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The Emperor’s New Competency
The Emperor’s New Competency Lemons, Apples, and the Quiet Architecture of Educational Survival Mechelle Marie Gilford Ed.S. NBCT In schools across America, there are apples and there are lemons. The apples move cleanly through institutional systems. They absorb spreadsheets the way sunlight absorbs into a windowpane. They shift from tab to tab, meeting to meeting,…
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Intuition, or the Art of Not Falling Over
Ode to the Swanny Sputniks circa 2026 (Part of my Bi-Directional Theory of Mind for Educators curriculum for teachers, for a pilot study in the making in collaboration with Dr. Angelica Garcia-Martinez) By Mechelle Marie Gilford Ed.S. NBCT There are forms of knowledge that arrive before language. Before the pencil touches paper. Before the dancer…
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On Mathematics and Metaphor
By Mechelle Gilford Numbers begin where language grows tiredof carrying the weight of explanation.They arrive quietly,like students who already know the answerbut attend anywayfor the shape of the room. 2 + 2 is never only 4—it is also the moment certainty learnsto sit still in a chairand pretend it was always there. A parabola opens…
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Oak Spring Garden Foundation deadline approaching
“Literary Ecologies: Reading to Reinhabit the World” returns to the Oak Spring Garden Foundation. The Oak Spring Garden Foundation (the former estate of Paul and Rachel Mellon near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia) is offering a residential short course based at Oak Spring on “Literary Ecologies: Reading to Reinhabit the World” from April 27-May 1, 2026. The seminar will be taught by Gretchen E. Henderson and…
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From Yaa Asantewaa to The Woman King: Black Feminist Counternarratives in Film, History, and Digital Culture
“The controlling images that circulate in society define what it means to be a Black woman, and they limit our possibilities for self-definition and self-determination. African-American women come to understand the workings of intersecting oppressions without obvious teaching or conscious learning. The controlling images of Black women are not simply grafted onto existing social institutions…
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Reclaiming the Lemon: A Neurodivergent Educator’s Philosophy of Wandering and Worth
By Mechelle Marie Gilford Ed.S. NBCT Reclaiming the Lemon: A Neurodivergent Educator’s Philosophy of Wandering and Worth By Mechelle Marie Gilford Ed.S. NBCT The Lemon as Radical Truth-Teller At a regional training—one of those mandatory professional development days where educators from multiple districts gather in a fluorescent-lit conference room to eat sad sandwiches and pretend…
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CFP: XVIII Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Conference/Association for Documentary Editing 2026, a joint conference
Record Keepers of Nation: Diverse Foundational Figures and Documents of the US The Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Program (Recovery) and the Association for Documentary Editing (ADE) invite proposals for a joint conference to be held October 8-10, 2026 in Houston, Texas. This first-ever collaboration between Recovery and ADE will bring together scholars, archivists, editors, students and…
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Call for Papers: Comics and Machines Conference 2026 (Sweden)
April 22-23, 2026 Uppsala University (Uppsala, Sweden) & Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) Deadline for abstracts: 1st December 2025 A two-day international gathering rethinking comics as computational media and as engineered configurations entwined with automation, standardization, and information processing, and positioning comics-as-research as a way to generate knowledge through making. Inviting work on topics…
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Preprint Feedback Request: Ecology, Identity & Media (Beyond Prescription)
Preprint Open for Feedback Beyond Prescription: Naming Grief, Refusing Erasure considers how intersectional ecology can frame cultural identity and media analysis, weaving cultural studies with relational, non-anthropocentric ways of knowing. It welcomes feedback from scholars and practitioners across humanities, arts, and media; happy to reciprocate with peer review on related work. 📄 Preprint DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17214609…
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Soliloquy in Violet-Rose: An Uncharted Existence
Soliloquy in Violet-Rose: An Uncharted Existence By Mechelle Marie Gilford Ah, so they’ve figured it out, have they? These clever little eyes, these busybody brains. “Purple isn’t real,” the pronouncements echo, bouncing off the very lavender fields and plum skins I seem to inhabit. Not real? Tell that to the artist who dabs me onto…