I didn’t sleep much last night. I like to think I have a semi-routine. I try to stay up to a certain time of night and then settle into the routine of curling up with the love of my life. I started it way earlier than usual and my mind responded poorly. By 2 AM I was up. It is 4 now and I am not only awake but at the computer typing out these words before I get to work on planning a semester of learning for perhaps a handful of kids who care among scores who really don’t.
Early mornings bring out my inner cynic. Still, I am looking forward to getting back into the classroom and discovering what that space is going to be like over the next few months. I can say that I am especially looking forward to teaching novel writing again. It is one of my true joys.
Still the cynic lives on. He says, for example, what about the other classes? What about ChatGPT? The other day I queried the AI to create an assignment that it would find difficult to complete. The response was… interesting. It also allowed me to start refining ideas for what a classroom space could look like for a modern composition class where apps of this nature are basically how students move through the system. We have, at this point, reached a level of computer aid where younger people don’t have basic understanding or skills and instead have new skills–the skills to interact with and manipulate the tools that do the (what I am forever referring to as) first level work and first level thinking. This frees them to do the second level and higher level thinking, which many of them do. However, the foundations are built upon and reliant upon tools they simply do not understand.
I learned how to build computers when I was in High School. Now everything is black box. Nobody knows what happens inside and if it breaks down, they just wait for it to get working again. Half my kids couldn’t put up a wireless network without a video to explain it to them. Of course, the videos exist they are available, so to them, they do not need to store the knowledge in their personal memory and understanding. It is readily available online.
So, that is the thinking I am dealing with in terms of being a teacher. That is what the cynic in me is trying to respond to.