It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
—Albert Einstein
With Humanity
The early 1900’s, before the Roaring Twenties set in, is known as the Progressive Era. It was when Einstein was sharing his groundbreaking work about the theory of relativity and other fantastic science things.
When I stumbled upon this week’s epigraph, it gave me pause.
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
—Albert Einstein
Part of me wants to end the lead essay right here. Maybe I could just write “Boom.” Or “Mic drop.” The other part of me knows that if I push through the discomfort, there’s still an idea for me to tug and figure out.
The fancy “education” term for this is productive struggle. Last week, I wrote one of my favorite lead essays — “Four Things I Didn’t Use AI for This Week.” I realized later that in deciding not to use AI For those four things, it was the productive struggle I was protecting.
I was listening to a recent episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, in which he was talking about avoiding the use of generative AI as a writer. Although it can be a tempting shortcut, he explained that the cognitive work of creating a draft is something he doesn’t want to make easy. He went on to compare it to the way we used to have phone numbers memorized. If you talk to anyone who lived childhood before the millennium, they’ll recall with sweet nostalgia the way they had a whole load of phone numbers stored in their memory banks. Many can still recall their BFF’s number, even decades later.
Does anyone memorize phone numbers today? The last four digits of my own number end with a spelling of RUTH. Yet there are Gen-Zers who are clueless about digits being associated with letters…so telling them that isn’t helpful to them. My own Gen-Z kids, though, always know my phone number, and I guess that’s what matters most.
I’m not sure if over the course of more than a century Einstein’s words are true, but I know they resonate with me. The word humanity can refer to several things —a collective group of human beings; being human; or compassionate and generous behavior (i.e. being humane).
It is my intent to never let technology exceed my own humanity—to remain compassionate and thoughtful to others. The articles this week are beautiful in this regard. Our contributors are sharing their in-process work with generative AI in their classrooms and in their work as coaches, teachers, and pre-service teachers. They are doing so with transparency and humanity—plus more, as always.
Shine on,
Ruth Ayres
Editor in chief
Inspired by a third-grade teacher, Suzy Kaback uses AI to generate an imaginary student to engage her teacher candidates as they mediate teaching and learning through a proxy. This is the first installment in a series about using AI with teacher candidates.
In a Newsweek article, Theo Burman helps us understand the cost of being polite to ChatGPT.
Larry Ferlazzo shares free and useful AI tools for teachers.
Consider attending the NCTE-NCTM Joint Conference in Chicago on June 16—18. I’ll be presenting with other Choice Literacy/Numeracy contributors: Jodie Bailey, Becca Burk, Mallory Messenger, and Mandy Robek. We’d love to connect with you!
New members-only content is added each week to the Choice Literacy website. If you’re not yet a member, click here to explore membership options.
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills explore using AI to help with grading student writing. In this practical and insightful article, they share a process for using AI as a co-teacher and their reflection on whether it helped them save time (nope) and made their feedback more useful (yep). They share a downloadable student literary essay reflection sheet that you might want to use in your classroom, too.
Julie Johnson encourages minilessons about sound and image to give students more ways to create meaningful texts.
Gretchen Schroeder considers the positive ways AI will influence her high school English classroom.
New members-only content is added each week to the Choice Literacy website. If you’re not yet a member, click here to explore membership options.
Suzy Kaback offers a thoughtful review of using AI for giving feedback on student writing and a reflection for making it a wise and practical use of technology. Suzy offers a list of articles to help each of us develop our own understanding and stance on using AI for feedback on student writing.
Matt Renwick considers how technology can hinder building relationships or be used as a tool in fledgling classroom communities.
Dennis Magliozzi and Kristina Peterson outline the importance of productive struggle for writers and the ways to ethically use AI in the high school writing classroom.
Quote It:
Authenticity can’t be replicated or faked. You’re either real or you’re not.
—Bibi Bourelly
That’s all for this week!
