honest toddler's trademark feud with honest company.

if you're a fan of either the Honest Toddler (HT) or the Honest Company (HC), you may have noticed that there's been an interruption in your regularly scheduled programming, especially in social media. but what many folks reporting on this are failing to note is that this didn't just start this week.


this isn't the first time
this didn't start on sunday. no. it began back in april, when HC (abbreviations are so much easier) decided threaten HT creator, Bunmi Laditan, with costly litigation if she didn't give up the name "Honest Toddler" to them. to be clear, while HC had registered the domain "honesttoddler.com," they hadn't applied for a trademark of that name, or even bothered to register the domain  "thehonesttoddler.com". HC doesn't have a line called "honest toddler" and have no rights to the name other than the domain "honesttoddler.com" which sat dormant, without any content, until recently. but i'll get to that in a bit.

when HC initially threatened HT in april, there was a big public backlash and HC led Laditan to believe that it was all a misunderstanding, a rogue employee speaking out of turn. Laditan forgave HC and even lended them credibility by hosting a HC diaper giveaway on her page. (side note: even in this midst of this dispute, Laditan says that she doesn't regret doing that giveaway, because the winner was a needy mom.)

We're sorry for the misunderstanding @HonestToddler (& everyone else!). We adore toddlers, honesty & look forward to future collaborations!
— The Honest Company (@Honest) April 17, 2013

before the kerfuffle in april, HC had asked HT to do an interview on their blog. so before anyone demanded anything of anyone else, HT and HC were peacefully coexisting, and HT had even given HC's brand some credibility by cross-branding with them on their blog.

peaceful co-existence seemed to be what everyone wanted, before the april threats, and again after the april threat. or so it seemed.

so who trademarked what, when?
Laditan got a book deal with publishing giant Simon & Schuster in Sept of 2012. on sept 27th, 2012, Laditan filed a trademark application with the US trademark office to trademark "Honest Toddler." the trademark process includes comparing the application to existing trademarks to ensure that it does not interfere with anyone else's trademark. Laditan's application hit no snags and she was granted preliminary approval on april 2nd. as part of the trademarking process, there is a 30 day period where the public can respond to the trademark. this is when HC filed their opposition.

it is significant to note that Laditan's trademark application was put in long before HC ever expressed itself in a hostile manner. her "Honest Toddler" brand was taking off in the entertainment industry, and she was doing the savvy thing to protect it.

to get a really nice timeline of all events, as well a a full myth/fact list, check out Bumni Laditan's personal blog.

how did we get here?
from what i can gather from Laditan's comments, and what HC has posted about "amicably reaching out," it sounds like HC has not stopped calling and emailing her, to request she withdraw her trademark application. she has declined each time. they have threatened her with costly litigation, should she continue to pursue the trademark. she has let them know that she does not care.

it seems that HC's big compromise solution was for Laditan to withdraw the trademark application (thereby forfeiting her rights to the name "Honest Toddler"), but that HC would happily license her the name for one year--for free. keep in mind--HC has no official rights to the name, and if Laditan were licensing, they could revoke it or change the terms at any point.

HC posted Laditan's response email as if it were damning. for me, it only endeared her to me more. her tone is friendly, and she even shows them her hand, letting them know that HT had been optioned by big-time tv producer Darren Starr.

and this is how we got where we are today. it seems as though HC saw that they weren't getting anywhere with Laditan, and decided to instead try to intimidate Darren Starr by sending a letter telling him that production of an Honest Toddler tv show would mean trademark infringement.

now, i'm not a trademark lawyer, but i DO know how to reason. HC doesn't own the "Honest Toddler" trademark--Laditan does. and if Laditan's "Honest Toddler" trademark didn't interfere with their current trademarks according to the US trademark office, how could it now?

the letter is below for your perusal.

almost immediately, HC finally decided to put content on honesttoddler.com, after leaving it dormant for 16 months. their content was a sleek narrative that cherry-picked details of their not-so-nice history with the Honest Toddler. it characterizes Laditan as impulsive and emotional, and impossible to work with. this tells me that they weren't really seeking amicable resolutions, they were gathering fodder in case their behavior became public again. is this HC's attempt to fight fire with fire?

a few observations
there are a few things i want to note about this situation and about the person of Bumni Laditan. the first is that Laditan is a HILARIOUS commedian. (for evidence, please see the mother's day gift guide.) i personally started following the Honest Toddler twitter before i even had a kid. as a person who loves children, her take on toddlers will leave you in stitches. but Laditan is unlike other parenting blogs that border on exploitation of their child (i have in mind a certain one that finds it funny to post pics of a toddler crying). under every tweet and post is a respect for toddlers as autonomous, rational people. their feelings and convictions are never belittled. toddlers (as impetuous and whimsical as they can be) are celebrated. this is a DAMN HARD thing to do in sattire, and Laditan NAILS it.

Watching a movie. This man just used the dark arts to make a preschooler out of wood. This can't be for kids.
— Honest Toddler (@HonestToddler) July 25, 2013

Jiminy, you’re a bush cricket not a court-appointed guardian. Go destroy a crop.
— Honest Toddler (@HonestToddler) July 25, 2013

and as a comedian, Laditan is a woman, and further, a woman of color. in the world of wildly successful comedians, she's a veritable four leaf clover. but that's not the only barrier Laditan has busted. have you looked at popular mom blogs lately? it's a white girls' club. as a woman of color, Laditan has broken down walls in BOTH the comedy and blogging communities. this woman is amazing, not just because of what she's done, but because of where she's done it.

did you know that she also wrote a book this year and had a baby--her third child?

(excuse me, i need to sit down. i'm tired just imagining this woman's life.)

and so it's because no one seems to be noticing what a ceiling cracker Laditan is that i'm aggravated. look at the press on this issue. see how often, even those articles that defend Laditan's position, accuse her of "throwing a tantrum." HC makes her out to be indecisive, wishy-washy, impulsive.

let's just review: in this fight, HC has money, the coattails of a celebrity, a PR team, a legal team. Laditan has social media. leveraging what she has is not "throwing a tantrum." exposing the nefarious practices of chris gavigan and his company in a public forum is what she has.

typical stereotypes of emotionalism and lack of reason are being lobbed at Laditan by HC, and because of lazy journalism and poor metaphors, the mainstream media is perpetuating them. it disgusts me.

i also think that the HC's constant harassing of Laditan, even after she repeatedly said no to their licensing offer, is symptomatic of how our business world mirrors rape culture. HC refuses to take no for an answer. (no means no, guys.) to submit to their demands is to relinquish rights, autonomy, branding. to give in to their persistence is to give up to them all her work and labor and the fruit thereof. being more powerful doesn't give you the right to badger people into submission. railroading smaller entities is wrong. it's doubly wrong when you think you can just do it because the person you're railroading is a "mommy blogger."

what we can do
i don't know about you, but i can't help but identify with Laditan. in my work, i manage a program whose copyright and trademark are owned by a large company that is external from my organization. we've had our ups and downs, and i can tell you from personal experience--it is no fun to have a behemoth company threaten you.

as supporters of Bumni Laditan, we can all do the following:

• boycott the Honest Company
   
• let Honest Company know that these nefarious practices and patterned attempts at striping Laditan of her professional rights and property will not stand. you can contact them in several ways, and you can do it repeatedly:
  --email them from their website
  --write on their facebook page
  --tweet at them: @honest, @jessicaalba, @christopher_gav
  --call them: 1.888.862.8818
   
• sign the petition to ask the US trademark office to block HC's opposition to Laditan's trademark of "Honest Toddler."
   
• buy Laditan's book.
  --amazon
  --barnes & noble
   
• help to build the audience and fan base of Honest Toddler
    
• get the story out. tweet about it. share it on facebook. write about it on your blog. talk to the moms and dads and kid-loving people you know about the Honest Company's deplorable behavior.
    
• ask main stream media to get on this story. tweet to your favorite news shows. if you have connections, send them a pitch on this story.

digesting the zimmerman verdict.

my sign at the bmore protest. it made the news :)

it's been two weeks since the zimmerman trial verdict, and while i'm not sure that i have the words, i finally feel like i can begin to write about it. questlove said that the day after the verdict felt like the day after september 11th. that about sums up how i felt for a good week after the verdict. shell shocked. deeply sad. disillusioned by the world i thought had order.

i was so glad when i saw that there would be a protest here in baltimore, the day after the verdict. i felt like i needed, somehow, to shout "this isn't ok!! this is not a way for people to live!!" and while that's what my twitter TL looked like, there was something satisfying about standing on a busy street corner in the inner harbor, letting strangers know.

i have a lot of feelings, but not a lot of coherent thoughts. or at least, not strung together enough for me to convey in a blog post. so bear with me as i use this catharsis to get my amorphous emotions into something resembling prose.

when the dust settled, and the shock wore off, and i could reflect a little, i think that the strongest or most salient feelings i have had is disappointment. it's a disappointment in my fellow white christians. i'm disappointed that in church, 12 hours after the verdict, my pastor said nothing about it. nothing. can you imagine that happening on sept 12, 2001? no, me either.

i'm disappointed that the white church--my church--has such a lack of empathy for the black church, that they literally say nothing in the face of their brothers' and sisters' pain and struggle. and i have to be careful here, because i know that had this verdict come down 4 or more years ago, i likely would have been the same way ... i wouldn't have known how real this verdict is for black folks ... how close it hits to home. how personal it feels for them. i'm trying to remember what it was like to be wrapped in that cozy blanket of privilege that kept me from feeling others' hurt, because i hadn't witnessed it for myself, and it didn't even come close to affecting my life or my existence.

and i'm trying to trace back my steps, to think about what learnings i had over the past few years that made me shift from where i was before--when i was mainly isolated from the struggle that so many endure; that place where believing a black president meant a post-racial america where colorblindness was the key to equality.

because i'm not satisfied with this group to which i belong (the white church) not realizing our collective privilege to stay silent in the face of injustice and tragedy. i'm not satisfied with the white church--my church--being the levite and the priest in the parable of the good samaritan--those who see the poor, beaten, robbed, downcast man on the side of the road, and cross to the other side and ignore his plight ... because they can.

honestly, this situation is a crisis of faith for me. i'm not saying that to be overly dramatic, i'm saying it because it's true. i have always noted the segregation of christianity in the US and thought that it was problematic, but more than likely just a symptom of the lack of unity in christianity in general ... or perhaps a symptom of differences of cultural preference in worship. i no longer think that. i see the segregation in american christianity as a direct result of our (white peoples') active decision to ignore, pass over, and be silent on the issues that affect black people in the united states.

all i could think, all last week, was what if the morning after the verdict, a black person in the neighborhood had needed God that sunday morning, needed--as we all do--to know that he cares for us, that our struggle and pain do not go unnoticed. what if that black person had walked into my church? he would have thought that God, and the white christians, cared nothing for his suffering.

shame on us. this is directly in opposition to the call of scripture to bear one another's burdens, and to weep with those who weep.

i'm embarrassed to be a white christian. and it isn't because of christ.

repost: me and trayvon.

this is a repost from an old blog. i posted it on 3.23.12, and it was titled "me and trayvon."
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i've been waiting awhile to write something about trayvon. it's been about a week since i first saw his story on my twitter feed. (maybe it was there sooner, but i was distracted with work in az.)

i have so much sadness for this situation, and it took me awhile to put into words why. because i tend to be pollyanna-ish about racism. i like to think that i'm not racist (or rather, that if racism is a spectrum, i come in on the low end), and i try to see the people around me as human beings that might have different experiences and culture, making them sometimes different from me ... but never with a different worth or validity. and i guess i tend to assume that those around me (for the most part), are striving to do the same.

the first time i was slapped in the face with the reality that there is more racism around me than i may realize was when steve and i were dating and he told me that there were racists in new york too. i challenged him on it, and he told me a few stories of people who had approached him, knowing that he grew up in the south, and thinking that they could say racist things to him that they knew they couldn't say to others (aka someone like me). i couldn't believe it. in my white, suburban, middle-class world, racism was something we learned about in american history class in 11th grade, denoted by plessy v ferguson and MLK. it was something that old men in the south perpetuated, not young people in new york state.

there were a few black kids in my school and in my grade. i was friends with them, and so was everyone else. they were popular, even. but i didn't understand the idea of assimilation (or think twice about why it was "easy" for us to be friends with them, and whether or not it was "easy" for them to be friends with us) until i saw on facebook that one of my closest black friends from high school had gotten two big tattoos on his biceps in college--one of the puerto rican flag and the other of the jamaican flag, to symbolize the heritage of each of his parents. i had known that his parents were each of jamaican and puerto rican descent, but i had no idea that this heritage meant so much to a kid who had worn abercrombie and fitch and ran cross-country ... which was basically the status quo at my high school. and it wasn't all white wonderbread all the time at my school, either ... i read zora neal hurston and ralph ellison in high school ... i guess that was supposed to give me a window into racism and the black american experience. but i'm not sure that it really did.

i think one of the best things i ever did was work in an urban school. it was only for a year, but it allowed me an up-close, get-to-know-you relationship with the kind of kids trayvon is now symbolizing. you're not supposed to have favorites, but one of my favorites was a kid named elijha. he was sensitive and sweet, and wrote poetry. he was also in a small gang of freshmen. one of my proudest moments (not just as a teacher, but as a human being) was talking to him about the gang, and trying to ask him questions to help him think about it ... like why was he in the gang (for protection, to belong, identity, manhood, etc) ... and were these guys really his friends .... and was it worth it to be in a gang if part of that membership meant fighting with someone you liked (in the context of that week, his gang was scheduled to spar with another group of boys, and as part of his initiation/loyalty, he had to fight a kid from the other group ... a kid he actually liked and got along with). on the day of the fight, he stayed after school with me "for extra help with algebra," though we did more hanging out than we did math. a few days after that, he showed me his notebook of poems, and while they were riddled with 15 yr old sex (yikes!! why is this kid showing me this??), i felt like he and i were not teacher and student, but two human beings relating to one another, sharing the best of what we had to offer, and hopefully making eachother's lives the better for it.

(side note: there was one student i was seriously afraid of, especially one day when he stood up to me and towered over my 5 ft, female frame. this kid was also in a gang, and was actually arrested for jumping a 40 yr old with his friends. their weapons included a two by four and bricks. he was a drug dealer and was in my class because he'd failed. he was white. and scary. there were definitely kids to be afraid of in that school, but it wasn't because of the color of their skin ... it was more because of the choices they made and the lack of positive adults around them to make better choices. or at least that's my inexperienced take on it.)

in that year, i learned that a lot of the things that are stereotypically "black" are actually more true of poverty. things like crime, gangs, drugs, desperation. i read random family and sat in on lectures by a life-long teacher in that district. she told about how her teaching strategy had changed to not expect kids to have things like light-bulbs and free time at home. she shared stories of learning the culture of the students in her classes, and adapting her teaching strategies to help them so that their success wasn't dependent on an unfair assignment (ie watch the debate on tv at home and write a summary due tomorrow), but on their ability to think and perform (which could be done by showing the debate in class and assigning the writing in class, etc).

the following year, we moved to arizona. i don't know if you've been there before, but there aren't really any black people. there are lots of minorities and disadvantaged groups (hispanics, american indians, middle eastern populations), but it doesn't look the same as it does on the east coast or in the south. i moved there thinking i would brush up on my spanish. do you know that the only person i ever spoke spanish with was a dishwasher when i worked in the restaurant? he spoke little english and so he would work on his english with me, and i would work on my spanish with him. it was awesome, because he was the nicest, most positive person i worked with. we were also both very good at miming or pointing to what we needed. his name was marcos, and he was always smiling, and thinking of him makes me smile now.

in tucson, there are invisible lines. there are areas where all the hispanics live, and the grocery stores are the food city, and the churches are in spanish. then there are areas where english is spoken and the grocery stores are safeway and albertsons, and the churches are full of white people. there are white people who will say things like "i never go south of speedway--it's not safe there." it always bugged me because i'd been south of speedway plenty of times ... and while there were more poor people there, and more drugs in certain neighborhoods, the shooting of a congresswoman that got national attention occurred in the more posh white part of town. there are a few areas where there is more intermingling, but it's mostly in the middle class neighborhoods. and i have to admit, the last 6 months that we lived in our apartment complex, a hispanic family moved in across the little alley, and it was refreshing to live in arizona and hear people speaking spanish to each other, after having lived there for 18 months.

and now we live in baltimore. a city that is 2/3 black. steve and i made a conscious choice to not go to the church near johns-hopkins ... mainly because it was full of other hopkins people, and we prefer to not live in a bubble. instead, our church looks like baltimore ... mostly black with some white people and a few asians. i'm really proud of the fact that we have two pastors--one black and one white--and that on a sunday morning, you might hear a rap from the worship team. i'm not always comfortable in our church, because the reality is that i'm not the main demographic of the culture they're ministering to ... i'm white, i'm not bmore-born-n-raised, i've got a grad degree, and i'm white collar. but that's ok for me, because i know our church is a church that i could bring my neighbors to, and not have them feel awkward, be they black or white.

i don't know how to fix racism. and i'm sure i've said things in this post that can be misconstrued or sound racist to the right ear. but instead of being afraid of sounding like a racist to someone, i want you all to know (whoever you are, wherever you live, and whatever your race or situation in life) that race is something i think about ... on the regular. the reality is that i just try to do what i can to treat humans like humans. and today in target, i smiled at every small black boy i saw, because i want each one of them to know that i'm going to do my best to see them the same way i see other boys--as cute kids, not as potential predators. and i made eye contact with every person i encountered, and smiled, and said things like "i'm sorry, let me get my cart out of your way" when we were maneuvering in the aisles. because that's what decent human beings do for other human beings.

and i guess this idea of our humanity is what gets me most about trayvon ... is the fact that one human took another human's life, without an eye-witness, without that other person having any weapons on them ... and somehow, the person who did the killing (even if it was self-defense) is still free. i'm sorry, but whiskey tango foxtrot?? where is the law?? where is the justice?? if it was a mistake, we'd call it manslaughter. even if i can assume that the details were ambiguous, and race wasn't an issue, there still should have been an arrest by now. we're clear on who killed who, and the person who took another person's life has gone nearly a month without any kind of retribution other than the outcry on twitter.

i just can't make sense of it. this is why i couldn't write. i was dumb-founded ... do i not understand how the law works?? am i just being pollyanna again??

and then i thought more about it, and i talked it out with steve on the car ride back from new york, and i realized, that in some ways, to a white woman from the suburbs, trayvon encapsulates all the small bits of racism that add up to one great big mass.

i admit it, i've seen a black dude on the street and though twice about where my wallet was ... it doesn't happen every time i see a black guy, but i do admit that it happens. so maybe thinking that trayvon was "suspicious" is something that many of us can admit to, when we're really being honest with ourselves. but then there was the fact that zimmerman ignored the instructions to not pursue the boy. isn't that where he stopped having the law on his side?? where he went rogue?? how the hell did he end up shooting an un-armed kid, and not just shooting him, but killing him??

and how do the police just take his word for it, that the killing was in self-defense?? how do they bag the child as a john doe, even when he had a cell phone on him?? how do they not identify him to him dad until his dad reports him as a missing person?? how do they go to the dad and use a photo of him, dead, with blood coming out of his mouth, to ID trayvon??

aside from the actual shooting of an unarmed child, most of these infractions can seem ... well ... to be misguided if taken one at at time. the marking the kid as a john doe ... ok, so they didn't look at the phone or records to figure out who he was. not cool, but maybe they overlooked it. or the poor choice for a photo to ID the kid ... insensitive and unkind are words we could use, but again, if that were the only thing done wrong, i guess i could chalk it up to a cop having a bad day at work and not thinking twice about it.

my problem is that i see these seemingly "small" infractions all the time. and i'm afraid to cry racist on the offending party. i'm afraid to wrongly accuse someone of something that has become signified by lynching mobs and the kkk. but with trayvon, it's all there. you can't ignore all the details that all add up to some serious racism that cost a human his life, and yet somehow still to this day, doesn't add up to an arrest. this one poor kid, in a nutshell, embodies all the little bits of racism that i turn a blind eye to ... whether it's willingly, or whether it's out of hopeful optimism that we live in a "post-racist" culture.

and because i see too much of myself ... or people like me who may too often turn a blind eye ... in zimmerman and the sanford police ... this is why i couldn't put this all into words. because i don't want to think about how the little things i let go can add up to a child losing his life. i don't want to think about how my complaisance can play a role. i want my kindness in target to be enough. i want it to be enough that my experiences working with urban kids opened my eyes and changed the way i thought. i want a tweet or a linked post to show that we who try to be on the lower end of that racism spectrum are not the minority of white people.

but what catches in my throat is the idea that it's not enough. that clearly, with a child dead, this problem is bigger than i want it to be.

anthea butler shares about right wing intentional misreading and fear/hate mongering.

last week i was flying and while catching up on twitter between planes, i happened to see anthea butler (@profb) refer to a string of tweets about what she'd been through that week. i scrolled back down her TL and was really impacted by what i read. having been witness (on twitter) to attacks on other black women (zerlina maxwell's horrific experiences stand out in my memory), i decided to storify dr butler's tweets. because i genuine appreciate her taking the time and effort to share that awful experience and when people are willing to share experiences like that, we ought to listen, sit up, and take note.

STEM Solutions Conference: part 2.

my initial thoughts and feelings about the STEM Solutions conference were very negative. it was unlike any other education conference i'd been to before, and not in an overwhelmingly good way.

it seemed a giant circle-jerk of classic private sector paternalism--coming into the education sector behaving as if they are the great white hope who will save education ... when in reality, their words and framing betrayed that they knew little about how the education community functions or what we believe and hold dear. i mean, c'mon guys. "STEM Solutions"? that's a pretty ballsy (and if i may expand the metaphor) dickish name for a conference about education when you're a media corporation.

but before i get bogged down in the negatives again, i need to get to the point of this post ... that i did walk away having learned a thing or two in this conference. submitted for your approval:

#1. in education, we don't self-promote enough. maybe it's because we largely view ourselves as public servants. maybe it's because we're not used to having to "sell" what we do to other people in order to attract funding and keep our institutions from shutting down. maybe it's simply because as teachers and educators, we've just never worked in organizations with PR or advertising.

i'm not exactly sure they "why" of this situations, but it certainly exists. the result is that we allow others to frame what education in the US looks like. we allow "school report cards" and NAEP scores and outside groups like US news and world report to tell the culture at large what is happening in education.

we need to change this. we need to educate ourselves about PR. we need to write a line into our grant budgets for producing a 30 second video of what the project does and produces. we need to initiate relationships with journalists and pitch them stories and become their sources. (as a side note, the one session i sat in on that was IMMENSELY helpful was on how to get your projects covered by media.)

#2. private corporations who invest in education really like the common core. i was a little surprised by this, because i've sat in my fair share of conference presentations whose subtext is critical of the common core. but not so at the STEM Solutions conference. i'm not sure why this is. it may be because the private sector felt like they were invited in to comment on what "career ready" meant? i honestly wonder if it's also because the private sector largely misunderstand what the standards are or conflate them with curriculum or assessment. anyway, as a supporter of the common core, i was happy to see this.

#3. we who believe strongly in public education need to find better ways to enter the conversation, to speak up, to not let money, power, or influence keep us quiet. too often those of us who believe so strongly in public education are "just" teachers. by this i mean, teachers lack those three attributes: they make very little money, they wield very little power (just look at states like WI or OH to see evidence of this), and individually they have small circles of influence.

in the past, i've been undecided about teachers unions. i grew up and entered teaching in new york, where NYSUT is a very strong teachers' union. but i also grew up in a home and a town where conservative politics and small businesses were celebrated. i learned to think that teachers' unions were a good thing, but that they often were too politically focused, becoming too much a lobbying entity, and not locally-focused enough.

now that i work in teacher professional development, and i watch the way politics and partisan wheeling and dealing affect teachers' daily lives, i no longer can fault teachers' unions for being politically active. since becoming a teacher, we've seen Race to the Top (which ushered in the end of tenure and the age of "accountability" based on test scores), as well as the slashing of funding for schools, and the rewriting of teachers' jobs through the adoption of the common core. teachers have NO recourse, NO voice, save for the teachers' unions. and it seems the unions aren't enough.

i say all this because the voice of the teacher has been lost in this whole school reform movement. they've spoken for her, or cherry-picked the spokes people who agreed with the agenda they were pushing. it's too easy for a bill gates to jump into the conversation and because we know who he is, we all listen, regardless of his lack of experience in education. but if shonda jones speaks up? who is she? money and power become influence where experience and expertise should be. if we don't have unions for teachers, we don't have an organization to represent teachers in these larger debates. education will not survive without teachers or unions to represent them.


i came away from the STEM Solutions conference demoralized, but with a lesson learned. they're right: we educators, as a community, as a field, need to be growing and changing. but the ways we need to grow and change are not the ways the private sector is indicating, pushing, and cajoling. we need to grow and change to be better organized, better at steering the public discourse, better at educating the public on what actually works in education.

that's the message i took back to my boss and will take back to our staff meetings: who on our team is going to spearhead PR? who is going to help us frame and lead this public discussion?


this post was the second in a series of posts on this conference. find the others here.

STEM Solutions Conference: part 1.

for work, i recently went to the STEM Solutions conference that is sponsored by US News & World Report. i attended because it's a new conference (this was only the 2nd year), and in my position in teacher professional development in mathematics, it seemed like a conference that was worth attending. 

the conference was almost 3 weeks ago, and since then, i've been struggling to find the way to describe my uneasiness with it. as a first step towards organizing my thinking and sharing my perspective, i thought i'd bullet point out the way in which this conference was decidedly unlike others i attend*.

• there was little to no networking. now, to be fair, networking is always an awkward business when you're at a new conference. but i think that there were certain tactical mistakes made--like the fact that the networking reception was held in the exhibit hall, not a ballroom. this meant that instead of us all having to focus our attention on the other awkward people in the room by rubbing elbows and introducing ourselves, we were able to focus on each booth (more on this later), and never actually chat up the people near us. lunch was also served in the exhibit space, and while there were tables this time, there weren't enough. 
   
• the breakout sessions (meaning non-large group, or non-plenary session) were structured for lecture and/or Q&A. the set up of rooms did not facilitate discussion or collegiality. every one of these smaller sessions that i went to were structured as a panel of lectures (up on a literal stage with a microphone) with a little time at the end for Q&A. the rooms were set up for this, with the audience seated in chairs in rows and columns, no tables, no participant interaction. discussion was always from the podium to the audience, or a single participant to the podium. because the rooms were unnecessarily large, no one needed to sit near anyone, and no one did.
   
• the tenor of the whole conference was very … closed off (?). i'm not exactly sure how to describe this, but it was certainly a product of the structure i've outlined above. i can only offer a counter example—that at other conferences i regularly attend* for math ed, participants are friendly, welcoming, there is a tenor of camaraderie and collegiality. The idea is that “we’re all in it together.” people introduce themselves, and ask "where are you from?" i only had one person ask me where i was from, and she ended up being a director of the air and space museum in DC--it was also her first time, and she was also having difficulty breaking into the social culture. we both found it very strange.
• there was a TREMENDOUS amount of press (in fact, i would hazard a guess that photographers, journalists, and PR personnel who were there to report on the actual conference made up a good 15-20% of the attendees). and the structure of the conference made it feel like the main purpose was to be a platform for a national “look at what our corporation is doing! aren't we good/special/noble?!” from scheduled time for “announcements” (always about what "good" these corporations were doing in education) to press releases to self-promoting video clips during plenary sessions, the whole thing was set up to make those from the private sector investing in education feel good about themselves. it was incredibly masturbatory.
   
• the masturbatory nature of the conference was most seen through the twitter hashtag for the conference: #STEMSolutions13. it was full of parroting of speakers, groupthink, and twitter masturbation. there was zero problematizing of ideas put out there. there was no challenging discussions or what was said from the podium.
   
•  it was clear that a jack ford (the main MC for the conference) was not from the education community, nor does he know how to speak to the education community. in a speech where (this is me giving him the benefit of the doubt) his main goal was to challenge the audience to address the needs of STEM education, he said, "we know what doesn't work in STEM education: american kids don't work. .... women don't work." (there was a third thing or type of person who "doesn't work" but i was so speechless after the first two, i completely forgot it). i believe in these two instances, he was trying to say that we need to improve student outcomes and female recruitment ... but holy shit, dude. your framing is PROBLEMATIC. i could go on and on about how in education, we are careful with our words because we understand how important they are--that words matter. that framing matters. other things that i heard that would never be uttered from a podium at an education conference hosted by educators: "we need to educate the right kids." really? really?!

to tell you the truth, this conference was only 2 days long, and i skipped the last half day because i was so demoralized. as a true blue believer in public education as a public good, a public service ... i felt like i was alone in the world of ed, without funding. without hope. so i hopped on an earlier flight and got the heck out of there.


* conference i have attended and/or attend on a regular basis include: Math Science Partnership regional conferences, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics annual conference, National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics annual conference, the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences conference, and the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in New England annual conference.

on respecting the views of all women.

one of the greatest things about twitter is the ability to participate in, and comment on, national events with strangers. i began watching "Up with Chris" because of twitter friends who would live-tweet the show. the topics and guests seemed very compelling, and with an infant, i was most decidedly "up" early on the weekends. when i started watching and live-tweeting, it was an instant community of people who were smart, interested in similar topics, and having a terrific discussion beyond the typical passive reception of news. i was in heaven.

the difficulty with a network like MSNBC, though, is that it can all too easily become an echo chamber. we want to be with like-minded people so badly that we forget that (especially as progressives, but definitely as americans) we are interested in rights for all ... not just rights for those we agree with. or rights that we think are important.

there's not often dissent in communities like #uppers or #inners, but i always appreciate it when it's there because that's when i know that we're having real discourse, and we're learning from one another, not just parroting ideas.

but i was reminded yesterday morning that not everyone thinks that way. the following is a storify of the exchanges i had, interspersed with my comments and interpretations of the situation.




i think i pretty much said everything above in the storify. i could further tease out the nuances of the exchange (for example, how i didn't attack him, or use words like "misogynistic," even though that would have been legit ... or how he framed me as an archetypal woman, and his attempts at constructing a positive exchange were completely founded in flattery and not substance ... or how he projected his own relentless behavior and emotionalism onto me.) but i won't go there. ;-) for now anyway.

i do think it's worth outlining what i think would have been the appropriate responses of someone whose tweet is pointed out as being anti-feminist:

1. huh. i didn't think of it that way.
2. interesting. i'll have to think more about that.
3. wow. you're right. i'm going to delete that tweet
4. thanks for pointing that out. i know that being male means that i have blindspots. thanks for helping me see them.

and of course, if none of the above responses are comfortable to you, you can always choose to not respond. that is a completely legitimate option as well.