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Sally O’Brien

@sallyohbrien.bsky.social
294 followers 874 following 244 posts

Perpetually awaiting a rebirth of wonder. οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἔτ’ ἄλλος ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ’ ᾿Οδυσσεύς. Proud #PHLed neighborhood school teacher and parent. she/her

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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I am very annoyed that @inquirer.com is FINALLY offering a teacher discount and I can’t get it because I’ve been a subscriber in the past.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
This is rad!! She overlapped at Brookhaven with my grandmother— I wonder if they met.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
awww ty ☺️
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
nice!!!!!!!
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
new poem out today in BRAWL. this one bounced around for a long time before finding a home. shoutout also to @jxzzhndz.bsky.social who helped this piece achieve its final form, when I took a workshop w/ her way back when. www.brawllit.com/2026/sally-o...
brawllit.com
Sally O'Brien — BRAWL
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
I put together crates with hanging files for each student this year to hold on to important work for reflection later. This was inspired by your “story of the year” doc but I needed an analog system b/c we start and end the year without Chromebooks & students are writing a lot more on paper now.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
Carl Phillips has published I think 2 volumes of excellent craft essays.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
he said “maximum lethality” and by golly he meant it
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Reposted by Sally O’Brien
sarah clark (they) @sarahclark.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
we talk a lot of trash about john fetterman but he's going to really come in useful when it's time to hold a big door shut in the season finale of america
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 13/02/2026
I think Gritty not only respects savesies, but saves spots that aren't even HIS. puts a whole barcalounger in a spot he didn't even shovel on a block where he doesn't live.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
I really loved The Woman Who Split The Atom, a graphic biography of Lise Meitner.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
This year I’ve really leaned in to paper even more. I’ve had to completely retool my systems for grading & collecting work since I’m using so much paper. I wouldn’t go back. But it does make it a lot harder to figure out how to do “virtual learning” when we close for days in a row after a big snow!
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
This is great! Def planning to share w/ my colleagues. We started pivoting to analog last year not so much as a reaction to genAI but because our attendance numbers didn’t really rebound after COVID and we wanted to avoid giving the impression that students could just stay home & do work online.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 28/01/2026
honestly same!!! the enshittification of the internet has sucked for me too. if it helps bring a little levity to your day, a poem you helped me figure out how to evolve into its final form YEARS ago just finally got picked up somewhere after collecting double digit rejections.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
honestly, same
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 16/01/2026
YO @annieabrams.bsky.social this looks fireeee goodreader.hcommons.org
goodreader.hcommons.org
Making the Good Reader and Citizen – THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE INSTRUCTION IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS
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🎃 Spooky Dog 🎃 @stinky-doggy.bsky.social · 09/01/2026
Reposting with alt text because this poem is hard and I think it just about sums up what we all feel right now
You Who Wronged
By Czeslaw Milosz

You who wronged a simple man
Bursting into laughter at the crime,
And kept a pack of fools around you
To mix good and evil, to blur the line,

Though everyone bowed down before you,
Saying virtue and wisdom lit your way,
Striking gold medals in your honor,
Glad to have survived another day,

Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date.

And you’d have done better with a winter dawn,
A rope, and a branch bowed beneath your weight.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
omg yes thank you so much this is perfect!!!!
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
@lydiakiesling.bsky.social maybe you’re the wrong person to ask but after reading Mobility I’ve really got a hankering for MORE LITERARY WRITING about the petrochemical industry. I have read Ducks by Kate Beaton and loved it as well. do you have any recs?
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
yessssssssss how exciting for you!!! reading/rereading Homer very slowly over the past five years or so has been transformative for me in ways I still don't fully comprehend. the Wilson translation is great and it's what I use when I teach it.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 14/12/2025
I’m a longtime fan!!!
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Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
media.tenor.com
a man wearing a headband and a pink towel says sweetie you 're wasting your gum
Alt: Gif of Nathan Lane from The Birdcage, saying “sweetie you’re wasting your gum”
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
BECOME UNGOVERNABLE
It is not clear whether the Pensthorpe beaver, whose sex and age is unknown, was illegally released into the reserve by activists using a practice known as beaver bombing. It is possible it wandered of its own accord into the Wensum – an aquifer-fed chalk river whose name is derived from the Old English adjective for “wandering”.
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Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
Today is World Aids Day. The current administration has barred federal offices from acknowledging it. In middle school I memorized Elizabeth Glaser's Address at the 1992 Democratic Convention for a forensic competition, and I've never forgotten it. awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/a...
awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu
Address at the 1992 Democratic National Convention - July 14, 1992
[July 14, 1992 | New York, New York] I'm Elizabeth Glaser.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
I have discovered so much fantastic stuff from browsing the new fiction / new nonfiction shelf at the library. One book sent me down a years long rabbit hole of reading everything else I could get my hands on about heroic age Polar exploration.
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I support Somali-Americans @adamrothman.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
From Frederick Douglass's 1867 "Composite Nation" speech, a defense of Chinese migration to the United States at a time when anti-Chinese sentiment was intensifying. teachingamericanhistory.org/document/our...
If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all the nations, kindreds, tongues and peoples, and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic. The outspread wings of the American eagle are broad enough to shelter all who are likely to come.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
and I’m like, where did YOU go to school that you learned about him? …he went to Robert Smalls Jr High in Beaufort SC. Of course he knew about the hometown hero.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
I saw someone’s post about Smalls a few years ago and went to my old man who is a Civil War history buff, all excited to tell him about this new guy I had heard about, and he sighed and rolled his eyes at me like, where did YOU go to school that you never heard of Robert Smalls?
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
“If a Negro should improperly approach a white woman his body would be hanging on the nearest tree…If the same rule were applied on the other side, and white men who insulted or debauched Negro women were treated likewise, this Convention would have to be adjourned for lack of a quorum.”
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
talked down and successfully de-escalated a lynch mob in his 70s!!!
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
@derfbackderf.bsky.social floored by this, an incredible feat of both storytelling and research!
Cover of Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, a graphic history of the protests on Kent State campus that ended with National Guardsmen firing into a crowd of students, killing four and wounding nine more
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
DO ATTEND
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
I do not believe Pulley is likely to face justice in this life. When I think about stuff like this I have to remind myself of the words of St Paisios, “What I see around me would drive me insane, if I did not know that no matter what happens, God will have the last word.”
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
Someone can go to jail and have their life basically upended for writing a bad check or running a small-time scam or shoplifting-- but Philip Pulley is walking around a free man, and living (presumably) in comfort, despite all the ways he's defrauded his tenants and scammed our communities.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
He was sued by the PA Attorney General's office in 2023 for his egregiously shady and retaliatory management practices. whyy.org/articles/phi...
whyy.org
Pa. AG sues over ‘deplorable’ handling of Philly apartment buildings
The suit seeks to bar SBG Management Services from renewing lease agreements and collecting rent until all properties are repaired.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
And I wouldn't blame you if you confused THAT incident with an earlier incident where he ALSO made people homeless (in this case, via illegal eviction / lockout in the building that later got torched). www.inquirer.com/philly/news/...
inquirer.com
Judge: No lockouts Monday at West Philly apartments up for sale
While the intervention buys tenants more time, it could still mean the displacement of several dozen families from the neighborhood, where property values and rent are rising.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
You could be forgiven for confusing that incident with an EARLIER incident when one of his OTHER buildings partially collapsed. www.inquirer.com/news/lindley...
inquirer.com
Philadelphia sues owner of apartment building damaged by partial collapse last week
Many residents of Lindley Towers are still living in emergency shelter since the collapse on Sept. 14. Another lawsuit filed Wednesday seeks relief for the displaced residents.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
But wait, wasn't he JUST in the news for one of his buildings falling apart so badly that chunks of the facade were raining into the street? Yes, that's the SAME GUY. www.inquirer.com/news/philade...
inquirer.com
Historic Philly building managed by landlord Philip Pulley partially collapses, littering street with debris
The collapsed facade damaged cars in the city's Francisville section; no injuries were reported. Pulley, a Montco resident, also used the building's address to illegally cast votes.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
You might be confused that there is yet ANOTHER item in the news about this soulless reptile, because he was JUST in the news earlier this year for committing voter fraud. To be clear he is a "controversial landlord" like Epstein is a "disgraced financier." www.inquirer.com/crime/philip...
inquirer.com
A federal judge blasted a controversial Philly landlord who committed voter fraud, saying he showed ‘disrespect’ for democracy
Philip C. Pulley apologized, but declined to offer many details, including whom he voted for or why.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
chapter infinity in the saga of "Philip Pulley is a plague on humanity"! I lived in a building owned by this notorious slumlord for about five years. I brought my son home to that apartment. Every single news item that comes out about him just makes him look worse. www.inquirer.com/news/phil-pu...
inquirer.com
Landlord Phil Pulley transferred ownership of West Philly apartments days before suspected arson, records show
Property records show the notorious landlord signed a deed transfer two days before the June 2025 fire. The new owners are now demolishing the building.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
the GOAT.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Endurance!
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
BREAD AND ROSES TOO!
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Nate Holdren @nhold.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
everyone should have a life of individual free inquiry/creative pursuit and participation in collective versions of that as well.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
I just finished Is A River Alive? by @robgmacfarlane.bsky.social and just like everything else I ever wrote by him, I was floored by it. Also it has a GLOSSARY in the back because dude has one of the most expansive lexica of anyone writing today.
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
IT SURE TF WOULD!!!! that being said living scholars are, in my experience, VERY nice about just sending you a pdf
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
agreed 1000%!!!
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Sally O’Brien @sallyohbrien.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
It’s really hard to walk the line of finding Serious Literature for the youth to analyze and also not making the entire lineup a parade of the most depressing books of all time
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