Latest news with #Dunham
Chicago Tribune
7 days ago
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Gary Teachers Union opposes online teacher hiring: move replaces 'soul of education'
As a nationwide teacher shortage left Gary schools turning to online licensed teachers to fill the void, the move has drawn criticism from the leader of the Gary Teachers Union. The Gary School Board voted July 9 to retain Proximity, an Austin, Texas-based company to provide up to 41 online licensed teachers for middle and high school classrooms. 'We remain focused on providing the best for our scholars, which includes instruction delivered by highly qualified, licensed teachers,' said Gary Community School Corp. Superintendent Yvonne Stokes. 'We value our teachers and will continue to work to find a path forward to secure in-person, licensed instructors. We are still hiring and remain in contact with those teachers who are demonstrating efforts to meet the guidelines set forth by the law to obtain their certification,' Stokes said in a statement. District officials said about one-third of its teacher roster of about 245 teachers worked under an emergency permit last year, meaning they didn't hold the state-required teachers' license. The district just emerged from seven years of state control last year because of its perilous financial situation. Stokes joined the district last year as the first hire of the new state and local appointed school board. However, years of uncertainty may have soured local educators from applying for jobs, officials said. School board president Michael Suggs cited the urgency to have licensed teachers on a recent radio appearance with Stokes. 'We've been a failing school district for 10 years… 10 years of failing is broken. We have to rise to a new level, and reset the bar,' he said. Gary's students have performed poorly on state and national standardized tests for more than a decade. 'The state of Indiana says you can't have emergency permits more than three years in a row,' Suggs said. Chief human resources officer Jovanka Cvitkovich said one teacher worked on an emergency permit for seven years. Teachers union president GlenEva Dunham urged the district to reconsider its decision on using Proximity teachers. 'This is not just about saving money or adopting the latest technological trend,' Dunham said in a statement. 'This is about the future of our children, the integrity of our schools, and the livelihoods of the teachers who are committed to making Gary a better city for everyone. We deserve more than virtual replacements.' Dunham, who said the union wasn't consulted about hiring Proximity, said the online teaching platform will leave students more isolated. She said the emergency permit teachers are union members and covered under the contract's recognition clause. 'This partnership with Proximity is not just a decision to 'go digital' — it is a decision to replace the soul of education with something far more distant,' Dunham said. However, both sides agree on the importance of an in-person teacher in front of the classroom. Along with the online instructor, Gary officials said a facilitator will be in each online classroom to back up instruction and keep students on task. 'We cannot continue to place students in classrooms year after year with individuals who have not advanced toward professional credentials, especially when their instructional impact does not meet state expectations for student growth,' said Cvitkovich, who herself began her education career on an emergency permit. 'While well-intentioned, this practice places our students at a significant disadvantage and places the district at risk for continued academic underperformance,' she said in a statement. Last year, there were more than 1,300 teaching vacancies in Indiana, according to the state Department of Education. Low pay and increased responsibilities were among the reasons for the shortage. The General Assembly passed legislation this year boosting a starting teacher's salary from $40,000 to $45,000. Gary's starting salary is $50,883. The Gary Teachers Union is hosting a community forum on the issue from 6 to 7:30 p.m. July 31 at the teachers union, 1401 Virginia St.
Pink Villa
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Pink Villa
Still ‘Too Much' to Say: Lena Dunham Has More Story for Season 2, But Will Netflix Renew it?
Lena Dunham's romantic dramedy Too Much may not have made a splash on Netflix's global charts, but the creative force behind the series isn't ready to walk away. As speculation grows over whether the streamer will renew the show, Dunham is already thinking about what a second season would explore, and it wouldn't be more 'meet cute.' Instead, she wants to dive straight into what happens after the impulsive wedding that closed out season one. No renewal yet, but Dunham has plans Netflix has not confirmed whether Too Much will return, and the show's weak debut—failing to crack the global top 10—has led many to believe it's on the chopping block. But Dunham's recent interviews make clear she's not done telling Jessica and Felix's story. 'In terms of the second season, we're not there yet,' she told The Hollywood Reporter. She continues to say, 'that marriage is not the end of a love story—it's the beginning.' She wants to explore the reality of two people who barely know each other being thrust into a lifelong commitment. From learning each other's quirks to navigating family, future plans, and conflict, Dunham sees plenty of material still on the table. Cast is on board for more Star Megan Stalter, who plays Jessica, echoed the feeling in an interview with The Wrap, saying, 'If they're married, then what now?' Will Sharpe and Emily Ratajkowski, whose characters Felix and Wendy were central to Jessica's messy romantic unraveling, are also reportedly open to returning. Ratajkowski even shared that Dunham has storylines ready for her character, Wendy. Even though renewal is uncertain, Dunham's ongoing deal with Netflix and her enthusiasm could give Too Much a second chance.
Mint
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Lena Dunham's show ‘Too Much' spirals into overcompensation
Remember when Lena Dunham was the most important voice in television? Girls, her chaotic, semi-autobiographical HBO series, smashed its way into the prestige TV landscape like a giggling wrecking-ball, all elbows and ambition. It was bold and brash and unshaved. It was 'cinema" for the small screen, with characters that were abrasively specific and men who were off-puttingly real. In 2012, when Girls premiered, we bought into its first season—its rawness, its honesty, its audacity—and we went in a little harder on a man named Adam Driver, breaking through with such magnetism that you could practically see future Oscar nominations floating above his head. Then Girls kept going. And going. And it turned out, maybe that flavour of raw, like cookie-dough, was best in small doses. The series devolved into a self-indulgent mess, incoherent in tone, inconsistent in character, so uncomfortable that not even schadenfreude could keep you glued. Driver, a messy-haired escape artist, soared into stardom. The rest faded into podcast territory. Over a decade later, Dunham returns with Too Much, a Netflix confection that, at first glance, appears to be the anti-Girls. Where Girls was grubby and narcissistic, Too Much is breezy and big-hearted. There is structure. There is romance. There is—dare I say—wholesomeness? At the centre of the series is Megan Stalter, that loud and luminous scene-stealer from Hacks, playing Jessica, a hyper-American heroine obsessed with a vague and tourist-brochure version of the UK. Jessica doesn't know Bridget Jones by name, but she's certain that England is where her Mr Darcy resides—if not Colin Firth himself, at least someone with a floppy haircut and an accent like clotted cream. Her Alan Rickman. She arrives in London, laughing at its red phonebooths, questioning whether she's being treated like spaghetti by the National Health Service ('You're putting me under cold water? Like I'm pasta?"), and launches into a series of romcom scenarios that are skewered, lovingly and laceratingly, with Dunham's sharpened pen. The episode titles are parodies of romantic film landmarks—Pity Woman, Ignore Sunrise, Notting Kill—and each installment functions as a funhouse mirror, reflecting the genre back at us with googly eyes and lipstick smears. The cast is brilliant. The wondrous Will Sharpe (Flowers, A Real Pain) plays a sheepish musician caught in Jessica's romantic crosshairs; the ineffable Richard E. Grant is her manic-depressive boss; Emily Ratajkowski is a social media siren who's stolen Jessica's boyfriend (played by Mrs Maisel's Michael Zegen); and cameos from Rhea Perlman, Naomi Watts, Stephen Fry, and Dunham herself. Yet I find myself unable to sit through a full episode without hitting pause. More than once. Too Much is named far too accurately. The series barrels forward like a caffeinated Mean Girls, endlessly witty and desperate to prove it. There are too many zingers, too many clever lines competing for space. It's like Diablo Cody on a bad day. Every conversation is peppered with punchlines, some brilliant, some baffling. Even during dramatic moments, the dialogue won't shut up. Dunham doesn't trust the silences. She doesn't trust the story to tell itself. Thus the show, like its heroine, spirals into overcompensation. An impassioned argument on the street is disrupted by a line so jarringly self-aware that it belongs on a tote bag. This is the curse of smart people writing smart characters who know they're in a smart show. Still, there's a lot to like. Megan Stalter's Jessica is fluttery, fiercely insecure, and deeply watchable. Sharpe, with his wet-sponge eyes and mumbly charm, is great as a reluctant romantic lead who doesn't know the difference between polyamory and monogamy. He calls too much eye-contact 'a bit of a third-date thing in this country," while she is annoyed by the fact that the boardgame Clue is called Cluedo in the UK (as it is in India), complaining about the British need to add a 'little teacup of charm" on to everything. The episode Ignore Sunrise, where they stay up talking and making love (and watching Paddington) through the night, is particularly smart. Dunham, unfortunately, seems unwilling to settle for smart. She wants also to be important, and that self-seriousness drags down this series. Too Much desperately wants to be a show with a lot to say about modern life and relationships—like Master of None or even I May Destroy You—anything but the romcom (or anti-romcom) it could so perfectly have been. This show is not content being a cracked valentine to romantic comedy tropes. It wants to say something about trauma, about girlhood, about heartbreak, about everything. This desire to be substantial makes it a show where a dominatrix turns out to be a sad little girl who goes to sleep sucking her thumb. Would we have been better off just watching Sharpe cry while he watched the Paddington movies? Yes, yes we would. Too Much is, miraculously, a show that is as tedious as it is fun. The worst aspect of Dunham's artistic work is that it eventually feels sadistic: as if she is inflicting her art on her audience and daring us to sit through it. Too Much goes down easier than the latter seasons of Girls, but like the world of romance and relationships it attempts to navigate, it's full of red flags. Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.
Time Magazine
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
10 Times Girls' Hannah Horvath Was the Absolute Worst
Often thought of as a more unlikeable spiritual successor to Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, Girls leading lady Hannah Horvath was a character that fans struggled to love—or, for that matter, even tolerate—over the course of the HBO dramedy's six-season run. Created and played by Girls showrunner Lena Dunham, self-absorbed and entitled Hannah was seen as an archetype for a specific type of millennial woman, particularly the messy 20-something kind living in Brooklyn in the mid 2010s. However, much of the ire aimed at Hannah seemed to be intertwined with what viewers thought about Dunham herself, who touted the character as semi-autobiographical and was the subject of intense scrutiny during the years Girls was on the air. Dunham has defended Hannah's faults—as well as those of her pseudo-besties Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet)—as relatable and honest, and spoken out about how their flaws were criticized much more than the exponentially worse offenses of their male antihero counterparts. "I'm constantly being asked about these characters being unlikable, and I'm like, 'What does that even mean?'" Dunham told Vogue in 2016. "Walter White and Tony Soprano literally murder people, and everybody's like, 'I love them,' and all we do is be kind of rude and do drugs sometimes and we're unlikable." Still, that doesn't mean Hannah's behavior was always easy to watch play out on screen. So here, in chronological order, are the 10 Girls episodes where Hannah Horvath was the worst. "Pilot" (Season 1, Episode 1) Girls doesn't waste any time letting us know just what type of person Hannah is. After her parents cut her off financially in the pilot episode's opening scene, insisting she try to get a paying job at the age of 24, Hannah responds by telling them she doesn't want to see them for the rest of their visit to New York. However, she later proceeds to get high on opium tea, show up at their hotel room to confront them, and—in what has become one of Girls' most defining moments—deliver a half self-aggrandizing, half-self deprecating plea for support: "I think that I may be the voice of a generation. Or, at least, a voice of a generation." In the morning, Hannah wakes to find her parents have checked out and left behind two envelopes, one with $20 for her and one with $20 for housekeeping. She pockets both bills without pause and heads out. "Bad Friend" (Season 2, Episode 3) "Bad Friend" may be one of Girls' funniest installments, but it's also one of Hannah's most unflattering—which is saying something. After asking her downstairs neighbor Laird (Jon Glaser), a recovering addict, for a drug hook-up, Hannah goes on a Wednesday night coke bender with Elijah (Andrew Rannells) that results in him revealing he and Marnie briefly had sex in a moment of confusion. Despite the fact that he and Hannah broke up years ago and he's since come out to her as gay, this prompts Hannah to kick Elijah out of their shared apartment and show up unannounced at Booth Jonathan's (Jorma Taccone) home to accost Marnie with a self-righteous diatribe about how Marnie is the bad friend and she's the good friend. During a pit stop at a local pharmacy, Elijah succinctly sums up her bad behavior: "Leave it to you to make this whole night about you and your role in my path to honest what happened between Marnie and I had very little, nay, nothing to do with you whatsoever." To make herself feel better after terrorizing her friends, Hannah ends the evening by sleeping with Laird, who has spent the night racked with guilt over the fact that he supplied her with drugs. It's the cherry on top of a narcissistic spiral. "Video Games" (Season 2, Episode 7) While accompanying Jessa on a trip upstate to visit her estranged father, Hannah deems it appropriate to have a sexual encounter with Hannah's 19-year-old stepbrother Frank (Nick Lashaway) while Jessa is attempting to work through the issues her dad's immaturity and frequent abandonment have caused in their relationship. When Jessa questions Hannah's behavior, demanding to know whether she really "had no idea this was not supposed to be a sexcapade," Hannah blames Jessa for making her think that's what the evening was about. Later that night, she further isolates her friend by offering up the less-than-helpful advice that no one is ever in the right frame of mind to see their parents. To make matters even worse, when Frank tells Hannah the next morning that he feels like she used him for sex, she's dismissive of his hurt despite the fact that he's a literal teenager and seems to have been a virgin. Turns out actions have consequences, Hannah. "Only Child" (Season 3, Episode 5) After Hannah's editor David (John Cameron Mitchell) unexpectedly dies, she decides it's a good idea to show up at his funeral to question his widow about the fate of her forthcoming ebook. When she finds out the publisher David worked for has dropped all his projects, Hannah is more concerned with trying to suss out the name of another potential publisher than the fact that she's surrounded by David's grieving family members. In turn, she earns the only acceptable response to such an ill-timed and callous request: 'If I do give you another name, will you get the f-ck out of here?' "Beach House" (Season 3, Episode 7) During a weekend getaway to Marnie's mom's friend's beach house in North Fork that Marnie organized in hopes of healing the girls' fractured friend group, Hannah invites Elijah and his pals (including a new boyfriend literally named Pal who's played by Danny Strong) to come over without even checking to see if it's OK with the others. She then rudely laughs at everyone's jokes about how little food there is at dinner, a problem that only exists because Marnie thought she was shopping for four people not eight. Does Marnie's response to her plans getting derailed come off as a bit neurotic? Yes. Does that cancel out how inconsiderate Hannah is? Certainly not. "I Saw You" (Season 3, Episode 11) As Adam (Adam Driver) prepares for his first Broadway role, Hannah reverts to full on clingy mode, even going so far as to show up at Ray's (Alex Karpovsky) apartment, where Adam is temporarily staying, and interrupt his vocal exercises when she wants attention. Later, even though Adam is a guest in Ray's home, she barges into Ray's room after proclaiming that "everything" is her business to find him having sex with Marnie. She then proceeds to scream at a humiliated Marnie that she's never allowed to judge her again. With friends like these who needs enemies? Sadly, that's not all. Hannah also blows up her latest professional gig by going on a tirade against her fellow GQ colleagues for working in what she describes as a "sweatshop factory for puns"—all because she's insecure about her own faltering writing career. This quickly provokes her boss (played by Jenna Lyons) into firing her. "Two Plane Rides" (Season 3, Episode 12) In the Season 3 finale, an increasingly flailing Hannah finds out she got into the Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate program she applied to. This is a cause for celebration, but she selfishly chooses to deliver the news to Adam in the minutes before he's set to take the stage on opening night of his Broadway play. The unnecessary added stress of her announcement leads to Adam delivering what he judges to be a not-so-perfect performance and ultimately results in what appears to be a near-relationship-ending fight between the two. Hannah obviously isn't the only one at fault in their downfall as a couple, but her decision making certainly leaves something to be desired. "Ask Me My Name" (Season 4, Episode 7) On her first date with fellow teacher Fran (Jake Lacey), Hannah sabotages what seems to be a positive new connection in her life by dragging him to Adam's new girlfriend Mimi-Rose's (Gillian Jacobs) art show. Once Fran gets wise to the fact that she's using him as a pawn in her twisted attempt to interact with Adam, he quickly dips. But that doesn't stop Hannah from spending the night making herself and everyone around her miserable by trying to get to know Mimi-Rose, who clearly has some personality disorders of her own. Hannah's inner turmoil over her life trajectory is on full, chaotic display here. "Homeward Bound" (Season 5, Episode 8) After agreeing to go on a three-month summer road trip with Fran despite their issues, Hannah figures out before the first pit stop that she doesn't actually want to be with him anymore. But instead of handling the situation like an adult and having a conversation, Hannah chooses to lock herself in a rest stop bathroom and refuse to talk to him. She then rejects Fran's offer to drive her home and opts to call on Ray to come pick her up in his fancy new coffee truck. As a completely misguided thank you, Hannah tries to perform a very hesitantly accepted sexual favor for Ray, which causes him to drive off the road and tip over his recent $50,000-investment. She then hitches a ride with a stranger, leaving Ray on the side of the road to deal with the busted-up truck on his own. It's difficult to justify pretty much any of Hannah's actions in this one! "Goodbye Tour" (Season 6, Episode 9) Hannah's overall arc in the series' penultimate episode is a step in the right direction for her. But there is one glaring misstep that recalls the Hannah of old. After ignoring Shoshanna for months and neglecting to even tell her she was pregnant, Hannah shows up at her apartment uninvited to say goodbye. Only, it turns out Shosh has gotten engaged in the meantime and is in the middle of her engagement party, which Hannah was decidedly not invited to. Hannah's longtime disinterest in Shosh is particularly egregious considering how Shoshanna leapt to her defense over the whole Mimi-Rose situation and even stood up to Jessa after she shacked up with Adam (even if that wasn't really what she had a problem with). As Shoshanna says her fiancé Byron helped her realize, she can't be friends with the others anymore because of 'how exhausting and narcissistic and ultimately boring this whole dynamic is." You tell em, Shosh.
Elle
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Elle
The 'Too Much' Soundtrack Is Amazing—Here's Every Song
If Lena Dunham's Girls was the millennial confessional that made us all cringe and cry in equal measure, then her latest offering, the Netflix's Too Much, is the rom-com that promises to make you feel everything—and text your therapist). While the 10-episode series features bold outfits and a lovable cast, one of its underrated highlights is its accompanying soundtrack. (It sure helps that Dunham's musician husband Luis Felber co-created the show.) It's a whip-smart, era-defying selection of music that blends Richard Curtis nostalgia with the indie sleaze revival. Here's a track-by-track, episode-by-episode rundown of the music of Too Much.
