Sign in

Annie Bilancini

@abilancini.bsky.social
209 followers 359 following 155 posts

Teacher. I published some fiction during Obama's second term.

PostsRepliesMedia
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
My school has a farmstead on campus that provides an urban agriculture program for students. Today, I watched a freshman boy with a bag of tomatoes from his urban ag class lose total track of what was happening around him in the room because he was pulling each tomato out the bag to sniff it.
220
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
A shot in the dark (with a very intended pun): I'm looking for books about the concept of darkness in the literal sense (the history of darkness, night, unlit spaces, etc... and how it has been conceived of and depicted over time). Any recs?
000
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
A student emailed me today to tell me I should listen to OK Computer by Radiohead because it reminded him of our class discussions about Fahrenheit 451. He said it felt like the album was made to be listened to after reading the book, and when I will say I will ride this high for a year, I mean it.
020
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
This is the energy I'm taking into the classroom this fall.
020
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
This is why the AFT's new "A.I." training hub feels so misguided. There is no ethical use for a technology predicated on the kind of treatment of humans (and our world) that LLMs require. It's impossible to hand-wave this in the name of giving our students some nebulous competitive edge.
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
"We trust their values, not because they try to dominate us but because they are vulnerable with us. They put themselves in a position where they might be hurt. They walk humbly with their God."
020
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
Before I left Facebook, I mostly posted about GenAI's rotten effects on writing, thinking, truth, human flourishing, etc... This essay is like the molten center of all the rage I felt trying to get people to understand last year what a problem "AI" poses. I wish I could share it even more widely.
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
Helping students navigate info digitally has gotten demonstrably more difficult over the past decade of teaching. 2 things about this: We assumed that "digital native" meant that teens had evolved at the rate of tech and understood it intuitively. We assumed that reading had to be shaped by tech.
000
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
I've called/emailed Sen. Bernie Moreno (OH) almost daily since January. I have spoken to an actual human once (who was very low energy and eager to end the call). When I email, I receive the same form response within an hour. Just putting this out into the void: Moreno is the living worst. 0/5 stars
000
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 30/03/2025
I wrote an essay about language, operationalized listening, my contrived smart speaker battle, and Glenn Close.
nasturtium-cosmos-3ae641.beehiiv.com
The Machine Can Only Apologize
On Listening and Learning
040
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
What a great way to start my spring break. (I have basically zero social media presence, but I think the majority of my Bluesky presence from now on will be campaigning for @amyactonoh.bsky.social for governor and reminding people that the way Ohio funds education has been illegal since 1997).
000
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Morgan Trau @morgantrau.bsky.social · 19/03/2025
BREAKING: SB1, the college education overhaul bill banning DEI, has passed the House. It now goes back to the Senate for concurrence, then to Gov. Mike DeWine. @news5cleveland.bsky.social @ohiocapitaljournal.com www.news5cleveland.com/news/politic...
news5cleveland.com
Ohio House bans DEI, passes education overhaul bill
Ohio House Republicans have passed a bill overhauling the higher education system. It bans diversity initiatives, limits how "controversial topics" can be taught and eliminates tenure.
3146
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Okay, so I'm wondering if the growth mindset model has been subtly damaging (in education, etc..) because it suggests the only sign of improvement is an expansion in size and scope. The line on the graph goes up, up, up. Maybe a better framing (more anti-capitalist?) is change/revision mindset? Eh?
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.
140
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 08/02/2025
May all your public infrastructure be mostly boring, very convenient, completely accessible, and just a little bit cheeky. (Do Cleveland public transit next!)
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
Ohioans, take note.
0121
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Nina Turner @ninaturner.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
Due to America’s history, the path for working class liberation is the path of Black liberation. There has been no greater working class fight than abolishing chattel slavery. The laws that hurt working class Americans are often rooted in & pushed forward by anti-Blackness.
642065
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
I wrote about Musk and this bureaucratic coup as plainly as I could. There's reporting in here & the particulars are overwhelming but what's happening is so clear: He's not trying to run the federal govt like a software company He's trying to turn it into a political weapon. (gift link)
theatlantic.com
Elon Musk’s Bureaucratic Coup
Welcome to the “rapid unscheduled disassembly” of the United States government.
8948751835
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
John Green @johngreensbluesky.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
We worked for months with USAID to build an $85,000,000 project to end TB in two regions of the Philippines. The project is funded by private money, the Philippine government, and matching USAID funds. It could provide a blueprint for eliminating TB worldwide--except it's...not happening.
477221335833
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
🎵Musk eats the sun and drinks the skies, / and they both go with him when he dies🎵
020
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
David DeWitt @daviddewitt.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
"Ohio GOP can do what it wants — including duping its supporters. By Ray Marcano
buff.ly
MARCANO: Ohio GOP can do what it wants — including duping its supporters
Saying politicians lie and deceive is like saying an ice-cold beer tastes great in the summer.
0134
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Dan Samorodnitsky @dsamorod.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
What is happening at the CDC, NIH, NSF, and the federal government writ large is very familiar. It's a book burning. A late night post from me for @sequencermag.bsky.social. www.sequencermag.com/this-is-a-bo...
sequencermag.com
This is a book burning
The Trump administration's actions at the CDC, NIH, and NSF are the familiar tactics of fascists and dictators
613667
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Matt Weinkam @mattweinkam.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Fixed it
021
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Lynn Tramonte @lynntramonte.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
So, Geauga Sheriff has 20 ppl detained for ICE in his jail but doesn't know "where the detainees came from or where the raids occurred." Uh -- don't you want to know who is in your jail? Why is Geauga assisting mass deportation? "Civil detention" is still JAIL. Ugly. fox8.com/news/fears-o...
fox8.com
ICE detainees being held in local jail, sheriff says
President Trump has pledged to remove an estimated 11 million people and he has set up new rules making it easier to remove people to crack down on illegal immigration.
132
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
Bishop Budde's most recent book, How We Learn to Be Brave, is currently sold out everywhere I looked online. 🔥
000
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 26/01/2025
“You don’t have to be a person of faith to trust that innate human capacity to channel love, goodness, and real strength into our own lives and into the world.” A conversation with Reverend Mariann Budde.
newyorker.com
Why Bishop Mariann Budde Wanted to Speak to Donald Trump
“If you know what people are thinking about when they’re coming into church on Sunday morning, it’s very important to acknowledge that,” Budde says.
281648285
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
JFC.
ed.gov
U.S. Department of Education Ends Biden’s Book Ban Hoax
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) today announced that it has dismissed 11 complaints related to so-called “book bans.”
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
This is very good news.
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
The bill also includes a required a civics and capitalism course with required reading that includes King's letter from the Birmingham Jail, which I can't imagine OH Senator Cirino has read recently. Or if he has, he did not read it carefully or with much reflection...
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
These are my marching orders going forward.
youtube.com
1.21.25 Homily by The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde
YouTube video by Washington National Cathedral
010
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Literary Cleveland @literarycleveland.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
We're new here! Learn more about us and our free writing conference! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om-u...
youtube.com
Inkubator: The Largest Free Writing Conference in the Country
YouTube video by Literary Cleveland
2124
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Michael Tisserand @tisserand.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Jules Feiffer, 1974
141130442
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
Regarding all *this* [gestures indiscriminately], it occurs to me that I'm going to have Irving from Severance saying "You smug motherf*cker" playing on a loop in my head for at least the next four years.
030
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
A teacher and student discovered a recording of the speech in the Glenville HS school library in 2011.
clevescene.com
Audio: Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 Speech at Glenville High School in Cleveland
"We’ve got to organize so effectively and so well and engage in such powerful, creative protest that there will not be a power in the world that can stop us and that can afford to ignore us"
020
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Samantha Rose Hill @samantharhill.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
"Businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed as statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of successful businessmen." — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
9776293
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
I'm not on TikTok (I burn out on short-form video almost immediately), but I'm sympathetic to the people who have found flourishing communities there. What would it look like to imagine platforms that help build these communities w/o bad-faith broligarchs and Ozymandians? Can it even be done?
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 18/01/2025
Ohio needs a complete leadership reset. An one that doesn't involve Vivek Ramaswamy.
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 15/01/2025
Huffman's stated "accountability measure" for private schools is that Ed Choice vouchers costs less per student than the investment per student at public schools. That sounds less like an accountability measure and more like a basic misunderstanding of what the word "accountability" means.
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Grab your mithril, Frodo. This sounds like a call for an inter-departmental Fellowship of the AI-Resistance.
030
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Secondary Ed Lamplighters, ASSEMBLE. I read this essay this weekend, and I can't stop thinking about it. This is the creative writing pedagogy energy I have missed since I left grad school and had to leave my precious university writing center behind.
020
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 09/01/2025
I teared up a bit when I read the news yesterday. @amyactonoh.bsky.social is the definition of compassionate, coalition-oriented leadership. Ohio needs a leader like this, and I can't wait to support her.
010
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 08/01/2025
Fantastic reporting from @morgantrau.bsky.social.
000
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
Fantastic writing from @ceilidhann.bsky.social: "... there is sport in the systemic degradation of an entire gender, and it’s not a battle divided along those lines. It’s easy to make women hate women, if only because the smothering fog of patriarchy is something we’re all forced to breathe in."
0123
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
I've been significantly bummed out by the number of teachers I've talked to who've dabbled with GenAI because they feel pressure to adopt (or identify as "early adopters"). My PD for next school year is supposedly designed around "understanding AI in Ed." I understand it perfectly: it's a grift.
020
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
And now I need to know if @jowrotethis.bsky.social has read this book!
000
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
Random appreciation post: The final essay in Magical/Realism from @vanessid.bsky.social is the best piece of cultural criticism I've read this year (and gave me yet another reason to love Jon Snow). Her words are invigorating and a showcase of the reasons why the humanities are vital.
141
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
It’s private equity all the way down.
000
Reposted by Annie Bilancini
Neil Lewis, Jr. @neillewisjr.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
I've shared this quote before but I'll share it again, as it's one I've been thinking about a lot as I've watched how our oligarchs have been behaving over the past few months.
At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.” Enough. I was stunned by the simple eloquence of that word—stunned for two reasons: first, because I have been given so much in my own life and, second, because Joseph Heller couldn’t have been more accurate. For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit today on what enough entails.
13067732206
Annie Bilancini @abilancini.bsky.social · 26/12/2024
GenAI is theft.
020