

Not all of the many email newsletters hitting my inbox are about education, ed-tech, higher ed, academic casuals or activism. This week, Baffler featured a salvo against the scams and schemes of the tech world, Jacob Silverman's essay "The Crowdsourcing Scam." (with more excellent illustrations by ©Lisa Haney, example below). 

The article refers to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Uber and Yelp ~ among others, not adjuncts, but could apply just as well to the employment and workplace management practices in adjunct-dependent for-profit and non-profit institutions. The editors refer to the article as "another fiery salvo." I want to read the others too.  In a similar vein, read Deb Baker's ❝On being 'discontinued'❞ (via +George Station on G+, also re-blogged on As the Adjunctiverse Turns)

In today's fractured economy, where tasks are increasingly farmed out to low-wage and temp workers, "the result is an extreme form of Taylorism: in boom conditions, workers have more tiny tasks than they can say yes to, but they acquire no skills...they have no contact with other workers, and they have no chance to advance or unionize," Silverman writes. "Imagine a factory in which each employee wears blinders and can see only the thing in front of him on the conveyor belt."

Caveat: as someone who tries to keep up with and uses ed-tech and information technology, I'd qualify the article's network criticism as applying to disconnected networks (an oxymoron in Social Network Analysis, aka SNA) that isolate users, further divided into content/service providers and consumers, instead of connecting them.

#HumanRights Day, Dec 10, 2014—#Rights365

I missed the Thunderclap (small print on the UN High Commission page) and only just now noticed the Storify. In Chicago, +lydsnow got a jump on everybody with an +Amnesty International Write for Rights (#adjunctrights are #humanrights) campaign on the NEIU campus ~ with a Facebook Event page here and blogged here. There are Vines and more than one Storify, but as far as I know, this was the only adjunct action for Human Rights Day 2014 but maybe someone will check in and add more. It's never too late to read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights again ~ good sections on labor and education. Or right letter, sign petitions, speak out.

The other take away is in the tag: #Rights365 = every day is a human rights day. Missed today? You've got 364 days to get cracking. Our work is cut out for us with Ayotzinapa, Ferguson, child refugees seeking asylum and more on the table and in the streets while public education, social justice and even the concept of a public good is under assault ~ along with other human rights. Those include freedom of speech (second sentence of Preamble, check it out) and the right to organize (Article 23).

ITUC (International Trade Union Confederation) Statement: 

@NatM4Equity endorses #NAWD…gets FB page—@MMStrikesback writes @NEIU BoT—#WeAreNNMC petitions

…"again" on letter writing (here) and petitioning about NNMC (here and here). National Mobilization for Equity (NME) already has a page plus blog, recently added Twitter, even more recently endorsed National Adjunct Walkout Day and is now on Facebook. Still, a whole post in a title that will still fit in a tweet with characters left over for a link should qualify as a social media sub-genre or at least a hat trick So what do I do for the rest of the post?...besides make it a short one. With pictures. PS be sure to catch and sign the petitions as you scroll down...all the way down

Cover and profile photos for National Mobilization for Equity on Facebook

Here's the endorsement from the NME Action page:

#Ayotzinapa #Ferguson…#FueElEstado—intense & innovative online experience

Ustream logged 1,536 views of the Ayotzinapa conference, which  I'm not embedding because the archive is not up yet. When it is, I'll post it separately. With any luck, commentary links and perhaps even a Storify will be available to accompany it. It was intense and powerful, No reading list or having followed the news, however attentively, could prepare anyone for the experience of watching and listening to survivors, students and family, talk about their experience, let alone the powerful alchemy of Ferguson and Ayotzapa participants meeting and sharing.

I'm still processing the experience and can only imagine how alternately drained and exhilarated actual participants must feel, and especially the  #YaNosCansamos Solidarity Network that put it together, +Ana Maria Fores Tamayo, +Andrés Leopoldo Pacheco Sanfuentes (who get mentioned because they are the ones I know) and others from across the U.S. and Mexico ~ 22 on the group email. The story of the network is surely worth telling too. For now, check out the Facebook Event page, catch up on Ayotzinapa news and back story and watch the invitation video to see how many states, cities, universities in the U/S. and Mexico participated.

break is over—back to the #edblog beat & #adjunct blogging

…with something no matter how short or recycled. Not that it was a 100% break what with the persistent ubiquity of social media and email. The combined effect of information/project overload and sandwiching a holiday into a grim news news cycle had me dropping out wherever I could...

The time it allowed reading ed blogs and getting up to speed with my new colleagues on the Education Bloggers Network was well spent. There are 200 now. Just today I posted to the EBN Basecamp area explaining my ideas on configuring personal or open blog/social media networks. Most of the bloggers there are in K12 education. Some currently teach in both K12 and education courses in higher ed, most likely as adjuncts in the latter. I've been bookmarking their blogs on Diigo as I come across them. 

Anyway, when one of the members teaching in higher ed asked me about my field, I made my reply more of an introduction since I hadn't really posted one yet. Here it is, somewhat edited and with the obligatory apologies for tiresome redundancies:

My field is now "retired" with digital ankle biting and online community media as "retirement hobbies." I notice I am not the only ed blogging retiree here. [Aside: Is blogging the educator version of "old soldier" fading? Or just the persistence of longstanding habit?]

I started in English (UL Lafayette) and then Comparative Literature (ABDammit, UC Davis, representations of city space in literature). My move from multi-language lit to social media/web curation traversed teaching Spanish, developmental writing/study skills and 1st composition, ESL, GED, local Family Literacy and after school programs while doing web pages, email newsletters and groups and then onto blogging and social media. That's just the last 25 years...and leaves out non-academic teaching and other workplace byways,

Short version: precarious faculty is my home base / hub blog for what I consider an independent information network that takes in other blogs, aggregation platforms and social media.

❝@kudera's new #adjunct novel + more from the blogroll

Ready for good news from the adjunctiverse? A change of pace, not about organizing or actions within or unrelenting tragedies all about. Here's one from the blogroll: Alex Kudera, author of adjunct novel, Fight for Your Long Day, has another in the works.

I'm excited to announce that I signed a publishing contract for my second novel late last week. Beating Windward Press will publish Auggie's Revenge, a comic crime novel starring a trailer-park con artist, a supermarket seducer, and an adjunct instructor of philosophy searching for a life worth living.

 follow The Less United States of Kudera for updates on Alex's New Adjunct Novel! Check out these other recent posts on the PF blogrolls. 

#Strike! Shock Doctrine & enough labor movies for a film festival

…but online as a series, called Strike! after a) the topic, b) Sergei Eisenstein's first full length film, and c) the Skokie Public Library online list of labor movies that Anna Spiro recently posted to the adj-l listserv… a public PS to Anna: I found a free online pdf version of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and full (also free) online versions for most of the films on the list...now to decide which one to start with this evening (making this Sunday movie time more soiree than matinee). PPS: feel free to suggest more movies 

Anna wrote:

Onz upon a time — before Reagan and Thatcher and Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics — there was something called Keynesian economics [+ a mercifully brief comparison of Chicago School and Keynesian theories] and unionization. I truly feel all of the lessons of the past have been forgotten by the present generation, who need to get out there and fight for what they deserve. 

Here are some movies that perhaps should be shown during adjunct week or fair labor practices week... that would make a lot of sense these days. The list is from the Skokie (IL) public library. The banksters and their ilk have had a free ride for long enough... It's NOT just adjuncts...but people who work for Walmart, etc.   

I also again recommend at least Chapter One of Naomi Klein's' The Shock Doctrine ~ horrific and revealing in how how rights continue to be taken away from us. (We are about to get cameras inside NYS trains...)

Strike! Movies about Labor Unions

on the #precariousfaculty network & around the #adjunct/iverse

I just finished watching Ivory Tower online but should watch it again when I am not multi-tasking. It's definitely on the recommended list. Yesterday, when CNN aired the documentary, my viewing plan was watching skimpy clips and reading reviews. I don't often wish for cable or TV: don't miss the latter; never had the former so can't really miss it. This morning David Millroy's post to the CPFA list about watching Ivory Tower sent me looking for longer clips. Lo and behold...seek and ye shall find. Sometimes.

As for the rest of today (besides not taking all afternoon finishing and posting this), a PD "in the the News" on #HigherEd set up yesterday to have at the ready, awaits my attention. "News," being what it is, dates sitting in draft and will need updating ...the longer it waits, the more updating. 

Briefly noted and recommended, plus links to recent posts in the network

2 #precarity videos gleaned from #securework stream

…while waiting for quick (dare I hope?) re-cap post to make it out of drafts ~ and this afternoon's resumption of the NTEU Insecure Work Conference Livestream from Tasmania, I offer two videos from the #securework Twitter stream, one on insecure or precarious work and Verbatim Drama (Scene 3), a short dramatic performance ~ casual women academics talking about their retirement prospects.

In my opinion, the first, from the Australian Workers Union (AUW), has lessons for the often troubled relationship between contingent and tenured faculty ~ and for the unions organizing them.

from the archives, 2009: Judith Gappa & Rich Moser

Vintage movies yesterday, news updates and archives today...all looking back. Meanwhile (back at the ranch), the week looks forward to the International Student Movement (ISM) Week of Global Action and NTEU's online conference from Tasmania on #auscasuals' insecure work. That's getting around some ~ digital globetrotting. Now for some digital time travel:

Thursday, December 10, 2009. "Organizing: the Arts and Sciences," Rich Moser.   Cross posed from New Unionism. 

Organizing, yes, but for what? Richard Moser presents an intriguing summary of the current state of work and unionism in the U.S.. He argues that unions have tended towards an organizational culture which is resistant to change and unaccustomed to democracy. He traces the evolution of this process, mapping it against changes in work and society.  

Sunday Matinee: teacher movies, 1939-1988

Celluloid stereotypes and images of teachers and the profession from Good-bye Mr Chips (1939) to Stand and Deliver (1988)...dated and sentimental, but, unlike many more contemporary portrayals, competent and respected

Full movie: To Sir, with Love (1967) for free. | FFilms.org 

Full movie: Stand and Deliver (1988) | FFilms.org 

Our Miss Brooks playlist: Another Day, Dress / Induction Notice / School TV / Hats for Mother's Day and more - YouTube 

Good Morning Miss Dove (1955)

philanthropirates & education—déjà vu all over again

Venture Philanthropy...it's an epidemic. Reactions have been sprouting up all over as  I noted in Wednesday's post. Read on for more about why. Higher ed has the Koch Bros and is not exactly Gates-free either. ALEC plagues us all as Adjunked Professor explains in "Is ACCJC’s Bumbling a Set Up?" This slides right in with the reading I've been doing to catch up at the Education Bloggers Network since joining. 

As just one (or two) of many examples — more keep coming but I have to stop somewhere or I'll be up all night — here's Educating the Gates Foundation's two part series Prisons & Slavery: How Bill Gates, Gates Foundation and Microsoft Profit from Racism and Human Suffering: 

Walk on over to #NAWD Event page

National Adjunct Walkout Day Event page on Facebook

On Facebook and wondering how to join the Event page? Be pro-active. Go to the Adjunct Walkout page or and leave a message or pm on one of the pages asking for an invitation. Tweet a request to @AddieJunct or @NationalAdjunct ~ or a #NAWD tagged "invite me" shout out. Already invited (to the Walkout Event page on Facebook) and accepted? Then invite others ~ adjuncts and allies in your network. Tweet a #NAWD tag "will invite" notice. Invite friends directly from the Event page. Share the call to invite with other pages and groups. Let's do it! 

Event page host Debs V Eugene (dba @AddieJunct) meant to make this a public event page because a) it is a public event, and b) so we could share it with our networks and on other social media. We may not be able to change the settings, so it's up to all of us to pitch in. 

Not on Facebook? s'OK. There's Twitter and the National Adjunct Walkout Day discussion board too, with enough people on more than one to stay connected. No doubt a G+ page or Community and Event page are in the works too. Just keeping tagging everything. 

#adjunct & student actions & other happenings here there & everywhere

International Student Movement Global Week of Action, Nov 17-22

…local, national, and global ~ on the ground, through cyberspace ~ everywhere, continual and connected. You can't miss the common themes weaving through them…   #1world1struggle

Recently...

• End of October: Fair Employment Week in Canada and CEW 2014 in San Diego and Colorado
• November 3: Day of Action to STOP the Corporatization of Education with campaigns in Florida, Kansas, Massachusetts and Washington D.C. that spread across nation and the internet.
• November 11: @TakeBackNEIU demonstration at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU) against cancelled classes and a university land grabbing development scheme

Coming soon to a computer monitor or street near you...

Midweek Movie Break: Chomsky on the #Corporatization of #HigherEd

…with an introductory visual from Tom Tomorrow and a background article on the Powell Memo that Chomsky refers to.

and now for the main feature....

Back online & connected again…blogging, courses, sundry WriMo's, etc

It wasn't easy resisting the Arne/Terminator and Jack/TheShining memes.

I've been off-line (no internet, no telephone, no radio or TV) from mid-morning Thursday until 7 am this morning. Not the usual procrastination or blogging block. Today has been mostly e-mail triage and quick social media check ins with more ahead.

Even so, I expect to resume regular blogging tomorrow. There is no shortage of topics. Posts in progress and on the spike include:

• follow up on the DoE Call for Comments on PAYE Rulemaking Committee, 
• Next steps for PSLF Farness project, including Consumer Finance Protection Bureau pledge
• Network for Public Education, ed blogging and Public School Shakedown
• NAWD-y thoughts and reflections
• color coordinating Walkout online and IRL tees, hats, badges, avatars, twibbons
• emerging regional news ~ Union County NJ, Texas, Nassau County NY, Colorado
• not to mention whatever turns up on the feeds

I haven't had time to read let alone reply to everything but will get to what I can as best I can. In the meantime, there's new content here on the feeds, the news ticker and in the Reading Room

#NAWD links from the #BigRedA is for #Adjunct

…is the Big Red A giving National Adjunct Walkout Day a thumbs up, hitchhiking or getting ready to walk? I've been collecting links and tweets for a Storify (that I'd better get to before it goes as jumbo out of hand as the COCAL XI Storify) and am also working on a handful of related posts (including but not limited to a history of the Big Red A, Why February ~ another history, and the Adjunct alphabet game). The links are to a) tide you over until then, and b) remind you to check out, follow, share and, most especially, join conversation on any one or all of the main Walkout Day locations (discussion board, Facebook page, Event page, Twitter stream and hashtag) below

 National Adjunct Walkout Day Discussion Board

 National Adjunct Walkout Day on Facebook

 National Adjunct Walkout Day EventFacebook

 National Adjunct (@NationalAdjunct) | Twitter

 #NAWD - Twitter Search 

More #NAWD Links

What do you think of our #education system? #ReclaimEducation

Movie break w/ HT to #Adjunct Walkout Day: Road to #NAWD

…Rio actually. I'm collecting "road" and "walking" themed material to blog as part The Crosby/Hope Road pictures came to mind. Our "adjunct road" series starts with Road to Rio (1947). A wicked Vail played by Gale Sondergard (also associated with Salt of the Earth) is the arch-villain. There will be more "Road to..." movies between now and February 25, 2015. As far as I can tell, there's no hidden adjunct allegory, cautionary tale or subtext. Just a road, as in "the road is made by walking."

Road/walking poetry and other literature is another area I want to collect and post material for National Walkout Day: Kerouac, Frost, Machado, Rousseau, Benjamin (and his flâneur) I don't know about you, but from now to late February is a long, long time for me to live (and blog) on movement rhetoric, exhortations to organize, calls to build community and bridges, etc. Those roads are made by walking and connecting with other walkers, in my case, digitally. 

#Adjunct Reading Room: The #Precariat by @GuyStanding

…at a price any adjunct can manage, in case I don't come up with a movie before midnight...lagniappe if I do.

The Precariat - The New Dangerous Class, a Bloomsbury Open Access book from Bloomsbury Collections, is available in HTML full text for online reading, with page image PDFs for printing or offline reading (licensed by Creative Commons)

Neo-liberal policies and institutional changes have produced a huge and growing number of people with sufficiently common experiences to be called an emerging class. In this book Guy Standing introduces what he calls the Precariat - a growing number of people across the world living and working precariously, usually in a series of short-term jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, stable social protection or protective regulations relevant to them. They include migrants, but also locals.

Standing argues that this class of people could produce new instabilities in society. They are increasingly frustrated and dangerous because they have no voice, and hence they are vulnerable to the siren calls of extreme political parties. He outlines a new kind of good society, with more people actively involved in civil society and the precariat re-engaged. He goes on to consider one way to a new better society -- an unconditional basic income for everyone, contributed by the state, which could be topped up through earned incomes.

This is a topical, and a radical book, which will appeal to a broad market concerned by the increasing problems of labour insecurity and civic disengagement.

More information at Bloomsbury Collections - The Precariat - The New Dangerous Class

November…month of #writing—#edblogs…#digiwrimo…#nanowrimo & more

…which includes joining the Education Bloggers Network as well as adding a blog challenge to #nanowrimo and #digiwrimo (already a #wrimo surfeit). Still, since I already write at least one blog post a day, just not all on the same blog, #nablopomo seemed a trifle. The rub is that all +BlogHer daily posts have to be on one blog to qualify for the challenge. So I registered Computers, Language, Writing and will post a daily blogging recap ~ so very meta but something I'd been thinking about doing anyway. I most assuredly am not doing #AcWriMo. 

But back to the Education Bloggers Network, which has made a huge difference for K-12 advocacy against privatization, testing excesses and Common Core.  It could be a really big deal for us as well. I'd already added a number of  these K-12 bloggers to our blogroll and here are more for you to check out. I'm in. Are you? PS I'm making a list of adjunct and other higher ed bloggers who ought to be too. Email Jonathan Pelto at jonpelto@gmail.com. Let's do this. Now.

Jonathon Pelto replied to my request to join the network (blogged about earlier here and here):

Tuesday #Adjunct Notes—#FairEmploymentWeek #NAWD #CCSF @MLASubcon @CFPB

I started a Tuesday Notes draft last night. As the day progressed and expected terrain shifted, I had to leave them behind to start over but saved the draft for a template. Call it optimistic recycling. Late as it is already, this will be an erratic dash against the clock, zigzagging and jumping about.

So as not to forget Fair Employment Week: Precarious campus work in the spotlight again, I'm opening with it and the CAUT graphic. Although an optional annual Campus Equity Week came up at COCAL XI, only the campuses in San Diego and Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College Districts are doing #CEW2014. Colorado Front Range CC has been doing CEW annually too, but I haven't seen any notices this year

The predictability of tabling makes me look forward all the more to National Adjunct Walkout Day as different and innovative. Rumblings that NAWD needs to be "professionally" organized, less grassroots...even rescheduled to fold into CEW2015 make me wince. Say it ain't so.

The big news of the day has to be the #CCSF trial ~ just follow the hashtag on Twitter. Margaret Hanzimanoulis shared SFGate's story of dramatic testimony shaking up City College of San Francisco trial and recommends following @FitzTheReporter. Rare is the higher ed story that can hold its own with a World Series.

Monday #Adjunct Notes…Happy Birthday #AdjunctJustice

The Daily Notes idea I proposed last Friday, got lost over the weekend. I'm not ready to say that it's not working out and will try again. Maybe it's just not for weekends. There's not really a plan but if there were, "post more often" would be the short version. More content (posts) leads to more visits, develops the blog as a network hub and (hopefully) encourages checking out features (blogrolls, pages, news feed ticker, archives, video bar, widgets for Twitter, Facebook and blog feeds ~ and morw). We really do have a lot of comment even without posts.

Like frosting like on a birthday cupcake, bringing us to ~

...a happy announcement and call for a digital party. Yesterday +Ana Maria Fores Tamayo's Adjunct Justice (on Tumblr) turned one year old (you might not have noticed from just the post title) Celebrate by visiting the blog and following. PS plans are afoot to add a comment feature too because we all know how much Ana enjoys conversations with visitors to the Adjunct Justice Facebook page.

Halloween Special: Sunday at the Movies Double Feature

…with apologies for missing last week and extras to make up. Some Sundays, selections (Matinee or otherwise) are educational; others, entertainment. Our Movies for Precarious Faculty playlist abounds in the former...but not for every weekend and certainly not for Halloween. Even so, entertainment features are selected, not without irony, for subtext and metaphors relevant to our condition.

Tonight, we have vampires and zombies: Nosferatu and The Night of the Living Dead ~ videos below the fold. Don't try to tell me you have not seen both in the academic workplace.

Plus Cthulhu for commuters: H.P. Lovecraft audio collections and more from Open Culture.

On #PSLF: Public Statement to US #DoE on 30 hour rule

…guest post by Meg Feeley, originally posted to the adj-l listserv, Contingent Academics Mailing List, October 23, 2014

Please consider clicking through to the comments page for the U.S. Department of Education. Tell them you reject their '30 hour' rule for academics as outside the industry norm, and support a 'one class' rule: anyone who teaches one class (and is not employed full-time elsewhere) should be eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. You may submit comments anonymously.

Spread the word! You have until Nov 4th to submit comments here (click the "comment now" button):

Here is the public comment I submitted which has not yet been published.

Friday #adjunct notes—news links comments—whatever

…not in any particular order, not by importance, chronology, category or other ~ just as they flit by or come to mind. The operating idea is to turn out a quick update post. Morning would have been nice but we missed that window. Don't think of it as regular item either unless you see it appearing multiple days in a row. How hard can it be to snag a few from the morning flow to start the day with? Not pick, not select.

More than a hashtag, Marc Bousquet's #mlademocracy is now an organization with a url, a forum and a FAQ…taking memberships, inviting organizations to affiliate and offering badges. As much as the the MLA (and other organizations associated with higher education) might benefit from more democracy, the scope of this one may be limited. #mlatakeover seemed a more forthright tag.

Adjunctiverse reblogged Bryan Alexander's latest, "How to adjunctivize your university." It's on the blogrolls too. ICYMI here it is again. You won't like what it says but should not be surprised by it either. Halloween approaches: call it a #FridayFright4Faculty post ~ for adjunct and tenured alike.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness ~ a reminder about the call to comment on the legislation that controls PSLF, IBR, Direct Student Loans and more.  Federal Register page calling for comments on the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan program is a good place to start. November 5 is the deadline for comments and documents ~ find more details and a submit button here

3 ways to get on the solidarity bus & darker October thoughts

…about the bus part…I've been following, Facebooking and tweeting +Ana Maria Fores Tamayo's campaign supporting immigrant issues and calling the marginalized—social and geographical outliers—to stand together. Her campaign is both online at Adjunct Justice and @AnaMFores and on the ground at protests and all the way to border detention centers. Of the many powerful and moving pictures she has taken documenting protests (sometimes carrying a sign bigger than she is) and trips to the border, I am particularly take the solidarity bus. Maybe because it's public art on wheels or I'm having a 60's flashback, but the solidarity bus sure looks good for my next Precarious Faculty cover image. Besides, Vanessa is butterfly in Greek.

That's one way to get on the solidarity bus. The other two are National Adjunct Walkout Day and Meg Feeley's Adjunct Student Loan Debt / PSLF Fairness Campaign

A late, short #BlogActionDay post…#BAD14

…down to the wire because I have been too busy working for equity (and against inequity) to blog about it.

Yesterday's post would count if I were on the other side of the International Date Line. Tonight I don't even have time to tell you about what I did today.

…so maybe I will tomorrow.

Oct16 #BAD2014 Reminder + #PublicEdNation followup…all connected…even to #ccourses

…less unrelated than might appear at first glances: both are fighting #inequality. Also Blog Action Day shares a blogging connection with the National Public Education Network via the associated Education Bloggers Network. So of course I connect these networks to Connected Courses…both by blogging and as a "daily connect." There's more but isn't this already tangled enough? If you have a blog, register it with Blog Action Day and blog about adjunct inequality. No blog? Then check out blogs on the livestream (it's already October 16 somewhere), comment and share on social media. We're all connected. PS the ed bloggers want to add higher ed to their mix.

…and now more about Blog Action Day before moving onto Public Education Nation follow-up and the video of Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown's closing conversation about building a movement.

#ReclaimEducation…#PublicEdNation event, links & videos

...from National Public Education Network's #PublicEdNation event, October 11, 2014. For an event recap that also talks about both education blogging and involving higher education in the quest to #ReclaimEducation from corporations and "education privateers," read Russ Walsh's "Hangin' at Public Education Nation" with 200 hundred or so Badass Teachers, bloggers, school administrators, college professors, parents and students. Yes, bloggers are making a difference -- so will connecting more ed bloggers, whether across borders or discipline and category silos. Or as the adjunked professor commands us adjunct and precarious bloggers, blog on!

Public Education Nation videos still MIA: 

Testing and the Common Core: New York Principal of the Year Carol Burris leads a discussion  with educators Takeima Bunche-Smith, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen and Alan Aja.

Support Our Schools, Don’t Close Them: Chicago teacher Xian Barrett moderates a panel featuring education professor Yohuru Williams, Hiram Rivera of the Philadelphia Student Union, and a representative of the Newark Student Union.

...and the not to be missed closing event, Diane Ravitch and Jitu Brown, In Conversation: The event finished off with a conversation between leading community activist Jitu Brown and Diane Ravitch (both pictured above), who talked about building a movement for real improvement in our schools. Until the video is archived, here's a Bill Moyers interview with Diane Ravitch. You can fill in some gaps following the #PublicEdNation tag on Twitter. @CPFA_forum, @AddieJunked, @precariousfac and @VCVaile followed the event from afar, retweeting posts of particular interest to our "ad-junked nation,"

October is National #Bullying Prevention Month

…not the only item on the PF blogging agenda, which includes National Adjunct Walkout Day, Adjunct Chat's PD project, #ccourses ~ among other topics. Since this is Bullying Prevention/Awareness Month, I did not want to delay opening a long planned academic bullying series post. Although most of the months' designated websites emphasize schools, bullying and mobbing ~ as many of us know all too well ~ is very real in academic workplace too.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, in which schools and organizations work together to stop bullying and cyber-bullying through activities, outreach and education. The month not only tries to raise awareness of bullying in schools, but also works to raise awareness of workplace bullying.

So is bullying in online groups and volunteer organizations. Building and maintaining trust is central to both organizing and preventing online bullying. Whether serendipity or morphic resonance, today's #ccourses' webinar is about building trust online and off. That will probably be the next post in the series. Reading Room will feature related links this month, and I hope to get to at least some of the bullying and related posts in drafts

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, CSEA Local 1000 AFSCME, AFL-CIO...and now for a video and more links, with a focus on workplace and academic bullying and mobbing to reinforce group think and as a retaliation tool

Sunday Matinee: #Walkout…w/an #adjunct nod to #NAWD

OK so this late makes it more like Sunday Night at the Movies (which is classically
"Saturday Night at the Movies" anyway).

An #AdjunctWalkout is in the air (not for the first time since I've been covering this beat), last walkout we blogged was Wisconsin, February 17, 2011.  For the one coming, there is a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a few other links (nearly naked blog and equally sparse Facebook event page) that may or may not be related…more when someone sends it to us; if not, then not.

According to Wikipedia:
hence the film and links (below). The

In labor disputes, a walkout is a labor strike, the act of employees collectively leaving the workplace as an act of protest. A walkout can also mean the act of leaving a place of work, school, a meeting, a company, or an organization, especially if meant as an expression of protest or disapproval. 

A walkout can be seen as different from a strike in that a walkout can occur spontaneously, and need not necessarily involve all the workers present, whereas a strike is often voted on beforehand by the workers, giving notification both to all of the workers and to the company affected.  

The video Walkout the 2006 HBO movie based on the 1968 East Los Angeles Walkouts or Chicano Blowouts originally embedded in this post is no longer accessible. The student actions of 1968 inspired later protests that used similar tactics.

From the archives: a #poem for the weary #adjunct

 …When in doubt, that is to say, when I am woefully behind on posts and at a loss for which of so many topics (readings, news, issues, campaigns, social media, projects, courses usw) to blog, then it's time to make some breathing space by hitting the archives. So here, reposted from October 20, 2012, is ❝Waifs and Strays❞ by Arthur Rimbaud with this (still appropriate) note:

#PAD/s usually go to plog (short for poetry blog) & @PWPicnic…this one seemed somehow so right for here. Alors, sont-nous aussi les enfants de la rue dans notre malchance d'être ainsi abandonnés?

Waifs and Strays by Arthur Rimbaud, translated by Jethro Bithel

Wednesday miscellany⁓what I'm #reading…#ccourses #NassuaAFA #adjunct #labor #moocs & more

…yesterday was to have been a post day but turned into Disconnectivity Day for area telephones and internet via their fiberoptic cables. I would have missed #AdjunctChat but with the experimental all day "facilitated by us" format, I was able to make part of it and brought up +Laura Gibbs' idea about an instructor Learning Commons hub that she introduced on #ccourses. It keeps growing too.

As for blogging, today it is then ⁓ and a jumble at that. With the draft pile is growing, I should finish off a few before starting another post (potential draft for the pile). Meh. I'm still in recovery mode from yesterday's stress and in the meantime...

I've been reading...

Sunday Matinee Extra Feature! @DemocracyNow #ClimateMarch

Can't be there in NYC, missed the livestream? Catch the People's Climate March now

People's #ClimateMarch Sunday Matinee: #FrackOff & Disruption

#FrackOff  (video of September 20 livestreamed event) features activists Shelley A. Young, Kandi Mosset, Elle Maija Tailfeathers, and Ellen Gabriel who will discuss high-profile media campaigns by indigenous groups in Canada and the United States that protest the oil and fracking industries and the ongoing governmental violations of Tribal sovereignty and treaty rights.  

Sponsored by the School of Media Studies and co-organized in collaboration with Idle No More and Frack Action, a leading New York-based organization working for a statewide ban on fracking as a part of Climate Action Week at The New School. The New School demonstrates our commitment to climate action and our solidarity with people converging on New York City for the historic People’s Climate March on September 21 with a week-long series of events focused on climate change. 

❝@MLASubcon 2015 Vancouver BC…#adjunct/GS friendly MLA alternative/supplement

Please consider organizing a panel, or submitting an idea for a paper, collaborative research project, strategy session, or other contribution to the subconference ~ CFP online here and here.

2013 MLA Subconference Closing session, Chicago

There may be some funding for participants! (and if you can contribute 5 or 10 $$, that would really help someone attend who might not make it there without some travel funding!  Thanks to all.

The organizers of the MLA Subconference are committed to using a large portion of our funds to provide partial travel grants to participants and attendees who need the support. We have decided to make this an ongoing and expanding goal each year, and are currently working out the logistics.

More information on the MLA Subconference website, to be continually updated