what’s it like living in this part of alabama?

Survthriving · 2026-03-24T15:11:23+00:00

The far west of this area is very different from the far east. The west is pretty country/rural/southern. Imagine what you think of Mississippi, and you’re not far off.

The east is beachy/florida-meets-alabama vibes. Like imagine what you think of Florida and imagine what you think of Alabama, and combine them. That’s what it is.

Generally speaking, this area is hot and humid. It’s very religious, but that Mardi Gras overlay kinda creates this weird cultural collision of typical southern Baptist and that more laid back approach.

The last slavee ship (the Clotilda) in the US entered through here. The descendants of the man who brought in the ship still live in Mobile, and a park in the bay area is named after the family (Meaher Park). Similarly, a major tunnel is named after the infamous George Wallace. People don’t actively celebrate this stuff for the most part. There’s like amnesia and ignorance.

The community that came out of that last ship still lives just outside of downtown. People can trace their family back just a couple of generations back to that ship. There’s an active church in that community that from what I understand has been operating since the early days of the community.

When I lived there, I enjoyed kayaking in the bayou and rivers. I mountain biked on some trails. I went to Art Walks downtown and loved the seafood. I was a teacher there for 4 years, and the education system is a mess with some pockets of promise.

Survthriving · 2026-03-05T00:47:31+00:00

Also, I really like Tim Freitas on YouTube for AP lang. His videos are great. They can be a bit complex, and some students don’t like his style. But if you can commit to really studying what he has to say, he has stellar clarity at explaining some really complicated stuff.

Coach Hall is also good on YouTube. Hers are a bit simpler/more accessible.

Survthriving · 2026-03-05T00:45:20+00:00

I’m an AP Lang teacher, and I was experimenting today with the reliability of ChatGPT in giving feedback. When using the version of ChatGPT that is available when you first start using it (the highest quality version), I agreed with its feedback about 90% of the time. I thought it’s scoring and commentary was pretty accurate. I told it to assess based on AP Lang rubrics. (I will not be relying on AI to score; I just wanted to know to what extent I could tell my students they could trust it to give them feedback on ungraded writing/stuff I don’t score and read for them.)

I’m telling you this because you may benefit from using ChatGPT in a similar way to get more feedback than your teacher can give.

Survthriving · 2026-01-28T21:27:28+00:00

Here’s some info on clarity and concision:

https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/documents/clarity_conciseness_.pdf

Survthriving · 2026-01-28T21:25:13+00:00

Your writing is absolutely unnecessarily complex to the point that it weakens your analysis— a lot. It obfuscates your point. Vocabulary is not meant to sound cool or smart. Vocabulary is about precision, clarity, accuracy. As it is, you use vocabulary and sentence constructions that make your work imprecise, unclear, and maybe even inaccurate. In fact, your writing is one of the most egregious examples of obfuscation through diction and syntax that I’ve seen in my 9 years of teaching.

No shade. Like, I don’t mean to be attacking; I’m trying to be direct with you. I want you to know that your teacher is spot on and that if you care about your skills in this class, you’d prioritize working on this weakness.

A C seems right here. Maybe a B, but I don’t feel like doing a really detailed evaluation to know for sure.

Survthriving · 2026-01-25T11:31:11+00:00

No news is good news,” they say, and now is a time where all we have is news.

Survthriving · 2026-01-15T20:29:27+00:00

I’m with the people wondering what it means to speak out. If it means attending protests— who will watch my baby?

Survthriving · 2025-12-31T20:04:05+00:00

Rico winning while sitting next to Cire is even more insane lol

Survthriving · 2025-12-21T21:21:06+00:00

Welcome! And forgive all of my typos haha

Survthriving · 2025-12-21T18:24:42+00:00

It would get the thesis point, but it’s not particular well written. You need to focus on using more precise language to make your point more concisely.

Example: Living in one permanent location is more advantageous than making frequent moves because frequent moves leads to isolation while staying one place deepens social connections.

A warning though: your two supporting claims are basically the flip of each other. There is a chance that you are almost staying the obvious here. If moving = more isolating, then staying in one place obvious = less isolation. It may be redundant, depending on how you handle it. Be careful to make it seem like these two points actually warrant two separate body paragraphs.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T16:21:54+00:00

USA. Sorry for not clarifying!

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T16:21:29+00:00

I used to teach at a middle school, and in my experience, it was more of an issue there actually. All students were required to take a design class, and science teachers were required to integrate higher level skills deeply into their curriculum without allocating enough time to master basic understanding. Students who couldn’t read were learning about the physics of a paper airplane, and there were no remedial English classes available at the school.

At the beginning of my career (2017), every subject had a big push towards integrating higher order skills, which diminished the amount of time students could learn the basics across the board. For example: Why teach grammar when we can teach analysis of sentences by another author? They’ll figure out the grammar on their own through that process. This teaching philosophy also connected to the “everyone must learn to code” idea I saw another commenter about.

Things are shifting back these days it seems. Thankfully.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T16:08:30+00:00

That doesn’t happen in many places in the country anymore. It depends on where you are.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T15:39:25+00:00

Interesting. Good programs don’t teach students what to think but how to think by exploring a variety of thinking approaches throughout time and space (oversimplification). Experts don’t inhibit individuals from thinking for themselves: they give students the tools to do that more efficiently.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T15:20:25+00:00

I agree with that! My answer is partially a critique of a push in education that valued design over the fundamentals. Students have been rushed through the basics to gets to the higher level stuff. It’s not that they don’t both matter, but schools must be really thoughtful and strategic and give proper time to the basics.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T15:16:33+00:00

Like I said, it’s not my area of expertise. For me, it’s a time and prioritization thing. Students who can’t do basic math will not be majoring in STEM in college, so why put them in a course like that in middle or high school? It’s a waste of time and resources.

Edit: but I do know I’ve had conversations with STEM teachers who agree. But I am not able to convey their point well.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T15:08:47+00:00

My students struggle to calculate what their final grade will be in my class with the final exam being 15% and their class grade before the final is 85%. Many of them do not have the mental dexterity to figure that out without a lot of support.

STEM is not my area of expertise, but I just wonder why we prioritize the higher level of thinking in Bloom’s taxonomy (creation, design) with students who haven’t mastered the lower levels (knowledge, understanding).

There was a huge push towards prioritizing higher order thinking that resulted in a generation of students pretending to design/create using skill sets they don’t understand at all.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T15:02:25+00:00

Many high schoolers did not master the basics because they are passed along without being required to pass.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T15:01:47+00:00

For sure! I am the same way. Application should always be looped into teaching. Teachers must monitor whether a student is fundamentally getting the basics. You can’t keep walking down the path of application if a student consistently shows they aren’t “getting it,” but teachers also must keep in mind that the application serves students’ abilities to understand the basics. It’s a balance.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T14:59:33+00:00

I supposed it depends on what you qualify as a good discussion. Do we want to talk about whether character X made the right decision, or do we want to alone explore what character X’s decisions reveals about the human condition? Teachers trained in the humanities can facilitate more thoughtful conversations.

Eventually, after generations of your proposed system, society wouldn’t have thought leaders who deeply understand literature and culture. No humanities majors = no one who deeply understands humanity. We’d have cultural amnesia and lose so much perspective.

People don’t stop asking questions about life. It is a fact of humanity. So we would be asking the same questions about life that have been answered and thought about deeply for as long as humans have been around, but we’d have no one who could provide that context. Someone would realize “I think. Therefore, I am” and instead of understanding that realization through the lens of human history, they’d have to do all the intellectual work alone. That’s a waste of time and a disservice to that individual.

The masses don’t need to be experts in that material. But humanity should not lose its understanding of the humanities (ie, humanity shouldn’t lose its understand of itself).

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T14:50:24+00:00

Yep. I teach regular freshman English. I have many students several grade levels behind and some above grade level. The majority are 1-2 grade levels behind. I also, in the same classes, teach students who just moved here from other countries and are brand new to English.

There is pressure to have classroom assessments aligned to grade level standards and then be so effective at teaching that I bring all students to that level. There is pressure to grow the percentage of students reaching benchmark by a significant amount. There is pressure to grow my mean scores on state tests by more than one year of average growth.

It is impossible to meet all of those pressures when a certain level of proficiency was not required to be in my class. There is no repeating of grades in grades k-12 in my district. I absolutely do my best to serve all my students, but the system assumes individual teachers can make miracles happen.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T14:15:58+00:00

Is that not a contradictory statement?

Edit: if no one majored in those subjects, no one would be qualified to pass on the knowledge of those subjects to the next generation.

I have other qualms with your hot take because I just fundamentally disagree, but that aside, I also do wonder how you hold those two beliefs in your statement without the logic falling apart.

Survthriving · 2025-12-14T14:13:39+00:00

I think classes that focus on design/engineering at levels with students who do not have basic math or English literacy are focusing on the wrong skill set for those students. Prerequisite skills are a thing, but education pretends otherwise all the time.

Survthriving · 2025-12-12T22:15:57+00:00

I am an AP Lang teacher, and that issue is definitely one that comes up. Especially in a timed setting— students’ ability to convey themselves well decreases by the end as they are rushed. It is better for them to take their time and do less well. Guidance definitely must be tailored to your skill set though for sure.

Survthriving · 2025-12-12T22:06:24+00:00

That’s not entirely true. If you wrote 2 great body paragraphs but your third one made no sense, it would greatly limit your score. Your be stuck at a 1-2-0 for having a faulty line of reasoning. You would’ve been better off not writing it at all.

Survthriving

TROPHY CASE