Rebecca Bodenheimer

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (the nation’s second largest teachers union), has recently embarked on a media blitz to tout her support for a full reopening of schools in the fall.
By and large, she’s found willing partners in news outlets. She has been profiled in the New York Times, stating “my union is all in” for reopening schools. She was interviewed on MSNBC, NPR, and a host of other broadcast news outlets, al...

Hulu’s Shrill, adapted from Lindy West’s 2016 memoir of the same name, has been a bright spot as it relates to the representation of fat women onscreen. There are very few TV shows that center the experiences of fat women—and even fewer avoid perpetuating fatphobia. Take This Is Us’s Kate Pearson (Chrissy Metz), the most famous fat female character on TV, whose storylines have mostly followed her struggle and desire to lose weight and her unhappiness as a fat person. Kate is, as Bitch Media e...

With over 40% of Bay Area residents fully vaccinated and two-thirds halfway there, many people are starting to reunite with family and friends and making plans for the summer. Unfortunately, this welcome trend also comes with anxiety about those “pandemic pounds.”
Over 60% of Americans have reported gaining weight over the past year. Now that the country is reopening, messaging on social media and the news is urging us to lose it. We’ve also seen instances of fatphobic hand-wringing from medi...

In 1935 Duke Ellington composed Reminiscing in Tempo. The piece was a departure for the great jazz composer. Reminiscing in Tempo (RIT) didn’t sound like Ellington’s popular songs. It was long, clocking in at over twelve minutes. It didn’t swing. It was experimental. It wasn’t something the white audience at the Cotton Club expected from a Black composer.
RIT posed a creative risk for Ellington. The work was personal. Ellington wrote RIT in response to the death of his mother. In A Beat of Hi...

The Mills School of Education had already adjusted its program to better prepare teachers for the challenges of urban schools. What happens when that intersects with a pandemic?
By Rebecca Bodenheimer
Professor Tomás Galguera is the bridge between the School of Education (SOE) faculty from before and after the turn of the millennium. Early childhood education used to underpin most SOE programming, he said, but once his older colleagues retired around the mid-2000s, there was a shift in the sc...

Kimberley Leo was the owner of Namaste Yoga and Wellness — which at its peak had three locations in Oakland and Berkeley, California — when the pandemic forced her to close up shop last May.
Afterwards, she began to see some of her teachers striking out on their own on Zoom. She said they were offering much lower prices than she'd had to charge to cover the cost of renting out studio space in the prohibitively expensive Bay Area.

“Every single day is a battle.”
That’s how Maria Elena Novo describes remote learning since suddenly becoming her son’s main teacher last spring. A third grader in the Oakland Unified School District in California, David hates Zoom; Novo has to hound him to turn his camera on.
“I sit with him every da...

As public health experts reach a consensus about the low risk of transmission of the COVID-19 virus within schools, Oakland parents have become frustrated at the lack of urgency by educational leaders to get kids safely back to the classroom. While the Oakland Unified School District rolled out a plan several weeks ago to begin a phased reopening on Jan. 25, it has now decided to postpone reopening, not even giving parents a new date.

Jigsaw puzzles have made a major comeback in 2020. In the spring, when the first shelter-in-place orders were issued in many regions of the country due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, there was a surge in demand for puzzles. Puzzle makers saw sales go up by 300 to 400%, and, due to the pandemic-related pause in production, quickly sold out of popular items. As this seemingly endless year has dragged on—with record-breaking numbers of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.—sheltering in place isn’t end...

For Americans, raising children is more expensive, in both money and time, than ever before. Even before the pandemic, when many parents were suddenly forced to become teachers and full-time caregivers, the cost of raising a child can be upwards of $13,000 a year for a middle-income family. And, while it’s too early to predict the long-term affects, one survey from May suggested the pandemic has already impacted the decisions of some 40 percent of cisgender women with regards to having childr...

Fat shaming Trump has been widely accepted and popular among progressives and liberals for years.
Fat shaming doesn't harm Trump, but rather average fat people, who internalize public fat-shaming and get the message that their body is a subject of ridicule and should be a source of shame.
Trump is one of the most inept and harmful presidents in our country's history, but he should be critiqued on his words and actions, not on his body.

What do you think of when you hear the word “liverwurst?” Many people think of something gross, usually liver (which, although pooh-poohed by Americans, is very popular in many cuisines across the world). Then there’s the German word “wurst” (meaning “sausage”), which sounds exactly like the English word for something that’s the least likable, the most inferior. Even translated fully into English (liver sausage), it sounds horrendous.

“The Good Doctor” is set to culminate its two-part season premiere Monday, Nov. 9, on ABC. The show, set at a fictional hospital in San Jose, was the first returning medical drama to introduce the COVID-19 pandemic into its version of reality, though other network procedurals will be following suit, including ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Station 19” and NBC’s “Chicago” franchise.
“Good Doctor” showrunner David Shore considered not taking on the pandemic at all, telling Entertainment Weekly he ...

As streaming services expand their content catalogs, the inclusion of classic titles from past decades shows us that inclusivity on TV didn’t start in our current era.
The enduring popularity of “Friends,” one of Netflix’s most-streamed shows in 2019 before it left for HBO Max, suggests that it’s not just Gen Xers watching nostalgically. Streaming is introducing older shows — particularly comedies from the 1990s — to a new generation of watchers, and Gen Z is eagerly tuning in (sometimes with...

A record number of women are running for office this year, building off the success they had in 2018. To illustrate just how historic Election Day could be, we spotlight five women running for office for the first time ever.
Less than two years ago, Candace Valenzuela was a relative stranger to the world of national politics. In 2017, the Texas native ran for and won a seat on the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board. She told Texas Monthly she felt drawn to becoming more politically engage...