Author: Austin Ha

We are all responsible for everything our government does. And that’s terrifying.

Last year, in 2019, I graduated from the University of Washington and moved to New York to become a teacher via Teach For America. I spent the Summer of 2019 training to become an educator in the city, focusing on learning about the landscape of the work I’d be doing, along with the gritty details… Read more WDYL: Innumeracy

The intersectional nature of traumatic events tends to be covered in ways that are surface-level and glazed over. A pandemic that disproportionately impacts oppressed groups interacts complexly with protests that fight much more visible forms of racism. Meanwhile, at Twitter HQ, 2,900 miles away from my school, Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, wields his immense power… Read more Meditating on the First Amendment

This week I learned that I need to dive deeper into what trauma-informed pedagogy looks like. Last week was originally slated to be our Spring Break in NYC, but, of course, COVID-19 has completely changed the course of what is expected of us as educators in one of the hardest-hit cities in the world. Of… Read more [WDYL] Trauma-Informed Pedagogy

The ASCEND blog has long laid dormant. For me, it’s really been more of an outlying brain than anything else. That said, as I’ve sat in quarantine, I’ve had more time to consider what I need to do as a newly-minted educator in our surreal developing reality. At the end of Summer last year, I… Read more WDYL: An ASCEND Blog Update

Why In my life, I’ve had two transformational moments in education. The first was in fifth grade, where I was given the power to leverage my curiosity through self-directed learning and technology. The second was in high school, when I entered the International School of Communications (affectionately known as the ISC). The experiences I had… Read more What Did You Learn Manifesto