What does it cost to seem okay?

For Whom is a spoken word poem for the strong friends, quiet strugglers, brilliant overfunctioners, and anyone who has ever carried more than they showed.

A visual meditation on mental health, survival, and the ache of being praised for what almost broke you.

He did not just hand out rings. He told a story about each boy.

What I was hearing was not just hype. I was hearing a leader narrate belonging in public.

The trophy and rings marked the win. What mattered most was everything that made them possible.

At the UT System Momentum on OER Convening, I kept thinking about what higher education too often skips: the moment before adoption. The part where educators need structure, not cheerleading; method, not mandate. In this post, I reflect on that experience and share openly available resources, including a mini-lesson series and the OER Tracker, designed to make OER exploration more rigorous, transparent, and usable across roles.

Family has never felt simple to me. It has felt layered, unstable, sacred, painful, blurry, loaded. More like something I have circled than something I have stood securely inside.

Imagine it like this: no courtroom, no highlight reel. Just a quiet place at the end of the road, and little you waiting. They don’t ask about your titles or your output. They ask one thing, plain and devastating: Who did you become when you had the choice?

McGraw Hill’s “Buyer’s Guide” to OER isn’t a neutral comparison. It’s a framing device. I read it through care ethics and open education values, pulled the key claims, and annotated what’s missing: consent, privacy, academic freedom, and who the “ROI” is really for.