My dudes, I’m pissed — and not in a fun, Australian, blottoed kind of way.
Last week, MAGA tried to dox me after I participated in a rally on the steps of the Alaskan Capitol.
The headline of a so-called “bipartisan” news source wrote: Previous speaker was a teacher and said “I teach DEI every day.”
“Who is that teacher?!” people replied in the comments. “You should report her!”
That woman, dear Reader, was me.
What I actually said during my speech, which you can verify in the video above, was:
“I use DEI every day. Sally can’t see, so I put her up front – that’s equity. I teach Spanish via books with Hispanic characters — oops, diversity. Our school embraces Tlingit culture around the halls — there’s inclusion. So my colleagues and I are supposed to be reported for… just doing our job?”
So why is MAGA so pressed?
Because this administration, in conjunction with the so-called “Moms of Liberty,” opened a snitch site, paid for by your tax dollars, where people who don’t even know what DEI stands for can rat out teachers for using DEI. And if that doesn’t sound like some outright Nazi-style tactics, I don’t know what does.
They demanded my name. They suggested reporting me “to Isis.” As in, the Egyptian goddess? Cool.
They said we were “paid agitators” from California, hired by George Soros. I’m still waiting on that check, George!
Fight, flight, or freeze?
If you’ve never had someone try to dox you, let me explain what it feels like. Your mind knows you are okay, but your body does not. Your muscles freeze, like you either can’t move or you could run harder than ever before. You’re unsure if you should move out of the country, change your name, or delete all your social profiles. Then you wonder if maybe you shouldn’t take that trip to Mexico, considering the reports of ICE going through citizens’ phones for evidence of government criticism.
The good news is that the trolls received plenty of articulate push-back from kind citizens jumping to my defense.
But for three days, I read the ongoing stream of putrid comments to ensure no one had name-checked me. (It wouldn’t have been hard to find my name, as they published it in other news sources.)
I imagine the same people who called for me to be reported are the ones who elected our Alaskan governor — a governor who’s vetoed the increase in the education budget every year. Because of 9 years of flat-funding schools, I’ve lost a teaching job, had to move schools, lost my favorite colleagues, and started homeschooling my daughter last fall.
Did I want to homeschool my daughter? No. Would my daughter have a better educational experience if we had elected a governor who supports public education and hadn’t DOGE’d Alaska years prior? One million percent.
I live in a state where idiocracy directly affects me and my children. Just like we all share the same planet, which gets hotter with more devastating storms, and we share the same community centers, which experience much higher gun violence than any other high-income country (4 times that of the second-leading country, Saudi Arabia).
We don’t just suffer fools figuratively, but literally.
Public education = critical thinkers
I’m not saying I’ve never done anything idiotic. Of course I have, but there’s a difference between doing some dumb stuff versus willfully ignorant brand loyalty.
It comes down to being able to think for yourself, i.e., learning “critical thinking skills,” which, of course, is the point of education. There’s a reason that the first thing they taught me in Teaching 101 was Bloom’s Taxonomy hierarchy of thinking.
Yes, some old-school models still view education as regurgitating knowledge into children’s minds. But even in the early aughts, we knew the Oracle of the Internet rendered that teaching style null and void. Even back then, when I was receiving my master’s of education, education was viewed not as teaching children what to think, but how to think — moving beyond basic recall to higher-order thinking.
Fun fact: the highest level of cognitive learning on Bloom’s Taxonomy is Create!
If the Department of Education goes away
They say that education in this country is failing, but the administration just eliminated 160 education research contracts aimed at helping better understand how to improve outcomes for kids.
If the D.O.E. is eliminated, all Title I schools will lose funding and oversight. This means that states and cities must increase local taxes to make up the difference. States will no longer have a federal check on compliance with I.D.E.A. or other federal laws. Special needs students — people like my daughter — will lose funding, supports, protections, and federal oversight.
When they say they’ll “send education back to the states,” what they mean is to take a wrecking ball to fund tax cuts for billionaires and leave us to make up the rest.
In writing, there’s an expression, “show, don’t tell.” The administration is showing that they don’t care about kids, and they care even less about poor and disabled children.
The best way to teach our children to become critical thinkers is with education. (And creating!) Education is how we teach our children to think for themselves so they can imagine a better future than the one we’re offering them right now.
Thank you for listening to my rant! I am so grateful. If you want to support my work and fight for more critical thinkers, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.
Love, Summer
Summer, thank you for your courage and your “rant”. So many emotions and so much energy trying to sort through this insanity. I’ve set time aside for thoughtful conversations and deep introspection. Those of us with a conscience, a capacity for critical thinking, and an open heart, have had to hold so much toxicity from the prevailing dark storm that is forming around us. So much grief to hold in our bodies. But there comes a time for indignation and anger, even rage. When being forced to the subjugation of a despot and his immoral lackeys, with no end in sight, there is only one recourse. My time has come to push back, to say no, to hold the line. Anything else is the enabling of this abomination. So on April 5th I take to the streets. I search out camaraderie. The fight has begun. I am a 70 y.o. widower who lives alone with “beauty boy” Buster (my yellow lab/catahoula mix). I walk both in beauty and in sadness, I understand how deep grief can hone the soul and bring oneself alive again. I have worked hard at this since my wife passed. I also know if she were alive, she would be standing next to me, voice raised, eyes fixed with resolve and conviction. She will be with me in spirit. I deeply admire seeing you, your daughter, and your mother standing along side each other in the picture. In solidarity, Mark.
dear Summer. rant away...and sorry you have to rant in the first place. sorry for the intimidation. the doxxing. the continuing decimation of education in your state (and in our country). of course those who want to control people don't want them educated! critical creative thinkers will not serve obediently in a dictatorship. so not surprised by what is unfolding. sending a protective hug your way.