EMC² Blog

You Do The Hard Thing. Cause That’s The Right Thing.

Hey folks. John here! Michael and I have some really exciting news to share in today’s blog entry. But we wanted to set the stage quickly by taking a brief moment to give a bit of backstory into how we got here.

The Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen tells the story of a young man with social anxiety disorder who so yearns to make a connection with his peers. It is a powerful, poignant meditation on the human condition and the life of an average American teenager, and offers especially relevant appeal to educators who work with so many students who fight their own private mental health battles of in an age of 24/7 social media, cyberbullying, and physical isolation from their peers.

In short: it’s timely. Bold. And brilliant.

I’ve had the pleasure of seeing the show live on three separate occasions. And I am consistently awed by its universal message of inclusion and hope. Seriously: it’s a must-see.

"No one deserves to be forgotten. No one deserves to fade away [...] No one should flicker out or have any doubt that it matters that they are here. No one deserves to disappear"

We simply couldn’t have said it any better.

One of the things we’re most excited about here at EMC² is bringing EVERYONE to the table together to play safely and as seamlessly as possible. All play begins with consent. And the best games are expressly designed to be universally inclusive for players of all ages, backgrounds, and ability levels. That’s why you won’t find any simulation-based games on our site that make light of real-life historical trauma. Why you won’t see any activities that pit physically stronger, faster students against players who might need a little more time. And why we’re working behind the scenes to design a site that’s inclusive, socially responsible, and accessible to all sorts of learner profiles. 

So here’s something we’re really excited to share about each of our EMC² resources to come: adding closed captions to each of our instructional videos. Starting today, we are honored to announce that we’ve begun partnering with Rev to add closed captions to each of the members-only videos that are embedded within our site. Transcribed by a real-life person, not a machine. So that every one of our instructional walkthroughs and self-paced video courses can be more accessible for each of the members of our community of Engagement Engineers.

When you host an online community like ours that’s rich with step-by-step video tutorials, you inevitably end up creating a ton of original content. This spring, we’ll be opening library of our self-paced, modular PD courses — which will add dozens more hours of video content to our library. And by the end of the year, our goal is to have individual explainer videos for every single resource that we’ve shared. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and we are looking forward to doing it right.

It’s going to take a bit of extra time on our end, but we believe the initiative is more than worth the effort. Ableism is awful. No one deserves to be forgotten. And our goal is to create a community where everyone can feel safe and supported at every step of the way.

Going forward, we are likewise working with our webmaster to retroactively add this same feature to each of the videos we’ve provided at site launch. We envision our community as a place that can bring everyone to the table. In short: we’re on it. And we’re committed to building this thing the right way from the ground floor on up!

Honored to have you here with us for the road ahead.

We hope you’ll consider joining us as an Engagement Engineer to unlock a full year of site access. For complete details including our exclusive limited time offer for annual site membership, click here.

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Carol McLaughlin
1-8 Teacher

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