Why I'm probably not getting an LTO this year

Sizer sealed my commitment to preserving young people's right to the best K-12 publicly funded education.

—and the answer is a bit more complicated than my almost half-decade fighting corruption in student unions. As a virtue ethicist who prefers not to wear the label on my sleeve—if I can help it—I like to believe that I am an honest guy; my track record on the internet probably predicts my carelessness for whether this blog post could affect my future job prospects as a civil servant.  I might as well get justitia plus a nobis postulat tattooed on my back—but, as the maxim goes, justice demands more from us.

I have almost no time to write here (as of these final editorial reviews, I just finished two math courses with Western and am on track to acquire the senior math additional qualification), but caught up in the zeal of the hiring season, I could not stop thinking about the situation in my Board. I am writing this in part to consolidate and to organize my frustrations.

If you've been following the news, the Thames Valley District School Board isn't doing particularly well.  Moreover, after two consecutive years of over-projected enrollment and the subsequent surplusing of numerous contract teachers, the fourth round of job postings visible for occasional teachers (hereafter, "OTs") for the 2025-26 academic year included a handful of partial technology education lines. (My one administrator wasn't joking when they remarked to me that the only new tech teachers in our Board are those returning from retirement.) 

Bootstraps firmly distended, I have normalized working 7 days per week across public and private because I don't perceive my job as a job; it's a lifestyle. However, recent events have sent me down a rabbit hole of reflection regarding the exhaustive implications of enduring as a TVDSB secondary OT.

My free-fall down the rabbit hole began when I recently visited my old associate teacher who hosted both of my practica and who is now a principal in the TVDSB. They informed me that, to my ignorance, my private school teaching experience—all of it, potentially even my TA work for OISE—can count towards teaching experience on the collectively bargained pay grid for all permanent and temporary contract teachers (including long-term occasional teachers, hereafter "LTOs").  This insight, and the acknowledgement from one of my friends that over-qualified people tend to be avoided in hiring in most industries, had me revisiting all of my interviews and interactions with administration over the past year.

To understand the depth of my dismay, I need to briefly review my work experience.  In addition to a year and a half of full-time teaching at a British Columbian certified offshore school, I have also taught at least one course part-time for my private school every year since I was hired back in 2015 (excepting an 8-month hiatus to go full-time as Internal Commissioner for the UTGSU).  I usually teach 2-3 condensed courses in the summer.  Now, this is all in addition to the 6 courses that I TA'd for my former supervisor under Graduate Assistantships.  The latter is questionable as admissible teaching experience, but even if they included only my time serving my private schools hour for hour from paystubs, I probably have about 5 years of teaching experience /before/ the last year and half of solid supply teaching (I think I took ~10 days off from supplying total this past year due to illness or exams).  

So, here's the problem.  If my prospective administrators' concerns begin with the existential threats to their school, including first-and-foremost financial solvency, then my competency and efficacy as a teacher—including familiarity with the respective school's students, my consistency, and even my performance in interviews—are almost immaterial.   My content fluency (or capacity to regain it under pressure) to teach my qualified subjects passably is guaranteed by the OCT.  Empathizing with the average administrator trying to balance a budget in a cash-strapped Board running a deficit with dubious upper leadership—from their perspectives, I am an overpriced, at least more than passable, temporary History, Social Studies, /or/ English teacher (or Math teacher by Nov. 2025).  Anyone among the interviewees who can demonstrate that they can teach the subjects posted in the job more than passably for substantially cheaper will get hired over me every single time.  (Since LTO teachers are paid according to the same grid as permanent contract teachers, the salary discrepancies for LTOs are substantial; it'd be the difference between hiring a temporary contract teacher who can do the job passably according to Ministry and OCT standards for about 50-60k per annum versus hiring to preserve at least the status quo for the school for about 80-90k per annum; if you were an administrator trying to balance a budget, who would you hire? The Union-negotiated rules give administrators this discretion.[And it's worth noting that my Union would probably not appreciate my zeal to work for less than 40k]).  

Therefore, when hiring LTOs in many public boards in Ontario, it's not a question of who's the best person for the job, per se. It's not even a question of who's the best fit for the school and its students.  Rather, it's a question of which interviewed candidate appears to offer the school the best deal.  A candidate's qualifications and seniority will get them the interview since the TVDSB manages the shortlists for prospective interview candidates under collective bargaining.  But, if even one other interviewee can promise to do the same job passably for less cost, they'll get the job over the more experienced candidate almost every single time, especially if the principal has ultimate power over decision-making since they're responsible for the execution of the school's district allocation within the Board's budget.  Meaning that a candidate's teaching qualifications (as in additional teachable subjects) can count /against/ their employment for, say, a one-line LTO, given how the grid determines pay based on additional qualifications.  So, as a consequence, for long-term occasional positions, it's in the best interests of administrations to hire the least (over-)qualified candidate with the least teaching experience.

I am not going to lie on my resume or during the interview about my experience or capacity as an educator. Moreover, as someone who has worked in private systems for over 10 years, I am relatively confident in asserting that this is not the system that renders generalist private schools in Ontario redundant. My colleagues in private systems have all the public boards' dis-incentives and personal & professional incentives to make privatized schooling as effective as possible. When I alluded to one of my managers that we seemed to be building an empire during COVID, they responded, "well, what do you /think/ we're doing?"

Likewise, if I committed to the thought experiment of finding additional ways for the secular public boards to dis-incentivize the best teachers in private education from attempting to transition into public, I would be hard-pressed to make it less attractive to most of these subject specialists who generally have much freer reign and comfort to do whatever they believe best supports their students. I began making the transition from private to public myself for moral reasons; it was another substantial pay-cut to become a full-time supply teacher rather than going full mercenary for my private school that I was willing to make for the sake of this blog post's video caption text: the public system must succeed to preserve the best K-12 education as a human right.

The problem I've referenced is not just that the Boards prioritize solvency and the status quo over student growth.  Guess how my private school originally interviewed me—how they interview all new hires.  —my administrators watched me teach.  I know this may sound absolutely groundbreakingly revolutionary, observing teachers in order to judge the quality and efficacy of their teaching as part the hiring process to find the best person for the job (and for their students), but my Board doesn't do this.  Turns out most of the Boards in the province don't do this. Which, yeah, may seem preposterous to an outsider.  Granted, the Ontario Education Act requires that LTOs participate in the Teacher Performance Appraisal process, but only after 97 days into an LTO.  One can try to chalk this up to the resources needed to appraise new permanent and temporary contract teachers, but the system allows teachers to be hired to teach and to work with students for up to 97 days with negligible legally required oversight by administration.  Consider the implications of the answer to the question "when is an administrator actually legally required to observe a teacher teaching in Ontario?"

The history here is complicated, but my research and conversations with colleagues suggest that the limited hiring process and oversight can be mostly attributed to the persistent animosity between the unions representing administrators and the unions representing teachers—which, by the way, is also an exceptional power dynamic relatively unique to Ontario.  It's an adversarial system with students often caught in the cross-fire.  Here, it's worth reiterating that the title "principal" comes from the original expression "principal teacher," akin to headmasters in 19th century British  schools: a first-amongst equals in a teaching staff.  As though, administrators and teaching staff are on the same team.

I have nothing against "putting my time in" when it comes to any pursuit.  I've joked publicly that I'm probably supply teaching straight into a principal qualification course.  But, as someone who's studied education academically for over 10 years full-time, I can't help but inquire whether this situation is healthy for our students and their families.  Catholic Boards are continually sponging secular public boards' students and teachers in my home city, in a positive feedback-loop since funding is tied to full-time equivalent enrollment. The secular public schools in my Board are generally not the ones that need enrollment caps.  Likewise, most of my OT colleagues are either considering, have been recently hired by, or are already also working for the London District Catholic School Board.  Parents are clearly paying attention.  So should we.

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Ted Sizer arguably had one goal: student growth, whatever the cost.  The practices he promoted in Horace's Compromise eventually became the basis of 600 schools.  In addition to mastery- and project-based learning, he recognized the importance of team teaching.  Yet, more than one of my colleagues has indicated, rather sternly, that the administrators "are not our friends." This assumption betrays a fundamental problem if we're genuinely committed to the educations of our students, particularly in community-funded schools sustained as civil service.  In schools, we will never be as effective as adversaries as we could be as cooperative allies, and I'm relatively certain that I don't need to conduct multiple studies and write several dissertations to confirm that proposition beyond a reasonable doubt—since we're human beings.

Update Video: Publishing my Dissertation

I am self-publishing my dissertation as a free video series for educators.  This video examines the status of my channel and explores the justifications and process of publishing my dissertation.

Text Talk: Northrop Frye's "Don't you think it's time to start thinking?"

I created this video for one of the assignments for my senior English Additional Basic Qualification course.

On Platonic Guardians

Still my favourite scene in the whole show.

    What does it mean to serve as a protector of the state? In Game of Thrones, they may have referred to the "realm," but the essential meaning remains: the protectors of community are forever invested in the welfare of its constituents—but not for power, self-interest, or pride. If not established by this post's title, I am discussing "protectors of the realm": extra-state actors who rarely hold political office, but prioritize the polis: the police usually unrecognized by the state.

    As some of the folks familiar with this blog may know, I almost dropped out of high school in grade 11. I was fortunate that I discovered a bunch of philosophy books at Chapters that became the basis of much of my future interests, research, and writing. Particularly, I became obsessed with translations of Plato's Republic, reading and rereading sections until I was satisfied and confident in my understanding. I had heard of Platonic guardians prior to reading the Republic itself, but I did not appreciate their exhaustive importance to my context until reading (and rereading) Book VI. This section provided me with the knowledge that shaped much of my future aspirations, particularly to participate in governance when- and wherever possible.

    It's 2024, so the alleged guardians of Classical Athens don't hold as much relevance as they would to a relatively isolated city-state with a stable population. However, it's a critical idea for understanding the tension between any general populace and its persistent aristocracy. Plato's philosopher kings exist with and despite the aristocracy, even when the least educated of his contemporaries could be relegated to "Aristocrat, " a term traditionally referring to a typically wealthy member of a minority-elite in a given community, or its "best citizens" in 1500s French communities. In my experience, it's rarely used in 21st century contexts, but its traditional characteristics persist in neologisms of "elite," "privileged," or the "establishment."

    I was hesitant to write this post because I feel as though discussing this passage from the Republic has been overdone to clichéd parody.  However, it was critical to my own development and motivations.  Much of my decision-making after that tumultuous year could be attributed to my aspiration to service,  toward Platonic guardianship.  

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  Since that time, I have considered myself a civil servant first and an educator or student second.  Following the Socratic tradition, education was always a means to a stronger civil society, which follows from the description and purposes of Plato's "guardian class," AKA "philosopher kings."

    If you Google this passage, you will find innumerable blog posts referencing rough transliterations of the same essential meaning:

"the reason why truth forced us to admit, not without fear and hesitation, that neither cities nor States nor individuals will ever attain perfection until the small class of philosophers whom we termed useless but not corrupt are providentially compelled, whether they will or not, to take care of the State, and until a like necessity be laid on the State to obey them; or until kings, or if not kings, the sons of kings or princes, are divinely inspired ' d with a true love of true philosophy. That either or both of these alternatives are impossible, I see no reason to affirm: if they were so, we might indeed be justly ridiculed as dreamers and visionaries." (Republic, Book VI)

    This custodial role has continued everywhere from Warhammer 40k to Wikipedia Administrators. These often extra-state actors don't always hold political office or enforcement arms of nation-states, but they frequently gravitate to these roles in order to fulfill the broader purpose of "[taking] care of the State."

    Ironically, these would-be protectors often find themselves directly confronting the faces of the aristocracy, those who treat the state as a means and not an end in itself.  This classical conflict will persist long after we're gone; the aristocracy that exists for itself isn't going anywhere.   

    Yet, we must persist.  Anyone committed to the broader welfare of the state (however the "state" manifests in each respective epoch) must confront the excesses of aristocratic power.  Most of the folks predisposed to such advocacy tend to find themselves among the aristocracy, and therefore, they are usually best positioned to police it in each instance.

    Bertrand Russell no doubt encountered this same tension, especially given his obvious and self-consciously privileged origin.  But, we cannot let ourselves become so consumed with doubt that we cease to check the power of a self-serving elite; in keeping with Russell's critique, we need to challenge their certainty.

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    When Varys approached Eddard, he likely did so from the same justification he held to continue to serve as a eunuch for the state; he was merely continuing to act as a custodian for the realm the best way that he knew how under the circumstances. Although Varys's characterization included some deliberate faults of character, he is probably the closest GoT has to a member of Plato's guardian class. He illustrates many of the conflicts and paradoxes referenced earlier, of an advisor who also polices other aristocrats and of an aristocrat consumed with doubt despite their privilege and relative power.

    Hence, Varys's death signaled the final decline of his current system of governance. Once aristocrats who exist purely for the sake of the aristocracy seize power, these protectors of the realm are usually the last barrier to totalitarian control, and therefore the former's primary targets. You know many of their names throughout the ages, but these casualties of established power were all in part chasing the same aspiration. That of personal sacrifice and service.

Drafted, edited, and published live on stream in 2 hours on April 28th, 2024.

On the inherent value of integrity

In honour of the impending Civil War too to the South.

In my final months at UofT, I started insisting—first—to myself, introspectively, and—thereafter—to family, friends, confidants, and colleagues that "my integrity is worth more to me than this degree." During the additional time that I've had to reflect while settling into full-time supply teaching for the Thames Valley District School Board and teaching for my private school on weekends, I found an exciting way to synthesize a bunch of my existing ideas.  Despite currently conducting interviews with past research participants to add to the eventual publication of what would have been my dissertation, in addition to unpacking the nature of that insistence, I felt the need to try to explain the significance of "inherent values" in writing, particularly that of integrity as a virtue.

But first, we need to review "inherence".  Etymologies can be powerful teachers; "inherence" demonstrates this impeccably.  To "inhere" is "to stick in or to".  Therefore, "inherent values" refer to values that stick to or from within or attribute their value from within (i.e., attribute their value inherently).  However, "inherence" has another meaning in metaphysics traceable to Aristotelian and Platonic ideation, that "of essence."  Or, in other words, inherent values also refer to essential values.  And yes, the inherence of some values coincides with the ex-herence of others.  This latter adjective is rarely used outside of philosophical writing circles, but it's an extremely useful term in this discussion.  Basically, exherent values refer to those that "stick to" from "out," from extrinsic sources. 

A lot could be written, here, about the "stickiness" of inherent and exherent valuations, but that's a topic for another space. 

Before we get to the titular fun stuff, we need to ground these broad categorizations of exherent and inherent values.  Exherent values refer to any ascriptions of meaning, worth, (or of value) to objects, subjects, and ideas external to one's being.  They are always a posteriori, after or emergent from experience.  Exherent values stick a posteriori, and their value is derived exherently, or exheres. Thus, they are among the most changeable and ephemeral of values inhabited by an individual.

Inherent values, meanwhile, stick a priori, and their value is inherent, or inheres. I.e., their value could be said to exist a priori, before and/or despite experience.  Note the "and/or", here: inherent values can exist before and without experience, before and with experience, or despite experience and timelessly, (recognizing that some pragmatists may argue that all inherent values exist before and with experience). I've already given one of the many examples of inherent values away; virtues as traditionally understood persist among the bedrock of inherent values.  E.g., honesty could be virtuous (and valuable) regardless of whether you or I existed, and regardless of whether humans existed.  But, integrity is special, both the cornerstone and keystone of all other inherent values.

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I should preface the crux of this post by acknowledging that I am by no means the first person to suggest this; it's been said over a thousand different ways by over a thousand different intellectuals since at least the Ancient Greeks.  And yet, people's actions generally do not reflect this recurrence, so I feel compelled to echo their sentiment.

Much of human history can be reduced to an endless conflict between inherent and exherent values, manifested in and enacted through people.  Objects, subjects, and ideas ascribed meaning by individuals compete for dominance in hierarchies. However, inevitably, cyclically even, individuals find themselves confronted by inherence no matter how committed they may become to exherence (and vice versa for the self-identifying philosophers and virtue ethicists).  But, the eternity and relative ethical and moral superiority of inherent values tend to elevate them, often as fundamental or essential virtues.

Although trust, loyalty, diversity, community, and humility seem to share a similar /elevation/ morally and ethically, integrity holds everything together, etymologically and practically.  Many different definitions persist to denotate integrity as a virtue; I tend to stick to moral and ethical consistency in an attempt to cover as many cases as possible.  Yet, integrity's origins of "wholeness" and "soundness" give it extraneous utility beyond morality and ethics.

Like many of the more nebulous and paradoxical philosophical concepts, integrity tends to be easiest to define and to understand through its absence.  An oversimplification, but practicing integrity can be characterized as a constant evasion of hypocrisy.  At essence, hypocrisy refers to an incongruence among an individual's thoughts, values, and actions. Importantly, integrity could be breached given merely an inconsistency among values themselves (often experienced as cognitive dissonance).  Integrity is both cornerstone and keystone because all other virtues in part derive their values from it; in other words, one could diminish the value of a virtue by violating their integrity.  The cases illustrating this phenomenon are myriad.  It doesn't matter how honest or humble we are (or how committed we are to honesty or humility) if we betray another person's trust unjustifiably or patronize them.  And it doesn't matter how much we value trust if we're dishonest or condescending,  especially if we allege the importance of trust or honesty while betraying someone's trust or lying.  The value of integrity inheres before and despite the inherent value of any other virtue; it is the bedrock of the bedrock—and the keystone, or ideal of the ideal (—or Form of Forms if you're feeling especially Platonic).

And it goes without saying, then, that integrity is not easy.  Anyone who tells you that practicing integrity is easy probably doesn't have much of it, assuming the fallibility of the average person.  At best, we can merely minimize our hypocrisy as much as possible.  More than any other virtue, integral consistency among one's values, ethics, perspective, and actions requires a perpetual vigilance.  But, I can confidently affirm from personal experience that the vigilance is worth it, even if it may not feel like it in the moment.  As I've noted wryly on Facebook over the years, "integrity's not something you practice when it's convenient."

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I'm not here to drag my former thesis committee through the mud, but the final outcome of my PhD program could be attributed to some member's direction to violate what I knew to be right and just.  The stonewalling followed in the wake of departmental intervention, and the more my administration dug into my case, the uglier it became for my committee.  

Indeed, one of the benefits of the academy is that at the professoriate level, people are generally, relatively smart.  But, that does not necessitate that they all hold themselves to the highest standards of ethical and moral conduct.  Not even UofT's Social Justice Education Department is immune to that  inconsistency.

I raise this point to emphasize that the greatest breaches of integrity, greatest hypocrisies, are not perpetrated by the unwise or ignorant but by the leaders of our leaders and, in my case, the teachers of our teachers.  Of all people, they do and should know better.

When confronted with the prospect of breaching my integrity as an intellectual and researcher, I gave a hard "nope."  And I'd do it again.  

/Shameless pitch to show up and vote in the next American presidential election if you hold American citizenship./

P.S. Currently in the process of writing a book about this nonsense.  I'll keep folks posted regarding its progress.

I am dropping out.

Few people know that he was actually defending Bertrand Russell.

I am writing this post mostly for myself as a reference to be used later when I write a much more exhaustive memoir documenting these experiences.

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A vocal minority of people in the academy wax lyrical about the substance and nature of "speaking truth to power" when it's actually relatively banal in practice if university faculty and administrators happen to dismiss or to enable malpractice, corruption, and/or bad faith action.

Just speak the truth. Challenging existing false and dubious authority is concomitant with the communication of unadulterated truth.  But hey, if you really want to speak truth to power, 

rip that doctorate up at the podium, ideally while also reaffirming to the people of the cloth that 

"this is how we speak truth to power."

Cathartic incendiary invective aside, I am dropping out of my PhD program in year 7, after finishing and submitting a full first draft of my dissertation a little over a year ago.  My only regret is that I did not drop out the moment that my thesis committee refused to recognize my data collection in 2021, allegedly because it was unethical for me to collect data without their unanimous approval of a revised proposal, and despite my receiving full ethical approval for the study's Ethics Protocol from my respective Ethics Review Board.  Despite my most recent attempted compromise negotiated with my departmental administration this past summer of 

collecting a second set of data, 
after ratifying a second set of amendments to my Ethics Protocol, 
upon conducting a secondary analysis, 
and despite offering to consolidate two dissertations worth of data and analyses into one oversized manuscript, 

my thesis committee seems to be stonewalling my progress.  Despite paying tuition out of pocket without working full time while living in downtown Toronto, I submitted a revised proposal (about the 6th or 7th version) with highlighted sections for review early November 2023, and no one on my thesis committee has yet gotten back to me as of this writing with feedback or suggestions for revision.  For some of the folks on my thesis committee, this is not a first-time offense.  One might ask, 

"how did you get here?"

I am not interested in flaming my thesis committee and departmental administration, even if I were convinced that such whistleblowing may assist other current and future colleagues experiencing abuse at UofT; there are other fora for that.  Moreover, I am a pacifist who researches and teaches pacifistic pedagogy.  Yet, I think it's still worthwhile to revisit the basic facts of my situation.

I first applied for my program in 2015 from China while teaching math and science just outside Shanghai.  Unfortunately, I was not accepted to OISE's Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning program's fully-funded PhD cohort on the grounds that the department could not find someone to supervise my research.  Upon receiving the decline, I was convinced that the only way to do my research justice was to leave China and to spend at least a year developing contacts and building my application in-person in Toronto.  So, during a year of massive turnover of staff at my school, I elected to pass over an opportunity to serve as vice-principal in order to pursue the PhD program in the Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning department at UofT.

What followed was one of the craziest years of my life; it was essentially fully-funded cohort or bust.  My close friend and confidant in China insisted that I could not accomplish what I set out to accomplish in a single year. He insisted that I could not learn French while securing a teaching job in Toronto while also gaining admission into the fully funded cohort at UofT.  Not only did I nearly achieve B2 level French with Alliance Française in about 8 months (as a backup to teach FSL if I didn't get into the PhD program), but I also landed a job at Olympiads School to build and teach their Advanced Placement US History Course after publishing my Masters thesis research in a journal article to convince my current supervisor to give me a recommendation for the program at OISE.  I know my work ethic.

Yet, I should have paid more attention to the red flags.  After admission into the program, I developed a permanent scar in my eye (from a "peripheral corneal ulcer" in the words of my optometrist) from the additional stress of a two week stint supporting my supervisor in writing a grant proposal for over 300 thousand dollars (which they won).  I needed to support a close friend and colleague who had their work plagiarized by a member of my committee after I had recommended them to this individual.  I imagine my growing reputation as a whistleblower (or, you know, someone who cares about the pursuit of truth in a university) merely exacerbated my thesis committee's willingness to attempt to stonewall my completion and my departmental administration's unwillingness to intervene.

The most common advice I receive is to either escalate to the School of Graduate Studies or to lawyer-up.  Feeding other UofT departments additional ammunition to fire at OISE betrays my own commitments as an educator and as an education researcher.

And, I refuse to earn my degree at gun-point (through coercion via "hired gun").  It betrays not only what I believe, but what I research and teach to my students. If the only thing standing between me and a doctorate is my willingness to retain legal counsel, I'm better off just going straight to law school.

Fundamentally, a doctorate is premised upon the recognition of the value of an original contribution to an existing body of knowledge by the doctoral candidate's moral, ethical, or at least intellectual superiors.  On these grounds alone, the degree has lost most of its meaning to me.  I will likely never redeem my image of my department or of UofT, partly because of the over-idealizing I engaged in prior to and near the beginning of my program.  I pursued this path based on a mythology.

These intuitions allege to support and foster intellectual specialization.  But, if your research is truly speci-al (and thereby essentially original in keeping with the etymological roots of that word), then arguably no one in any of these institutions should be able to support your work directly, and, therefore, there would be a real need for other specialists to trust you to conduct your research rigorously and ethically because you're making a tangible but original contribution beyond existing knowledge, including the existing knowledge of your doctoral committee.

Empathizing with my departmental administrators and thesis committee, it's entirely possible that the University of Toronto's Faculty of Education was never actually equipped to support my work in the first place, despite the relevancy of my teaching and the research study's content to both the work of my colleagues and the interests of student participants.  Hence, I fully plan to finish the research study and to publish my research.  My last goal at UofT is to seek approval of the second set of amendments to my ethics protocol to conduct my second set of data collection.

I will finish this research project, conducting the additional data collection and analysis for a second write-up that honestly could undergird a second PhD dissertation.  I care about this research; I didn't give up vice-principal and leave China for a degree; I returned to Canada to finish the project that I began with my Master's thesis.  I will see this through to the end, with or without UofT, and with or without their increasingly irrelevant institutional recognition.

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When a colleague asked me why I submitted a manuscript for journal publication under pseudonym, I commented on the importance of practicing "a measure of humility in an ocean of unexamined arrogance."  These experiences have not shaken my resolve.  If anything, I'm more certain of my position now than I've ever been before.  From my work as a volunteer domestic violence counselor, to my role in the classroom as a professional high school teacher, to my role as a leader in the UTGSU Resistance, to the work that I continue to conduct as a researcher, we normalize the abuse that we're unwilling to contend.  

Moreover, I keep letting other people set my win conditions.  For me to finish my research project despite the neglect, misdirection, and sacrifices necessary to persist in my program is a greater accomplishment from my perspective than if I jumped into an existing research project and finished my doctorate in under four years. It'd be a far greater loss if I abandoned my research completely and betrayed the promises that I made to students, parents, colleagues, administrators, and to myself. My department may have failed me, but I won't fail them. I know what I promised to do.

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People familiar with this blog likely know about my effusive appreciation for Bertrand Russell.  He's been a tag on here since I launched this blog over a decade ago.  In the early 20th century, he was arguably the closest thing folks had to Socrates in the English-speaking parts of the world.  Yet, as I've insisted elsewhere, he would not have survived in some of the departments currently operating in North American universities.

As I was editing this post, I kept revisiting Einstein's quotation because I kept that same poster in my office, directly above my desk, at OISE; (I bought the poster among a couple others with the $60 my brother handed me when I began undergrad at Western University).  Turns out, my supervisor also kept a copy of this exact same poster, framed, in their office.

I'm too empiricist and agnostic to argue or to believe that everything happens for a reason, but I do believe in generalizable correlations as a researcher and someone committed to the development of knowledge.  If I were smarter, I would have recognized sooner the implications of most of the intellectuals I appreciate subsisting in exile from the academy.

As my close friends and colleagues could confirm, I did not plan to use the honorific even if I "earned it".  My students call me "Mr." from conventional courtesy; "Adam" is still just fine.

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Post script:  I've only just begun writing "thank you" letters to the faculty, staff, and administrators who have supported me throughout this journey.  A lot of great people do a lot of great work at OISE.  I will never forget their support.

State of [Voldemort] (September 13th, 2023)