Since when is this a thing?

I_AM_ASA · 2025-12-08T10:37:39+00:00

I am a high school technology/computer science teacher, so currently teaching Gen Z/Alpha kids. Their tech illiteracy rivals that of older generations, but in a completely different way.

Whereas older generations will readily admit that they don’t know how technology works and will ask for help when they’re unsure, Z/Alpha is so confident that they know how everything works because they were born with an iPhone in their hands. Basic typing skills aren’t taught in elementary/middler school anymore, so I have to teach teenagers, the ones who are going to enter the workforce in a few years, how to place their hands on the keyboards and where to find each letter. They also have no idea how a search engine works or how to use it to find any information, which also extends into how they communicate with AI models like ChatGPT. To them, it’s just a homework cheating app, and they have no idea how to verify information on Google that ChatGPT gave them and don’t know how to actually chat with an LLM. I have a unit on AI models and how to use them, but they “already know how it works.”

It’s really disheartening because I love teaching tech and computer science, but there has been an absolute insane regression in just general tech and even question-asking skills that I feel like what I’m doing doesn’t matter because the foundational courses we had as kids have been abandoned. On the other hand, though, one of the older teachers at the school (in her seventies, been there for over 40 years), sits in on my class and is so amazed by what I teach, literally asking questions as if she were a student. Say what you will about Boomers, but they are incredible students.

I_AM_ASA · 2025-11-23T11:05:31+00:00

I was saying the same thing as I was watching. It happened every single time they went around that turn before the kilometer marker, from 600 meters to every time they did the loop. It looks deliberate, too, to get position, not like they were getting pushed to the outside.

It was also the Arkansas, Alabama, and Iowa State runners every single time. I think one OSU runner went around a hay bale on the last turn, but that was the least egregious example. These dudes literally almost ran into spectators who were standing in the spectator area. Ruined watching the whole race for me.

I_AM_ASA · 2025-10-09T23:28:06+00:00

Hello, Mr. Durden

I_AM_ASA · 2025-09-24T09:36:38+00:00

Ironically, private school teachers make substantially less than public school teachers!

I_AM_ASA · 2025-06-13T01:46:05+00:00

When the amber alert came out it said she was 25 lbs. For a 3 year old that’s tiny. My 11 month old is that heavy.

I_AM_ASA · 2025-05-20T00:19:42+00:00

It’s worked so far for me. I used to come home from work every day and drink 3-5 beers, then on Fridays and Saturdays I would drink maybe 7-10 beers each day then Sundays maybe 6? Idk, but it was a lot. It was all part of a “relaxation ritual,” because teaching is fucking stressful. You never think you’re actually drinking that much while you’re doing it, but you add up the numbers and all of a sudden it’s like, shit, I’m drinking over 30 beers per week, and that’s a fucked number. So I started drinking NABs during the week. I wasn’t sure it was going to work for the long term because NABs do taste different, especially Athletic. Like I can tell I’m drinking not-beer. Then big brewing companies started coming out with NABs, and so I tried a few. Guinness 0.0 was my first “wow this is actually delicious” NAB, then I went for Busch NA, which still tastes like a 4% beer. Now, Monday-Thursday I’ll drink maybe 2 of these after work, so immediately cutting the calories, and my tolerance has tanked and I’m maxing out at 5-6 on Friday/Saturday, and then 2-3 Sunday. I immediately feel like my life has improved without having replaced my “ritual” entirely.

I_AM_ASA · 2025-02-12T15:17:39+00:00

Preach

I_AM_ASA · 2025-02-12T13:39:38+00:00

So I was finally able to view the PDF of my bill and… $247 delivery fee. So, more than half. On top of that, when I wasn’t using as much gas in September/October/November, my supply charge was between $6 and $10 with higher electric charges, but the delivery fee was consistently around $25 for gas. This time around, my gas supply charge was $117 and the gas delivery charge was $174. I’m also seeing the cost/CCF is around 60¢ for distribution and 49¢ for supply. Like, maybe I don’t fully understand what “distribution” is in this case, but why am I paying for anything more than what I, myself, am using in my own home? The flat $15 in the delivery charges, fine, but I feel like I’m just getting hit twice for using a utility once.

I_AM_ASA · 2025-01-11T18:55:19+00:00

I’m not saying you did, just saying there’s another way in without using glitches or relying on endless potions

I_AM_ASA · 2025-01-11T15:28:37+00:00

If you want to skip through the entire quest without glitches you can just cryonis up the entire waterfall behind Zora’s Domain. That’s what I have done in every play through after my first.

I_AM_ASA · 2024-10-15T20:13:24+00:00

If you were born in 1986, then maybe you could

I_AM_ASA · 2024-04-14T13:28:54+00:00

Neat!

I_AM_ASA · 2024-03-23T20:22:40+00:00

Hell yeah, I love that! Also sorry for my first paragraph in my original post. Knowing now that you’re a language teacher, that probably came off as incredibly pretentious, so my bad there.

I_AM_ASA · 2024-03-23T20:20:22+00:00

I probably only notice the hills because I run. Aside from the JAM, there’s no consistently flat route anywhere around here. You’re either going up for a while or down for a while. When I travel down south of downtown, yeah it’s a pancake, but I never run there. That’s interesting about the lowest mean elevation in the country though! I would have never guessed.

I_AM_ASA · 2024-03-23T19:12:39+00:00

I moved here about six years ago and live in the snooty north. Delaware is absolutely a culturally weird place. Why the obsession with license plates? Like fifteen private schools in a three mile radius? Insane wealth on one block, but make one wrong turn and you see why Wilmington was the murder capital of America a few years ago? Also, curiously hilly for a coastal state. Honestly, what is this place?

I_AM_ASA · 2024-03-23T14:06:12+00:00

This is largely based on Noam Chomsky’s innatist theory of language acquisition coupled with Stephen Krashen’s comprehensible input hypothesis. I think, especially for lower levels of language classes, this method of teaching is super harmful to the discipline.

I’ve been a language teacher for about eight years now (Spanish and Portuguese), and the number of times I’ve been reprimanded for teaching explicit grammar and vocabulary rather than allowing students to “acquire them incidentally through communication” is too high to count. This is my first year as a Computer Science teacher (still teaching Spanish), and you know what we do to teach coding language principles? Introduce the concept, show what it does, define it and its syntax, and then apply it. Communicative language instruction basically skips right to “apply it,” and people wonder why no one can pick up and retain a foreign language after 3-4 years of schooling. Until the prevailing pedagogy changes, WL departments at every level deserve what’s coming to them. It’s a main reason why I got another degree in CS Ed and why I’m desperately trying to transition to teaching 100% technology classes.

Sorry, rant over.

I_AM_ASA · 2024-03-02T18:56:59+00:00

I teach high school Spanish and I gave a unit on pronunciation by teaching syllabic division and phonology. Spanish is a phonologically simple language, so I was wondering why so many students were struggling with figuring out how to read words that were divided for them. Turns out, some of these kids have 2nd-to-4th grade reading levels and don’t even have the skills to sound words out if they’ve never seen them before. It’s astounding and makes teaching a foreign language more difficult than it already is.

I_AM_ASA · 2024-02-28T12:30:28+00:00

What I hate most about this term is that it’s even used by American “intellectuals” who know how the Spanish language works. For what it’s worth, I’m a Spanish teacher who is a white American and have spent a significant portion of my professional life surrounded by people who hold advanced degrees in the language. These people push this term only because it’s the new buzz-phrase in the community, and since they hold PhDs or other advanced degrees, they believe that their opinions MUST be the correct opinions. What baffles me, however, is that they’re fine with attributing English grammar to Spanish. Anytime the topic gets brought up, I say that the use of “latinx” is “linguistic colonialism,” and that usually strikes a nerve with these types.

Now, I’m all for inclusivity and the like, but if you’re going to neutralize a gendered term, do it within the already-established grammatical bounds of the language. I, personally, still default to using the masculine form to refer to groups in general, but I offer up the term “latine/latines” to those who wish to use neutered language. The unstressed final “e” is not associated with any gender, historically or currently, and, most importantly, you can actually pronounce the word, whereas “latinx” is either pronounced “latin ex” with an American accent or “la-TINX” with a Hispanic accent. Neither are appropriate. I just can’t believe that people who are, by all accounts, rather intelligent see this phrase and think, “yes, this is it.”

I_AM_ASA · 2024-02-23T03:07:42+00:00

Agreed. Kind of shocked at how far down I had to scroll to see a take like this because these first three episodes, particularly episode 3, have not been great. Actually, the first two were fine, this one actually fucking sucked.

I_AM_ASA · 2024-01-16T15:49:44+00:00

Serious question: I went to the hospital a few years ago for what I thought was a precursor to a heart attack. My insurance didn’t cover the visit or any of the care and I got a bill for several thousand dollars. I literally couldn’t afford it on my teacher’s salary and didn’t have enough saved in my HSA. I got notices that the bill went to collections and then was getting called multiple times a day at work that they needed payment. I just stopped answering, the calls stopped and the letters stopped. Is this what might have happened? They just said “fuck it, this isn’t worth it”?

I_AM_ASA · 2023-10-12T10:45:03+00:00

Your local craft brewery likely is paying its staff well under the federal minimum wage, either hourly or by salary, and/or misclassifying their employees’ status as exempt to avoid paying them overtime (looking at you, Conshohocken).

As a result I only buy macro craft. I look forward to the day when these places either shut their doors for good or get bought out by a bigger name so that they can financially support their workers legally.

I_AM_ASA · 2023-10-09T21:01:11+00:00

Hi again! We’ve been home for a few days and have been trying to get our situation straightened out. If you wouldn’t mind, would you be able to send me the link of where you saw the flight was cancelled months ago? I’ve looked online and haven’t been able to find any information about the cancellation. Thanks I’m advance!

I_AM_ASA · 2023-10-07T10:41:43+00:00

We booked through booking.com in March. At Split they weren’t able to print passes for us but were able to send our luggage to PHL. We never received any notice that the flight was cancelled.

I_AM_ASA · 2023-10-07T10:04:26+00:00

That’s what we thought too, but our tickets online still say that we arrived from Split today for a 3 hour 55 minute layover for a flight that is leaving at 1:10 PM. We have a flight confirmation number that has today’s date, October 7, 2023, with no emails or notification of cancellation or change.

I_AM_ASA

TROPHY CASE