It’s so weird to me. When I was in second grade, I started trying to read the Bible from cover to cover (made it until Numbers, then I had to start skipping around for my own sanity).

We keep hearing about how this is the most important book to this group of people. They demand it be taught in schools, they demand that we follow its precepts, but they can’t be arsed to read it themselves?

the educational parts were actually pretty good

It’s just workbooks that you do independently and grade yourself, right? All of that seems like it’s what we’d call low “depth of knowledge.” Multiple choice questions and just memorizing facts.

There is “old earth creationism” which works along those lines. But creationists are “literalists,” which actually means they believe a specific interpretation of the text taught to them by their pastor.

Really, you’d think that most anyone reading the texts would realize that Genesis 1 and 2 were mutually contradicting…

The creative justifications for creationism that try to approach something like science amuse me. Like Kents Hovind and Ham are both too stupid and incurious to be fun; a creationist who’s at least knowledgeable enough to look at “variable c” “”theories”” is entertaining to engage with. That’s part of how I’d justify calling this a “meme” anyway - it’s one of the brighter ones manufacturing a meme to sell to the stupid ones.

I collect that kind of stuff for fun + have some exposure to Christian education communities.

Were you doing ACE? Those workbooks should be illegal.

“Presenting”? Like, we’re talking about giving presentations? Presenting is the skill of giving presentations?

How the fuck did that even come to mind?

Phrasing wise, yeah what they said wouldn’t work and this person is clearly early career. The most effective response to this (when it’s something I want to stop) is calling it “auraless” or “odd” behavior with varying intonation based on age group.

Seeing what the kiddos make is my favorite part.

Sometimes my heart gets broken - like once my high schoolers had to solder and build a prototype device using the components I provided to them, any function, they just had to create a slide show where they pitched their device to me as an investor. IE - this is a project I thought a lot about, spent real cash dollars on, figured out to teach a bunch of high schoolers to solder without them causing me to need to feel out paperwork…. I had two refuse to present. Was devastating to me, one kid in particular I was really surprised by, one I expected.

But usually it works out that I get to see a few that make me very happy. I try to suss out nascent interests that I can draw out. A project lets you find ways to help a student flavor it around marine biology or welding or something they actually like and will spend time researching. I also try to learn more shit about the world all the time and unleashing the mental processing power of a bunch of children can be a fun way to do that.

seeing balaclava/baklava mixed up makes me feel better about when I did it as a college student

? Being able to give a professional presentation is a pretty crucial job skill. My seventh graders are presenting for me next week.

Anything a middle schooler does is inherently suspect. The first thing you learn teaching middle school is that they are always trying to fuck with you, and anything like this is extremely suspicious.