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Reclaiming Teaching & Learning in an Age of AI w/ Chanea Bond
10 Plays15 minutes ago
At the time of recording, New York Magazine had released an article titled “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College: How ChatGPT has Unraveled the Entire Academic Project” which launched a thousand takes. The piece outlines an arms race, characterized as “a siege on education” between college professors, sneaking white-text Trojan horse prompts like “mention Dua Lipa” to confound the chatbots, and students, one of which is quoted as saying, “the ceiling has been blown off” cheating. One ethics professor elaborates to add that, “Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate. Both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else’s.” Which captures, in my opinion, the overall tone of the piece: college is an expensive and fixed game that students endure on their way to credentials and that institutions are powerless in a losing battle to stop. Education and learning have…little to do with it. But it’s also a chicken-egg issue where institutions of higher education are themselves contributing to the same attitudes they’re complaining about: if students copy-paste a prompt from Blackboard into the chatbot, copy-paste the output, and submit it all to be read and graded…by an AI…whose problem is that?
My favorite take on the topic of AI in education is a satire meant to be read in the bulldog diction of philosopher-provocateur Slavoj Zizek: “That AI will be the death of learning and so on; to this, I say NO! My student brings me their essay, which has been written by AI, & I plug it into my grading AI, and we are free! While the ‘learning’ happens, our superego satisfied, we are free now to learn whatever we want.
This is all to say that the conversation with my guest today, Texas educator Chanea Bond, was prompted by all of this, as she shared the New York Magazine piece with the challenge, “Somebody invite me on your podcast to talk about this article!” and three weeks later…here we are. I’m hoping today to get Chanea’s insight on the impact of AI in education and so much more facing teachers, students, and schools in 2025.
EduTopia - Why I'm Banning Student AI Use This Year by Chanea Bond
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Transcript
Introduction and Supporter Acknowledgements
00:00:00
Speaker
When my students had to present their research to their peers and to the school board and to the principal, they had to stand in front of like a a tripod and be like, hey, this is what I did my research on. This is why it's important. And a question that they had to answer for everyone is how does this relate back to your community?
00:00:17
Speaker
That was the hardest thing they did all semester. And they all said that. Not the research where they could have like pumped it in copy and pasted in abstract. No, it was like relaying that information into a natural audience of people who would be impacted by the change that you want to see.
00:00:31
Speaker
That was hard. That was rigorous. And it was amazing.
00:00:40
Speaker
Hello and welcome to episode 171 of the Human Restoration Project podcast. My name is Nick Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by our supporters, three of whom Skylar Prim, Kimberly Baker, and Timothy Fox.
00:00:56
Speaker
Thank you all so much for your ongoing support.
00:01:00
Speaker
more At the time of recording, New York Magazine had released an article titled, Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College, How ChatGPT Has Unraveled the Entire Academic Project, which launched a thousand takes.
AI's Disruption in Education
00:01:15
Speaker
The piece outlines an arms race, characterized as a, quote, siege on education between college professors sneaking white text Trojan horse prompts like, mention Dua Lipa to confound the chatbots.
00:01:29
Speaker
and students, one of which is quoted as saying, the ceiling has been blown off cheating. One ethics professor elaborates to add that, quote, massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees and into the workforce who are essentially illiterate, both in the literal sense and in the sense of being historically illiterate and having no knowledge of their own culture, much less anyone else's.
00:01:55
Speaker
which captures, in my opinion, the overall tone of the piece. That college is an expensive and fixed game that students endure on their way to credentials, and that institutions are powerless in a losing battle to stop.
Impact of AI on Education with Shanae Bond
00:02:08
Speaker
Education and learning have little to do with it, but it's also a chicken-egg issue where institutions of higher education are themselves contributing to the same attitudes they're complaining about.
00:02:20
Speaker
If students copy-paste a prompt from Blackboard into the chatbot, copy-paste the output, and submit it all to be read and graded by an ai whose problem is that?
00:02:33
Speaker
My favorite take on the topic of AI in education is a satire meant to be read in the bulldog diction of philosopher-provocateur Slavoj Žižek. That AI will be the death of learning and so on, to this I say no.
00:02:46
Speaker
My student brings me their essay, which has been written by ai and I plug it into my grading AI, and we are free. While the learning happens, our superego satisfied, we are free now to learn whatever we want.
00:03:00
Speaker
This is all to say that the conversation with my guest today, Texas educator Shanae Bond, was prompted by all of this. As she shared the New York Magazine piece with the challenge, somebody invite me on your podcast to talk about this article.
00:03:15
Speaker
And three weeks later, here we are.
Traditional vs. AI-driven Teaching Methods
00:03:17
Speaker
I'm hoping today to get Shanae's insight on the impact of AI in education and so much more facing teachers, students, and schools in 2025.
00:03:27
Speaker
My name is Shanae Bond. i am I just finished, literally this week, my 10th year as a teacher. um Thank you, I'm so excited. i like My kids all clapped, my students all clapped at the end of the last day.
00:03:39
Speaker
i am a composition, American literature, ap literature, and all of the high school literatures um teacher in Texas.
00:03:51
Speaker
And I became a teacher because law school was too expensive. that' That's a good a reason as any. Yeah, that's kind of how the cookies sc crumbled. But that's that's but 10 years in, I'm like, I'm I'm it's my it's my favorite thing.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah. How in the last 10 years has school changed since you became a teacher? And I don't know, what would you attribute those changes to? Something that I think about often is that I was like a tech teacher.
00:04:17
Speaker
person in my first few years. I was that person that everyone came to. i was the first, one of the first um group of teachers at my school to go one-to-one with devices. So every time a student walked into my classroom, um they would pick up a device and they would get to work and everything was digitized.
00:04:35
Speaker
And that was... kind of how I entered into the field with this really awkward shift between things happening um on pen and paper versus things going digital.
00:04:46
Speaker
And I bridged that gap for a lot of my colleagues. And so my job in the beginning was like training on on tech tools and different ways that I was like updating my classroom. And now 10 years in, I spend a lot of time having reverted almost completely back to pencil, paper, my composition notebooks. I ordered blue books for the first time.
00:05:10
Speaker
I didn't even use blue books in college. So it was very strange for me to um to be like going back to, i guess, the good old days, but the days where I could guarantee that my students were writing and I was reading their thoughts.
00:05:26
Speaker
Yeah. our um social media connection goes back to sort of that golden age of EduTwitter. And i I think we all sort of rode that wave, right? I think being connected to, you know, being a Google certified educator and all these other um things in the 20 teens, in the early twenty ten s was,
00:05:46
Speaker
a good way to sort of get some sort of prestige and and training, frankly, in tools that at the time I think were novel and impactful um in the classroom.
00:05:57
Speaker
what What do you think prompted the the reversion for you? I mean, it's AI.
Student Experiences and AI in Education
00:06:04
Speaker
It's AI. It's the it's the the ease and accessibility of um artificial intelligence and the fact that students have gotten their hands and computers on it and have figured out a way to kind of bypass a lot of the thinking that, at the very least, I think in the spirit of our classes are set up to do.
00:06:29
Speaker
Okay, well, let's get into it, shall we? Okay, yeah. Because in in that intro, I tried to provide listeners some context for the New york Magazine piece about AI. And I'll put a link to it in the show notes in case anybody hasn't seen it or read it yet. But what was your initial reaction upon reading that? And has it changed at all in the weeks that passed? Or have ah do you have any other additional thoughts now that we've had some time to reflect on?
00:06:54
Speaker
So I think it was probably this time last year, I sat for an interview with Edutopia and i i i don't know if you remember that, but it was a huge deal because it was, I posted a fraction of my syllabus that said, if you use ai you will get a zero, no questions asked.
00:07:16
Speaker
i the The spirit of it was, I'm here to help you get better at writing and thinking And if I'm not reading your writing and thinking that I can't do my job and you definitely haven't done yours.
00:07:28
Speaker
So AI will receive a zero. I was flooded for so long with commentary and questions and um a desire for follow-up. What did that look like in my classroom? And so this entire year for me has kind of been me throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks in regard to actually getting my students to engage with um their writing and their reading in an authentic way. And so this year has been kind of been like my pilot program for what it looks like to attempt to ban AI in my classroom. And so when this
00:08:03
Speaker
article came out, it was at the end of this year where I have worked and struggled and, you know, fought the AI battle valiantly, I think. And it was, when I first read it, I thought it was kind of funny and, and flippant. I didn't understand why someone would write an article like this and publish an article like this.
00:08:23
Speaker
um But the more that I think about the, the political landscape that we're living in and the people who are um given power in our country, specifically right now, the more it makes sense that this kind of, um think his name is Roy, this dark horse figure would emerge from academia having never written an essay and never thought or never engaged critically with the assignment.
00:08:49
Speaker
And that would be applauded in some spaces. And when my students read it, they were like, that guy just told on all of us. Like I just told on all of us.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yeah. And they were they were mad. But they there wasn't very little. There was not the I had like kind of a moral opposition and they were just like, I can't believe that guy's a snitch. So that was really interesting.
00:09:12
Speaker
That is so fascinating. You were saying before we hit record that you had students annotate that New York magazine article. What? I did. What was their reaction upon reading it? Did their faces turn red when they realized that the student was snitching on them? Did they find this was an an accurate portrayal of of their landscape?
Preserving Student Voice in the Age of AI
00:09:33
Speaker
Did they say that the work in your course was different because of the you know policies and conversations that you have had and and put in place?
00:09:43
Speaker
So just to answer that last question, they did say the work in my class is different um and not because of anything I've done, except I know them. I know them so well. And so the basis of my anti ah My anti-AI policy is the fact that they write all the time in front of me and they I'm their thought partner for so many of the assignments that we do.
00:10:07
Speaker
And so anytime someone attempts to like turn in something that is not their voice, it is immediate to me. Like I can pull up five or six things and I'm like, this is what you wrote in January.
00:10:19
Speaker
This is what you wrote two days ago. Why does this sound so different? And so we have gotten to a place where they're like, I used AI or I wanted to use AI so badly because I didn't understand, but I didn't and now it's a mess.
00:10:31
Speaker
And so there's a level of like honesty that's come. um And again, the fact that I know them and I have tiny classes. But When they were reading this article, I think something that happened is that they admitted that this this this young man talks a lot about ah a bunch of different things, but he didn't talk about like the desperation and the shame.
00:10:53
Speaker
I don't think that any of my students were at the point where they were like, yeah, I'm just using AI because why not? And I'm only here to meet my my partner and a wife and a future like person to start a business with. None of my students were were there.
00:11:09
Speaker
None of them mentioned the desperation and the shame. So many of my students are using ai not because they don't think that they can do it, but because they don't have time and they don't have energy and they've often expended all of their mental resources.
00:11:25
Speaker
And so something that I learned, this came out a couple weeks ago, right after their final was due for our college course. And they, I think they were all frustrated with, with Roy because they were like, that's not what we're doing.
00:11:40
Speaker
We're doing this because we literally feel like we're out of options. And so that taught me a lot about scheduling and um the way that like my, assignments are like stacked on top of these other things. So i'm I'm thinking about like how to reimagine that. But my students were definitely a lot more vulnerable, I think, and ah they didn't think it was as heroic or cool. um They definitely admitted to this being true, but the spirit of it and the reason for it was very, very different for them.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, there was like a student shaming element of that piece that really rubbed me the wrong way because they seem to have found the villain that they needed for the narrative in in the one student that they got those quotes from who, you know, was sort of deceptive, manipulative, knew exactly what they were doing to game the system and then They project and elaborate that upon the entire student population to say, because of kids like this who are cheating and gaming the system, ignoring right what you're saying here, the fact that education, high school, college, whatever, has become incredibly high stakes,
00:12:50
Speaker
become incredibly stressful. Kids are burdened with more and more school and more outside of school um work, extracurriculars, work um obligations to family than i think they have before. So,
00:13:06
Speaker
Kids kind of see that as um a lifeline, you know, to say, hey, oh, ah instead of falling behind in my schoolwork to meet these other responsibilities that I have, I can let AI take that burden off me for a moment just so I can get by in that aspect of my life. You know, there was no sense of empathy towards why students would look to these two tools in the first place. And it seems like that's what you found when you were actually having honest discussions with your high schoolers.
00:13:34
Speaker
Yeah, there's another um person that the article writes about, Wendy, and they paint her as someone who is like so silly. She doesn't even realize like how ironic it is that she's using AI for this like paper about like thinking.
00:13:52
Speaker
And that felt really icky too, because... you know, watch you these are kids, right? These are kids. And for the most part, their prefrontal cortexes aren't developed. But my students thought that was really kind of gross too, because they are like, we know that AI doesn't sound like us. And we know that, um,
00:14:17
Speaker
we are doing this out of desperation, but we're not like doing it. We're not, I mean, they said we're not stupid. And this article kind of paints kids as these like passive consumers of what they're putting on the page.
00:14:30
Speaker
And at least for my students, they're they're not, again, unless it's desperation, they don't just sit and decide, okay, I'm going to use AI and I'm going to like throw it in there and see what happens. It really is a decision that they're making because like you said, they feel like they're out of options.
00:14:48
Speaker
And so there was no, this article was mean-spirited
00:14:54
Speaker
I think that because we're educators, right, in the core of who we are, we kind of got the, they're they're attempting to do this thing where they're like painting these students as the problem, when in reality, we've got, yes, education as a business model.
00:15:08
Speaker
And those of us who are reading this who are not teachers are like, oh my gosh, these kids are gaming the system. yeah. there're It's kind of valorized. i don't know. There's nothing. It doesn't jive with the reality that I think that most people are in.
00:15:22
Speaker
I think that both of the people in this article, that both of the students are very privileged. And I know that for my students, we've had to talk a lot about their voices, right? What does your voice even sound like? What's your contribution? What's your offering?
00:15:35
Speaker
Something as a teacher that's so important to me, most of my students are black and brown and from um spaces that are historically impoverished and marginalized. And so when they first come in to me, it's something that myself and my team, we value a lot is, what is your voice? What do you have to say?
00:15:54
Speaker
And so with the students that I had this year, I've had them for at least two years now. And so... Yeah, when they do use AI for me, it's like, this isn't your voice.
AI and Student Identity
00:16:06
Speaker
This isn't what you sound like. This isn't your idea. And that is not a moment of shame, but just a moment of disappointment because I'd like to think that I have cultivated a space where like I value their voice.
00:16:19
Speaker
And that's a lot of the feedback that I get, but it's also one class you know with one teacher cannot undo years of... systematic you know undervaluing of those voices.
00:16:33
Speaker
I think as class sizes bloom, they you know classes are bursting at the seams, kids fall through the cracks, they don't have relationships, perhaps, with other courses and educators who can have that relationship and feel like they can call them out on voice. What about a science lab, you know where it's not about stories and you know your tone and your use of language, but solving a science problem or math problems? right? I can pull up the math problem solver app on my phone, point it at my paper and just have it do the math for me, you know.
00:17:10
Speaker
But I went back and pulled the article up and I'm seeing here that Roy is a freshman student. Wendy is a freshman student. And I think about the adults and the systems here who should be building systems differently, building relationships, providing alternative models.
Societal Impacts and Ethical Concerns of AI
00:17:28
Speaker
And so to say, no, it's the fault of these 17 and 18 year olds who are new to this campus experience and environment. Oh, they're the problem um because they're using these tools that, you know,
00:17:43
Speaker
Society is not only encouraging, the institutions of higher ed you know, are adopting as labor-saving devices. And as you you had mentioned, too, as one of the reasons why you refuse to have student participation um in in AI tools,
00:18:00
Speaker
how entrenched they are with our current political moment where we're seeing, you know, democratic backsliding very quickly arise as sort of a technological um authoritarian movement. And so to to distance, you know, students from that too, I think is a huge adult responsibility. Anyway, the article just seems to completely absolve the adults who build these systems, who build AI tools and the companies that are pushing them in every single situation human experience. So have you gotten pushback either from students, from colleagues or from school for, you know, essentially putting up a shield, right? Or I don't know, do people think you live in a bubble or putting your head in the sand because you're not having kids use these tools?
00:18:45
Speaker
Nobody who works in my building, like the people who work in my building, the people I work with are very, we are aligned in that regard. But and outside of my building in these spaces that we share, you and I, um it is it is a lot of pushback. You're burying your head in the sand.
00:19:02
Speaker
You're not setting your students up for the real world. um When my Edutopia article was published last year, I got a lot of pushback from other black and brown educators.
00:19:14
Speaker
telling me that as a black woman, I wasn't doing my due diligence to students of color because I am attempting to shield them from, you know, the the ways in which AI is going to make them better workers.
00:19:27
Speaker
And to that, I say, pshaw. No, I'm joking. But really, i't I think that's dumb. I i can't imagine a world in which we need to make black and brown students closer to workers in a capitalist society. And that would be my job. I just can't.
00:19:46
Speaker
That's not why I do this. And so that that took some time to unravel because I was like, am I doing the thing where I am telling students not to use a calculator? Am i that teacher? And the reality is no, because my job is to help students think and articulate. And even when we use things like Grammarly,
00:20:07
Speaker
that is changed and altered. And when you're changing and altering things before you even know how you got there and what you're doing and what makes sense, then you are changing the chemistry of what goes on the paper.
00:20:20
Speaker
And then you're changing the way that your brain processes information. And so i don't know, I feel like it's kind of my my, it's like my sacred duty to help my students get that. Yeah, these tools are out there, but like being able to think without them is going to be the skill.
00:20:37
Speaker
It is going to be the thing that companies look for. And I also take issue, I'm sorry to all of my friends who are listening to this, with teachers who are like bringing AI in the classroom or bringing AI in the classroom.
00:20:50
Speaker
Every other professional development that I am at is about using AI and leveraging AI. And and i I don't know. I feel like what i maybe I'm like, um you know, the parents in Dirty Dancing who are like, don't do it No, we can't do it. feel like I'm almost like, no we're not going to do this.
00:21:09
Speaker
But i feel like it's so... important for students to have the skills that they need before we start to change their ability to get those skills, right? If I am, if a student doesn't understand how to brainstorm, putting them on a machine that that simulates thinking does not make them better brainstormers and it changes whatever ideas that they've had and it formulates it into this like pattern of thinking this algorithm that is developed by someone it's almost like translation right it is subject to what machine you put it in and what what words that machine is utilizing and i don't know i just feel like it's such a dangerous game
00:21:56
Speaker
And I feel like in 10 years, we're going to see the types of students, the demographics of students who are heavily reliant upon AI are going to tell us something about that we already know, right?
Maintaining Engagement and Authenticity in Teaching
00:22:08
Speaker
and This is just speculation. That's going to tell us something important about what we meant when we said students needed AI.
00:22:15
Speaker
You had said that, you know, it changes the chemistry. It changes the the audience, ah changes the way that you're going to write and express. If I know as a student, I'm writing for the audience of the RoboGrader.
00:22:28
Speaker
Well, right. What does that mean as far as my voice and my expression? What kind of feedback and relationship am I building with the computer? If I know it's just going to go into Grammarly or ah Canva AI or Blackboard ai But if I know I'm writing for the audience of Mrs. Bond.
00:22:44
Speaker
right I know she's going to care and give me feedback or I'm writing for ah my peers or I'm writing for this kind of audience, right then you know i can not only take ownership, but like responsibility for the things that I'm going to say and how I'm going to say it, how I'm going to commune and communicate with those people.
00:23:03
Speaker
Pairing that with how you've, you said you've gotten the blue books back out that you did. I never used those in college, you know, was kind of the, on the cusp of having the laptops open the whole period. But um how have ah How has your classroom practice then changed from the Google Classroom certified tech guru of your past self and an earlier version of your career to the one that now is slowing down, maybe being, you know, less efficient, right, in rebellion against these tools that
00:23:40
Speaker
um prioritize efficiency and speed and accuracy what is how has that changed your day-to-day and your relationship with kids i have to be so much more present in my classroom now and that's not to say i wasn't before but it is easy to open up someone's google doc and be like oh you're doing great and oh you're doing greater here this is what you're doing on the jam board um But now I have to walk around. i have to sit with students. I have to read what they're writing.
00:24:11
Speaker
I have to parse through these like weird, difficult sentences. have to read their handwriting, which is like a whole other skill. I didn't even know that I needed to develop as I was going into the classroom 10 years ago. But I have to be there and be in the moment with them.
00:24:29
Speaker
And something that I started doing this year that i i haven't done in a really long time is that every single thing my students write, I write with them. Every single thing. I have my own journals. i have I have a set of pens that I use when it's drafting time.
00:24:44
Speaker
Everything, even if it's an outline, I draw my own outlines. I model everything. So this year, everything that happened in my classroom, I was building as it went. And something that I learned is that there are there were assignments that I was like, this sucks.
00:25:00
Speaker
We're not doing they weren't This was great when you were typing in a Google document. This was great when you guys were, um you know, doing different things in regard to like hyperlinking.
00:25:12
Speaker
This was great when when it was an analysis activity that I expected you to do digitally, but now it just doesn't work this way. And like, that's okay if the mission is voice and thought and critical thinking. like and that's And that was okay. But there were times mid- writing something, I would just like tear the page out of my journal. I'm like, we're skipping this. We're not doing this.
00:25:36
Speaker
The biggest, biggest, biggest change that took place in my classroom is that I think that we, as a as a society and as a as a profession, especially following the COVID outbreak,
00:25:54
Speaker
were very much into talking about SEL, social emotional learning. And I think that as we came out of those initial years, right, so many of us, myself included, were rushing back to rigor.
00:26:09
Speaker
rigor. I have to, you know what, i I have to stop talking about your feelings. This isn't just vibes. It's about rigor. And I definitely said that like two years ago, I was like, this class is not vibes. It's so vibes. I like, I, I am vibes. It sounds like vibes. chenna Yeah, it is. It's a lot of vibes. It's a, it's a crap ton of vibes and it's so funny, but I was like, you know what, we're going back to rigor. We're doing the things.
00:26:31
Speaker
And this year I had to, I had to go back to some vibes and And what I realized is that there's there's not a difference. Like those two are intertwined, especially for me, right?
00:26:43
Speaker
So the first activity that we do in all of my classes is who are you? it's ah It's an identity map. It is a, you know, writing, it's it's grounding ourselves in who we are.
00:26:55
Speaker
And then again, talking about how are these parts of my identity intertwined in what I'm writing and and how I'm analyzing what I'm reading. And what I realized this year is that, yeah, it's not what I was doing before was never just vibes, right? It was, I couldn't articulate it and I hadn't thought it all the way through, but now that I've like seen it happen and I've seen my students do really, really hard, rigorous things and they leaned on parts of their identity and parts of their understandings of themselves,
00:27:28
Speaker
That made it so much easier to say, hey I know this isn't your writing. What happened? Or hey, this isn't your voice. Or even just asking, you know, why are these different?
00:27:40
Speaker
Where is Sally in this? Where are you? you Like something happened and you're lost in here. Where am I seeing you? And then that opened up conversations about the desperation and about the fear of doing it wrong or the misunderstandings from me, right?
00:27:59
Speaker
I thought you wanted this. And so this is what I wrote. What I realized, especially this is my first year teaching composition, is that When we were writing personal narratives, it was super easy to be like, no AI, we're writing everything down.
00:28:15
Speaker
But when we got to the academic, when we got to the, we're analyzing sources, then students were like, oh, well now it's AI. And I'm like, no, because like you are, yeah I need you to be a part of this conversation too.
00:28:28
Speaker
And so we had to take a huge step back and we made slides about different facets of our identity And every reflection piece after that was, where are you in this piece of writing? Where are you in this, in your analysis of this text? What about you shows up? Where can I point to your identity here?
00:28:48
Speaker
And that makes it so much harder for them to get away with using AI. But most importantly, that makes it so much harder for them to, you know, not be honest with themselves about what we're doing here and what the point of
Educational Goals and Student Engagement
00:29:06
Speaker
it is.
00:29:06
Speaker
And so I said that the biggest difference, but the biggest difference is that I had to explain to them why we were doing the things. Something that I think that high school as an as an As a college college instructor and someone who works with juniors and seniors in high school, I don't really have to do a lot of explaining of myself. I haven't in years past, right? there I'm just going to do what you want to do.
00:29:28
Speaker
But that leads itself to this like obedience pattern where it's like checking a box instead of doing thinking and something that I think that our colleagues in higher ed have.
00:29:39
Speaker
And in, um, even in in, the higher rungs of high school need to think about is like, why are you doing this? What is the intentionality behind it? I had to be so intentional and so explicit, right? I'm not doing this because I want you to like c chug and churn something.
00:29:55
Speaker
I'm doing this because I want to know what your thoughts are on their eyes are watching God and how you can support those thoughts with a primary or secondary source. I want to know what your thoughts are on Fahrenheit 451 and why you think it's a relevant text for us to teach in 2025.
00:30:13
Speaker
And when I make it that explicit, then they're like, okay, well, she wants to know my thoughts. She wants to know what think. Now i have to write it. i have to be an invested and engaged. And then I have to offer them class time in class to do it.
00:30:26
Speaker
You said so many of our students are are already living in the real world, right? They're already doing the thing where they're engaged in, you know, childcare and work and eight other classes or seven other classes.
00:30:43
Speaker
So if I want them to think deeply, i have to not only model it for myself right in class, but also have to give them time and look over what they're writing and and direct them in the moment. and a lot And that means like fewer assessments and a lot more time spent with them like doing the things in front of me and us building something together.
00:31:04
Speaker
There's so much to unpack from that, right? Like i think I think about Wendy and Roy as freshmen in the piece at university and to think they were in a system, you know, that valued rigor, where which in this context meant like more and more severity.
00:31:21
Speaker
Yeah, like to be at the highest echelons to get into Columbia University, right? You just need to do more, better, faster, whatever. And apparently that's what AI does really well.
00:31:33
Speaker
yeah Because that's what those students did. And then in college, they modeled those activities. What they didn't have, you know, was a model of an adult, an educator who can ah not just tell them what to do, but do that alongside them to not just be a model of academic content and processes and skills, but a model of a person.
00:31:54
Speaker
who isn't going to use these tools to. And a model of a student, right? A learner, somebody who is actively grasping concepts. I tell my students all the time, all of my student, all of my courses in college were literature based.
00:32:05
Speaker
I did not take a single composition class because like I got AP credit or whatever for that. And so the last year of my life has been me buried in these composition texts, taking notes, learning, and then doing it with them, doing it live. um And so, yeah, some like that a lot of the times I'm like, guys, I have not written an annotated bibliography in longer than I'm going to admit to any of you. but And when I did, I can't guarantee that it was good because I didn't know how to do it. And so now what I'm attempting to teach you is a framework so that you can figure it out or outlining.
00:32:41
Speaker
Outlining. I am a terrible outliner. I suck at it. I have ADHD. um For a long time, it was untreated. And so sitting down this year and being like, okay, I'm going to read this rubric. going to read this set of expectations and I'm going to outline it with you.
00:32:56
Speaker
And this is what my brain does. And this is how I would throw it up there. How would you guys throw it up there? And sometimes I would put it together and outline and it sucked. And my kids were like, this doesn't match this lady. You're doing something different. And I was like, correct.
00:33:09
Speaker
I'm Okay. Welcome to the process. yes Exactly. And so like modeling what it's like to learn how to do things. And what we learned is that for me, I'm a voice noter. As you can tell, I'm i'm i'm a yapper.
00:33:19
Speaker
I have a shirt that says professional yapper. And so all of my all of my outlines were done in voice notes. So I would just like... put it in voice notes, it would translate or it would give me a transcript and I would throw that into a doc.
00:33:31
Speaker
And so then I had this thing and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is this is it. I found my way. But we had a lot of iterations of that. And so they watched me suck it up and they watched me like write a paper and then go back to the outline and be like, these are very different things.
00:33:46
Speaker
Or they watched me like write a whole draft And then nothing about it was salvageable or interesting until the last paragraph. So I got rid of all of that. They watched me go through those processes and they were like, oh, this is actually just hard.
00:34:01
Speaker
And that was such a huge moment for them. They're like, oh, you have, you have two and a half degrees. You are, you know, applying to PhD programs. you're still not an expert at this. And it's like, no, because like, unless you write all the time every day, and unless you figure out processes that work for you, and sometimes they do change, right?
00:34:22
Speaker
Like if I'm writing a literary analysis, that looks very different than I'm writing a a personal narrative, which looks very different than if I'm writing, you know, something in science, but something that I told them to do is in every single thing that they're doing, they took a stats class.
00:34:35
Speaker
Some of them had economics. Where are you? Where are you fitting into this? If you're writing a lab, where was your, where's your interest in this? What do you think is going to be the most fascinating moment of this experiment?
00:34:46
Speaker
Where, where are you like extremely excited or extremely underwhelmed, right? That is the stuff that I think personalizes it.
Process-oriented Learning and Rigor
00:34:56
Speaker
What were your expectations, right? what were the How is your hypothesis different than and what came to fruition? I was like, those are you.
00:35:04
Speaker
Those moments are you because all of those things come from your brain and your experiences. And so, yeah, i i I totally took off on a tangent. Just to say that like my goal in my classroom is always to be the lead student,
00:35:18
Speaker
And that that is what has essentially changed, right? I'm no longer a constant facilitator. i am I am the thought partner. You want to use ai Talk to me.
00:35:30
Speaker
Let's talk through it. Let's figure it out. you know And I have had to step back and make sure that my My ah what I incorporate into that conversation doesn't do exactly what I think AI is doing.
00:35:42
Speaker
So I make them talk through it and they will go in circles for a while before I'm like, have you thought of because I, too, as educators, we we want to fix things just like AI.
00:35:55
Speaker
And so I've had to step back and be like, OK, let's think about it. Let's about it. What does that mean? Okay. And they hate it. They absolutely hate it. They're like, could you just give it the answer? No, I can't give you the answer. We're doing a thing. We're doing a thing. And that's my motto. We're doing a thing. We're doing a thing.
00:36:08
Speaker
And so, yeah, I just, my job has changed. And instead of attempting to get them to write the best paper or the best version of a paper, it's, or it's the process. And I say that as someone who used to, if I
00:36:26
Speaker
Is this a safe space? Can I say this? I'm going to say this. This is a safe space. Okay. This is not, you're going to judge me a little bit and that's okay. A little bit. If I, it's okay. I'm judging me too. um My first two years teaching, if I opened your document and I saw that it was not properly formatted or I saw like three errors within the first like 30 seconds, I would send it back.
00:36:44
Speaker
I would send it back. I was like, no, no, not doing it. You didn't, you didn't do it. Um, and there were a lot of tears and I thought I was being like cool and a hard ass. I'm so sorry. I made a curse on podcast.
00:36:55
Speaker
I thought I was being cool and like rigorous and those students got good at MLA formatting, but that doesn't mean that they were better thinkers. Um, Now i get papers that are less polished because we spent time on these beautiful, thoughtful, intriguing ideas.
00:37:16
Speaker
And so by the time students turn things into me, I would probably argue that they needed another round of revising or editing. But I know that everything in those papers is like theirs and it is thoughtful.
00:37:29
Speaker
And I've seen it from, you know, the the first moment where it was coming into fruition to this point. And so that's something too, my expectations have changed of myself and of them. it's almost like we have to step back and just reevaluate, like, what's the purpose of this entire project together, like' right? why why are we here? What is, what is the end goal of this course ah in a world where AI can write anything?
00:37:54
Speaker
Who cares? I want to care about what you can do, whether that's in a disciplinary English class, social studies, you know, whatever. um And maybe that does just involve a redefinition of rigor away from those previous ones in terms of severity and um more of something or like a more complex rubric or whatever that you can just plug into the chat bot. But maybe a redefinition of rigor in a more humanized context is really like about depth and breadth and connectivity, a responsibility to yourself and stewardship towards like a community. And maybe that sounds vibes based.
00:38:33
Speaker
But again, I think in a world where AI can do everything, well, that means we have an additional responsibility to do more human things, more better. ah and And if that involves, you know, slowing down in the classroom, perhaps covering less, doing fewer assessments, but they're more rigorous in a redefined human context, meaning it's authentic for students, it's You've modeled the process with them. They understand how to think and communicate by the end of it rather than have the AI do the thinking and communicating for them.
00:39:08
Speaker
That, to me, sounds like a more sustainable educational system and a more humanized vision for classroom rigor than the alternative, which is get into an Ivy League school, um having had ChatGPT do all of your work for you in high school, and now being here where the stakes are even higher and perhaps the financial costs are so much ah more burdensome and you're you're trapped, right? With no skills, with no aptitudes or habits having been developed.
00:39:40
Speaker
You've just checked the box. Congratulations. Where has that gotten you? The no skills thing scares me. The no skills thing scares me. I hear a lot of professionals, teachers and otherwise, journalists, um ah analysts saying, well, we're using AI. We have to teach them how to use AI.
00:39:56
Speaker
What I don't think people understand is that the people who are using AI in their fields have had whole careers without AI, right? If a student cannot do something without AI, they don't have that skill.
00:40:09
Speaker
And so what we're about to get is a bunch of people who are new to fields who never learned how to do the things. And that's very different than someone making a decision to utilize systems that can alter or change or shortcut, right? I think that there's a huge difference.
00:40:25
Speaker
As an educator, I have I tried the AI thing. I was like, we're going to write a paper. We're going to do it. And we're going to use AI. And this was before last year. it was kind of the impetus for my no AI policy.
00:40:39
Speaker
And what I found is that the students who didn't have the skills wrote crap. It was crap. It was terrible. And because what we're asking them to do is we're asking them to write about things and think about things that they didn't think about to begin with.
00:40:51
Speaker
right i want you to write and i I want you to write about an idea that you didn't even have. And that's what scares me, right, when we're looking at... um Wendy in this article, she's just like, i utilize AI to outline. And I'm like, I understand because I hear people who are awesome teachers talking about using AI to outline. And what I don't understand is what happens when Wendy doesn't have the skills to outline?
00:41:18
Speaker
What happens when she doesn't have, when she can't do that? Now, what have we left her with at an Ivy League institution? um And then what happens when AI becomes like a pay for play as it's becoming a situation where you can use the free version, but it's going to give you crap that you can't rely on, or you can pay for the, you know, expansive pack. That's going to give you something that it looks like right now.
00:41:42
Speaker
So again, i think that those, like, this is another form of giving our students who are the most marginalized and the most in need a bandaid and in place of skills and in place of You know, what we like, why are we here? And I have to sit with that often. Why am I here? Why am I doing this?
00:42:02
Speaker
And being able to articulate that, I think it's something that educators in the K through 12 space are really good at, but I don't necessarily know that a lot of our colleagues in higher ed are really good at, right?
00:42:13
Speaker
Because it's like, I don't want to start a beef. i't I just want to throw that. that's not the The point of this is not the higher ed versus K through 12. I just think that I know as somebody who's been in academic spaces, getting a bachelor's degree and then a master's and then another master's and then applying for PhD programs, ah all of them, there are a lot of professors who are like, you're doing this because it's what we do.
00:42:34
Speaker
You're doing this is because this is what people who get this degree do. And it's like, well, but like, but why? And i I asked my professor, one of my professors, who is a big deal in the space that I'm currently working in.
00:42:49
Speaker
I was like, can I have a rubric for this? Because like, what are you grading on? And he goes, we don't use rubrics in grad school.
00:42:59
Speaker
I was like, I have a master's degree. yeah That's not true. um Like I'm just, okay, whatever. And so I got like an 83 or something and it was vibes. It was just based on vi That's really vibe. He was just like, I was an 83 and I didn't get much feedback other than I had some weird sentence things.
00:43:18
Speaker
But like, it wasn't even, there was nothing in the the very brief explanation that was about like grammar or mechanics. And I did it in MLA instead of APA. And I got lost like 10 points for that. But like there was, he couldn't he couldn't explain to me why we were doing it. And so it was really interesting to me.
00:43:33
Speaker
And that was like a light bulb moment where I was like, I don't ever want to do that. I don't ever want to be that teacher. And I think that if we have to step back and be like, why are we doing this?
Humanity and Connection in Education
00:43:43
Speaker
It's not about AI proofing as much as it's about thinking about what do I want students to get in get to put in And what do I want students to get out?
00:43:53
Speaker
And then articulating that and bridging that gap, right? And the idea that rigor is more and harder and better and faster is so absurd because I read some of the most beautiful, beautifully articulated, beautifully formatted papers that I've ever read in 10 years.
00:44:16
Speaker
And we talked a lot about our feelings and about how we relate to characters. And they're it's not separate. And I think that your work um in like humanizing education and humanizing humans is so important because like that stuff's hard.
00:44:34
Speaker
when my students had to present their research to their peers and to the school board and to the principal, they had to stand in front of like a a tripod and be like, hey, this is what I did my research on. This is why it's important. And a question that they had to answer for everyone is how does this relate back to your community?
00:44:51
Speaker
That was the hardest thing they did all semester. And they all said that. Not the research where they could have like pumped it in or copied and pasted it in abstract. No, it was like relaying that information into a natural audience of people who would be impacted by the change that you want to see.
00:45:06
Speaker
That was hard. That was rigorous. And it was amazing. You can't fake that the chat bot can't tell you what the community connection is, no matter how much context you put into it. Right.
00:45:16
Speaker
All of the previous conversation has been so valuable just to unpack that landscape and explore that space together and, you know, kind of craft a humanizing vision. Right. It it always sounds so um cheesy, like so cliche to be like restoring humanity to education. But then like I always say to what what more higher purpose is there?
00:45:39
Speaker
You know, Is it about um credentials and jobs or whatever? Well, like clearly now in an AI environment, we know chatbots do those things better.
00:45:49
Speaker
But what are the things that humans right are are capable of creating together and how do we shift spaces towards that? I think the strength of what I'm hearing you say about how you had to be really responsive to students and ah and their needs in that context to respond, to build an alternative to the AI chatbot driven future.
00:46:13
Speaker
And I think in higher education, to your point, they're so stuck in this is the way that it is. they're not going to be responsive to students, which is what they need to do to beat the chatbot. But instead, they're going to, you know, name and shame and ah blame um students for, you know, being in in that environment.
00:46:35
Speaker
Anyway. I don't think that the the academy is a space for student responsiveness, right? I think that this is kind of like the whole purpose of what you're doing. and And I think that There are educators, especially if you go to any education um department at any university, they'll tell you, right? They know because they've been creating rubrics and they've been looking at their assessments and being like, is this what I want to do?
00:47:00
Speaker
I think that the lack of pedagogical expertise in institutions of higher ed is a huge problem because when you ask a professor for a rubric, if they don't know what they're looking for, they cannot give you one.
00:47:13
Speaker
If you ask a professor, why are we doing this? If they haven't thought critically about what purpose their assessments or assignments serve, then they can't give you one.
00:47:24
Speaker
But there also has to be some sort of overhaul of this like idea that I'm there to like pass on this like generational knowledge and I'm bestowing upon the people who are deserving and by deserving, I mean, they can afford it.
00:47:42
Speaker
There has to be this overhaul of what a higher education does. And I think that the the priority has to be not just on the students as products, but on the students as humans and also on the educators, right? How many of my history professors had sat through a lecture on best practices for, you know, delivering,
00:48:00
Speaker
Even their like even when they're they're they're giving us information, right? How how do brains learn? How do brains get information and retain information and then utilize that information? I don't think that any of those people knew that.
00:48:14
Speaker
And that's not their fault. But I definitely think it's the responsibility of the people who are doing it now for students who could just Google whatever they're saying to say, hey, this is why this is important.
00:48:28
Speaker
This is why this is this is assignment's important. This is how it relates back to the world that we're living in now. I think that we just have to be extremely explicit. um And I think that, again, K-12 teachers are good at that because students will absolutely ask questions.
00:48:41
Speaker
If I have to be here, you're going answer my questions, right? So many of my students are like, We're both here. We're both here for the next 45 minutes. So you got to figure You got figure something out, lady. I'm like, you're right. And I think that we have to be responsive because like students don't like students have to be there and we have to deal with it. But I think it's different when you don't feel an obligation in the same way to ensuring that your students understand the purpose of being there.
00:49:05
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's always been tension in the K-12 system as far as it relates to like the preparation for the next level, right? How is this preparing kids for college? How is this?
00:49:17
Speaker
But now I think that the real tension, maybe there's this AI divide, right? Where K-12 has a real opportunity to be a lot more responsive to students in this. And I think institutions of higher ed are embracing AI as a labor-saving device. And I think there's going to be a lot of tension then in kids making that making that transition.
00:49:38
Speaker
But that's removed from like the human element too, right? Because I think institutions, right? like Presidents and chancellors are like, yes, cool, we've got this way to save money. um But then you've got like actual professors who are like, no, i actually care about this.
00:49:52
Speaker
I really want them to learn things. I don't have the tools to teach them in a way that subverts these systems. And so, yeah, I think that there's a lot to be learned about like the people on the ground actually doing the work of educating and how much more we have in common than we have separate.
Critique of AI Integration in Education
00:50:08
Speaker
And maybe this is a good off ramp into solutions, be they like idealized magic wands or some of the things like you've been modeling in your classroom practice. So there's probably a lot we could apply this kind of thought experiment to.
00:50:22
Speaker
so I'm not saying this was the only thing that we would fix if we had a magic wand. But if you could wave a magic wand and change something about the relationship of AI to education, if you swooped in and tapped that, what would it be?
00:50:36
Speaker
It would be that we would just stop. We would just stop. we i am so blown away by how quickly our education systems have just a adapted this thing that we're supposed to put in front of kids.
00:50:57
Speaker
It's not tested It is not research based. It's not research backed. We are just like, ai here you go That blows my mind because I can't think of, i mean, I can think of a lot of things that we do this for, but it's just so mind blowing that so many people are like writing and publishing books before we even have any sort of concrete information about how this impacts the trajectory of our students' education.
00:51:24
Speaker
So like, I'm not saying that we stop AI. Like I, that's not, we're obviously not going to put the genie back in the bottle as people keep telling me. But I think that every single person who works with students needs to think critically about what we're doing and where we got the idea that this was best practice and where we got the idea that this was like a foregone conclusion. And like, where's that narrative coming from?
00:51:51
Speaker
Who's, who's selling us? Is it Microsoft? It's Microsoft. I know that for us, it's Microsoft. Microsoft is telling us that we all need co-pilot, right? But like, What are we doing? I'm not trying to make an enemy out of Microsoft either.
00:52:03
Speaker
um But what I'm saying is it's like. Everybody's going to be coming for you. Just pitchforks and torches at the end of this. should a I'm blown away. ah i'm I'm going to be blown away by the responses. But what I'm saying is it's like educators are some of the most stubborn people I know. Like I still can't get some of the people in my building to like.
00:52:22
Speaker
put toner into the copy machine, right? I'm still like, I'm still, yeah okay, I'm just fighting everybody. I'm still fighting that battle on some fronts. but there but So how is it that we have easily convinced so many people that AI is the way or the future without giving teachers proper training, without giving us proper research, without giving us any sort of like model for the guardrails?
00:52:47
Speaker
We've just like thrown ourselves into this thing um without any sort of like, hey, what's what are we doing? What's the end game? What's the end goal? Are we making ourselves obsolete?
00:52:59
Speaker
what are we doing here? And I think that, so I would just pause it. If I had a magic wand, I would say, stop. We're going to stop and we're going to start thinking about every assignment as every activity as what's the, what is my goal? What am I, what am I, what do i want?
00:53:13
Speaker
How can i relay this better? I think that everyone would just have time and energy to think about what we're already doing and what's ineffective and why, why do we need AI so badly, right? What is it that we are saving time for?
00:53:30
Speaker
And are we actually allocating that time to things that are more beneficial? I think that you have posed that question a couple times. Like, what are we doing? It's time saving for what? And then are we what are we saving all that time for? And where is that time going now that we have it?
00:53:46
Speaker
Like now that we have this miraculous amount of time, like what are we doing with it? Yeah, it's going to save all of the time that we have to then do the other things that we don't have the skills and time to do. I guess I just don't know what we're saving all this time for. um If there's anything to be slow and inefficient and iterative and messy, right? It's got to be learning. It's got to be education. I i want the other things to be efficient. You know, I want surgery to be efficient. and I want, you know, um I don't know, laundry, right? Where's AI to- where's ai for laundry one right i want all of my chores to be efficient. But man, the thinking and the reading. What's going on? Yeah. And the the discussion. And I want that to be the messy human stuff because I think that's fun and cool. and And I think that's kind of what we're here to do on this planet. Not to just bank all of our time for some, I don't know, unknown future that's that's not going to come.
00:54:42
Speaker
And when we think about like the people that we revere, even in like this... like super white colonialist project that is like American education, like the people who are the, the, the pinnacles of like our thought or institutions, those people were thinkers, they were writers, right. And we're reading their writing.
00:55:02
Speaker
And some of our students are, you know, putting their writing through AI and like, that's not the people that we revere and the things that we we say that we value. Those people were doing messy, hard,
00:55:14
Speaker
thinking. MLK was like writing all of the time and preaching and like talking and teaching. Like these people were the philosophers that we Aristotle, like they're all thinkers.
00:55:26
Speaker
And the fact that we're trying to subvert that with the people that we're supposed to be teaching makes me sad. Also, AI is bad for the environment. I just, I don't think we talk about that enough. And I just wanted to say, if no one else has said it to you, do do some research about AI and the environment. I told my boss the other day it was like you could have googled that and he's like but but ai and i'm like you know that you're just like you know you're just using like the the amount of water is like however many google searches i'm like he but because people and he's like i legit didn't know
00:55:59
Speaker
I didn't know. Which is wild to me. i think that was probably new information like in early 2024 or something, you know, when that was the impact was kind of coming up. But i i I felt like that's old news now. So it's it's interesting to encounter people in the wild who haven't necessarily had that critical thought about like, oh, technology is environmental impact. But No, and I think that that's very intentional.
00:56:23
Speaker
I think that you and I know, right, because we are researchers. We do a lot of reading. We do a lot of talking to people who think about this stuff. But people who don't, I think that that that path has been intentionally quieted.
00:56:34
Speaker
Because like if you know that you're doing something kind of harmful, then I think most people would be like, I'm at least going to pump the brakes. Yeah, no, it's the the whole ecosystem is designed to obfuscate those costs and to make them hidden. You know, there's a lot of hidden human labor, things that were pitched as being the latest and greatest in AI.
00:56:56
Speaker
Six months later, you find out, no, it was human labor the whole time that was, you know, watching cameras to make sure that people grab the right items from, you know, the checkerless grocery store or, you know, they were human beings controlling a robot behind the
Future of AI in Education and Student Empowerment
00:57:13
Speaker
scenes. It wasn't an AI operated thing. So, you know, not just environmental impact, but a real human impact to all these things as well. You've got people watching the cameras at your checkout stations at grocery stores, right?
00:57:24
Speaker
um Pressing those buttons. Like it's not just, you're right, it's human, it's humans. You don't have to think about the cost, you know, because it costs you nothing. But of course, we know that there's ah no no such thing as a free lunch in this sense. So there was an energy, there's a labor, there's something hidden on the on the system side.
00:57:42
Speaker
So your magic wand, ah to quote Rob Van Winkle, ah is stop, collaborate and listen. Exactly, exactly. That's exactly what you're saying. So I think in the absence then, barring ah magic wands and wishes, what can students, teachers, and schools do differently instead to help build a different future?
00:58:07
Speaker
I think that as educators, we need to be really honest ah with ourselves and with our students about what our intentions are, what our what our limitations are, right? I cannot assign 13 different writing pieces in a semester if I don't want to use some sort of like outside intervention to help me grade.
00:58:28
Speaker
i have to be very realistic and I have to be Yeah, have to be intentional. And I think that for students, right, I think that they need to be empowered to ask questions, right? They need to be something that my students do not lack is empowerment, right? They will ask questions about at anything.
00:58:46
Speaker
Why? Why did you say this? Why did what for what? No, no, no, no. I have you voice recorded when you said this. you said and I'm like, OK, fine. So I have to explain myself so often. um But I created a space to do that. And so we need to create a space where student voice and student ideas and the messiness, those things are valued. And I think that starts with like building level principles, right? Talking to your teachers.
00:59:10
Speaker
What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Because if it is in service of an an essay or a, you know, 54 question test, like the star test in Texas, where they are going to get a number of questions right or wrong, and they're their essay is going to be graded by AI and that determines whether or not they graduate high school.
00:59:30
Speaker
If that's the end game, then okay, maybe AI is what your students should be using, right? If that's the value that you're building, that your district, that your institutions have placed on education, then some of the students have got it right, right? They know, they've they they've they've decoded the game and they're doing exactly what we expect them to do.
00:59:52
Speaker
But if the value is on citizenry, if the value is on thought, if the value is on articulation and the ability to be in community with other people, then I think that building level administrators, district level administrators, educators, department chairs, everyone and students and then home adults, right? I think that that's a big part of it too.
01:00:15
Speaker
We need to come together and think about what we value as a community and how are those values showing up in our classroom. If we say that we value student voice, then like outsourcing student voices to a machine is nonsensical.
01:00:28
Speaker
If we say that we value community voice, then like not getting community voice and instead like generating something about what we think the community represents, nonsensical. We need to start like practicing what most of our mission and vision statements say that we we preach. Amen.
01:00:46
Speaker
Every word is golden, Shanae. My goodness, Shanae, this was an excellent conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today. thank you for having me. thank you for Thank you for being the first person to take me up on my offer. I got like four other people who were like, can you come on a pod? And I was like, sorry, I'm busy. I'm booked now.
01:01:02
Speaker
so I'm sorry. I'm in the green room with the human respiration project. Yeah, we're doing a whole thing. It's fine. No, but I was definitely like, I want to i i want to talk to someone whose work I admire on you know social media, but also like in the real world, like the work of like talking about and really getting to the the nitty gritty about the human component.
01:01:26
Speaker
Because without even thinking about it, I think that that's what my work has been the last year, especially, right? How do we make this more human? How do we make this more humane? And I think that that's so important in a time when the dehumanization of people is so systemic and so in our faces.
01:01:47
Speaker
It is so important to Talk about like the human, the humanness and the ways in which our students are the humans who are most impacted, but also like most likely to be able to make a change and to make a difference.
01:02:04
Speaker
And even if it's on this like tiny scale where you're just talking to one person. about your semester long research, right? That's a moment where you have had the opportunity to use your education to change someone's mind or to sway someone.
01:02:18
Speaker
And those moments cannot be, you know, thrown into a machine. And i will also say this, I guess the one thing that I didn't get to say is that teaching since November the 5th has been hard.
01:02:32
Speaker
It has been so hard because I am, As you know, I'm sure you can tell, like I'm a pretty hopeful and optimistic person, but it is hard to convince students who are from multiple marginalized identities and communities that like this is a worthy process and this is a worthy project, right?
01:02:54
Speaker
Why do I need to think if like the bad guys are going to win? Why do I need to think if my neighbors are like voting against my best interest? Why would I want to give back to a community where the majority of people have voted to keep my family in this position of precarity.
01:03:10
Speaker
You know, I have had to think through all of those questions that were asked to me directly or indirectly so often, right? Who cares? Who cares if I chat GPT my way through this? Because like,
01:03:21
Speaker
I just need a job so that I can protect my family or I just need to get some sort of economic or social security so that, you know, if we if my little brother has to go to the hospital, you know, I don't have to like my my mom doesn't have to like not be able to be there to sit with him.
01:03:38
Speaker
These are real life questions. And for a long time, I was like, I don't know. I don't know what the purpose is. I know that this all sucks. And I know that, yeah, I don't know what your duty and responsibility is to a community that you feel has betrayed you.
01:03:53
Speaker
I don't know. But I do know that your ideas cannot be different than anyone else's. And going back to Audre Lorde, the dreams that we feed our children cannot be different if our dreams are stagnated and if our realities are altered by an algorithm.
01:04:13
Speaker
And so I just think it's important that we as educators and as humans, like remember that what we our are our writing and into our thoughts, those things take root somewhere, right? And if we don't have any thoughts or we don't have any ideas, then that's taking root too.
01:04:34
Speaker
And we're still being fed things, right? We're still on TikTok and Twitter and all these other, never X, always Twitter. We're still on these places, um getting information, consuming things, right?
01:04:46
Speaker
But it's like how and why and then what do we do with that? That is like the point of education now, I think. There is. Is that all? That's all. there There is this sense.
01:04:59
Speaker
And this existed before, obviously, right? But now when the dehumanization is almost totalizing, right? The dehumanizing message is coming from every single sector of public and private life, you know, where, again, precarity um is in the hands of, ah you know, your job might be in the hands of one person.
01:05:20
Speaker
The future of medical research might be in the hands of a single person. The country is definitely moving in a particular direction right now. And I think there is a lot of power and sort of ah intentional humanizing resistance to that, you know, that says resist we're not going to go good we're not going to participate in these systems anymore because we're going to build power.
01:05:44
Speaker
a more humanizing social system, right? Community focused social system.
Conclusion and Call to Action
01:05:49
Speaker
We're gonna build a humanized education. We're gonna build you know a humanized political system. Just like what what is the vision of all of that, right? How how can we actually provide a vision um that's counter to those totalizing dehumanized narratives if we don't offer better off ramps that value people within these systems?
01:06:11
Speaker
Anyway, I appreciate your words about that. And I think it just has the last 10 months have highlighted just the salience and the importance of, you know, what does it mean to restore humanity to education? We're all participating in that project together, whether we like it or not.
01:06:28
Speaker
Thank you so much, Sinead. Thank you.
01:06:33
Speaker
Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player.
01:06:44
Speaker
Plus, find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free at our website, humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.