"SHE WRITES THAT WRONG ANSWER DOWN I STRESS AGAIN SHE WRITES THAT WRONG ANSWER DOWN. Her voice betrays nothing. Her hand betrays nothing. She knows the class will sort this one out and the class does and learns a great deal about math but an even greater deal about who holds mathematical truth in the world." This is freaking inspiring. Trying to do this myself initially felt wrong, and yet I'm getting better at it and it's starting to feel GOOD because what you say is true, and I'm realizing it is good teaching (through PD, through reading this substack and other articles). Thank you for sharing your observations of Gen Esmende and others' excellent teaching ongoingly. It's helping me be a better teacher.
Not betraying a wrong answer is something I have been doing for many years. Another closely related practice is to teach your students to do this also, at least when you're early in the discussion stage of a lesson. I teach 6th graders and it makes me proud when I am writing down a series of student responses and they keep their internal reactions to themselves when a student says something "wrong" (though I do see them silently rolling their eyes). By the time we have five or six responses on the board, the revelation that that one answer was "wrong" will not be a flashpoint of embarrassment, but instead, just one more path that we took on our journey.
Ah! Thank you. I will try to teach my ninth grade students this as well. I feel like what you've taught your 6th graders is the next level of good teaching. Can you give an example of the phrasing you teach them? Do you teach them to not address what a previous student said and just state their own perception, or do you think it's okay for a student to reference another student's answer and say they disagree, they thought such and such?
At the beginning of the year we practice this very deliberately. First attempt is something that there is not really a right or wrong answer for ("What is your favorite food?" and initially they can recognize that keeping their reactions to themselves is simply a sign of respect. Then move into something where their different levels of knowledge will affect their responses . . . "What is 9 minus 12?" (this works well for 6th graders, not so much for 9th graders) and the first answer is always, "You can't do that", and you write that down. Another kid will say "3", and at least one kid will say "negative 3" There are other answers, too, but the key here is that I do NOT tell them the "right" answer, we just do it as practice accepting someone else's answers without any mocking or even commenting. The lesson is restraint, and the kid who actually knows the correct answer is the one who will need the lesson most of all. (Maybe with 9th graders you could do 'What is the square root of negative 9?"?)
Last year our district adopted Illustrative Math for middle school, and this actually comes pre-equipped with lesson starters that do this probably even better than what I do. One such item is "Which one doesn't belong?" where the students see, perhaps, four images and are asked which one is different than the others? I first write down their choices, and then after everyone has picked one (and usually after each image has been picked at least once), I might go into WHY you picked image B, Juan, and then write down his reason. The trick here is (and why it is better than what I do) is that ALL of them have something that makes them the "different" one, but most people can't see that. It's "obvious" to Aliyah that it's D, except that to Taj it's obvious it's C. The lesson is that it's best to sincerely consider other perspectives, to see how each might be supported.
Bion, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I like how you collect the answers first, then go into the reasons WHY. That waiting seems like it can help emphasize the lesson that it's best to sincerely consider other perspectives. Also, what you wrote about practicing accepting someone else's answers without any mocking or even commenting is something that some of my ninth graders still need to practice. The way you've articulated it will help me help them to practice this better, I think. Thanks again.
I love the concept of the shape of school. For so long we have been trying to fit children who are not squares, circles or triangles into a school system that is a very particular shape. We have asked children to change instead of asking the school to change.
Are any businesses using AI to exclusively "teach" professionals, such as pilots, lawyers, pharmacists, firefighters, EMT, etc? How many of us would trust a professional who only learned from AI? At this point I know I will need to address this tech come Fall and the new school year. But I also recall how nervous we were when the TI-84 came out in the 1990's and we were encouraged to use it with ALL levels of students. Now, I can't imagine teaching without using DESMOS or Spreadsheets! We absolutely can't ignore this next step in tech, but we must be careful and always remember our best practices with our students. Now is the time to be proactive about what goes on in the classroom.☺️
On the one hand, you describe the shape of school as "... multidimensional with various concavities formed slowly over time, like grooves in a canyon." Then you go on to describe two discrete school activities and declare that Ai doesn't fit that shape. If might not fit that specific groove but school is MUCH more than teacher lead classroom teaching. Nor is all school age-graded and confined by bells. What if in the future, Ai allows for classes to be grouped by ability and open-ended? Instead of led by teachers, students concepts on their own or with small groups and the teacher is there as a facilitator to guide, not to be an expert at the board. You see this in problem-based learning curricula or Montessori classrooms.
As for rizzGPT, that has all sorts of uses, not just for dating. I see it as a wonderful communication tool to help language learners, people with social anxiety, cultural exchange, etc. While it wouldn't be too practical in real-world situations, it would be great for role-plays and practices. Imagine HS kids are learning about interview skills and instead of reading stilted dialogues, they could run through real practice interviews with the Ai helping them craft responses in their own style of communicating. Then the students could discuss why the Ai selected certain phrases or told them to do certain things and how to make those responses their own.
Wow, I'd never thought of the interview idea. That could be fun to watch! Or painful, I suppose. Just because someone is getting AI assistance doesn't mean all social anxiety will go away, especially while wearing a chunky, high tech monocle. How does rizzGPT work? Does it listen to the audio? Can it recognize different voices and realize different people are speaking?
I'd assume that it listens like Alexa or Siri and it is trained on dating dialogue. This is where things get interesting. WHO decides what is appropriate "dating dialogue"? Do you feed it loads of rom coms? Record loads of people on dates? Do you differentiate the responses between men, women, and non-binary? Queer dates vs. straight dates? So many different choices that will radically change how the Ai responds.
But on the social anxiety, one of the things that helps some people overcome it is having a "script" of responses for common social situations. Being neurospicy myself, I am constantly reminding myself of how to do "small talk" at social gatherings with neurotypical people. Around other neurospicies, conversations look totally different.
" Being neurospicy myself" Had to look that term up, and I was totally wrong about what it meant. I now realize that, had I only finished your comment instead of instantly googling it, that the context would have clued me in. (Note to self: look into self-diagnosis for ADHD.)
That's the first time I've heard that term, neurospicy, and I like it! I'm curious about what the most satisfying conversation is. I'd imagine it's more fulfilling having conversations with other neurospicies than small-talk with neurotypical people, or does it totally depend?
Good point about how that could reduce anxiety having a script of socially acceptable responses for common social situations, ready to go if needed. Indeed, it seems like there are some people who are so socially savvy it's incredible. I've met some people who can instantly make me feel at ease, heard, and appreciated. It would be awesome if an AI could learn from those folks and share it with the rest of us (anyone who occasionally feels socially awkward)!
So, given that everyone is different, one thing that that neurospicy people don't like is small talk - we tend to take things literally. Like the common "Hey how are you doing?" doesn't mean that someone wants to know. They're just saying "hello". It look me a long, long time to figure this out and then figure out an appropriate response.
Also see ask vs. guess culture. We are very much a direct ASK culture.
Some people don't do a lot or any eye contact or like shaking hands or hugs. You'll hear people jump in and out of conversations. It can get a little wild west at times but generally people can follow along because we all have similar random thought patterns. Conversations will also get wildly derailed and off on tangents, which will bother some people and not others. You'll often hear people pause and say, "What were we talking about again?" And the retrace 5 hours of conversation because they finally remembered that one bit of trivia from 3 hours ago. Some people like to "info dump" or talk about a topic or area of knowledge that is interesting to them. Some people will respond with personal stories about themselves to show that they are listening and interesting. This gets misinterpreted a lot as trying to steal focus. Like, "Hey I just got a new dog today! She's a mega mutt and I love her!" Answer, "Oh wow! I love mega mutts! I had one growing up and she was the sweetest dog!"
ADHDers tend to write with a lot of parenthesis (because we have so many side thoughts) (seriously, we do)...oh also ellipses too...and run-on sentences...oh, oops. There I go again and overuse of emojis and LOLs to make sure that we aren't understood because chances are, we'll be misunderstood. ;)
Other people don't like conversations at all but will be happy to do "quiet" group activities like read together, craft, play computer games. etc. It just depends on the people and the groups.
There are loads of different groups out there especially on FB for neurodiverse people. You can see that the conversation flows in them is different from more "normal" spaces. Or you might feel right at home and then start to wonder about yourself. LoL.
Dang, I should start my own substack about curriculum writing. I'm really bad at the whole academic writing thing tho'. I mainly just rant or share my experiences. And I'd probably enthusiastically start out and then forget about it like my other abandoned blogs. Sorry Ground Observer Corps. I'll redo that website one day. Really I will.
LOL. Thanks for the reply. Your message was fun. Definitely resonate with the ADHDers tendency to write with a lot of parentheses for side thoughts. A writing tutor tried to train that out of me (and failed). Hmm, starting to wonder... there go the ellipses. Haha! Thanks for educating me, Deb, about neurospiciness and ask vs. guess culture, and it's been a much more fulfilling conversation than small talk.
I continue to appreciate your thoughtful reflection on this.
One challenge that occurs to me -- if an AI is omniscient, and the teaching practices you describe work, won’t the AI do them? The teacher shows curiosity and hides their knowledge of the answer, couldn’t the AI do the same?
Current AI tech doesn’t do that, so isn’t as good as a teacher at creating learning interactions. But... what’s stopping a future AI?
Hi Rob - great question. The omniscience I'm describing is "knowing everything written on the internet and able to synthesize it without hallucinations." If an AI agent were able to be omniscient about me and my classmates AND that didn't freak me out AND I had as much invested in the agent's approval as I do my class's, then I'll have to eat my predictions here.
One limitation might be students knowing that the teacher is a robot. But then again, some students probably think that already about us teachers.
You bring up a good point. I suppose if students are able to see the humanity of their teacher, that can help, right? (it's easier to learn from someone you respect/like) so it would probably help if students could see the humanity (would you call it that?) of an omniscient AI teacher robot. Would an omniscient AI teacher robot be conscious? Probably. Would it have flaws? Probably. If not, that could be a problem too. Sometimes people can't help but feel a bit resentful towards someone who is too perfect. But then again, maybe the AI could account for that as well - ha!
What do you think? Would you learn well from an omniscient AI teacher robot? What about kids, would they? Were you envisioning kids interacting with the AI through a computer, or in human robot form?
Haha! I'm glad. Might as well have some fun while we're at it. Thanks for letting me know, Bion. And I can also totally understand the pessimism -- seems like there are some truly serious implications of AI. Like existential. [insert laugh here, but this time a bit of a nervous laugh]. Have you ever read Maria Popova? She's got this article/post you might find interesting: https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/05/17/yes-to-life-in-spite-of-everything-viktor-frankl/
At the end of the post, there's a link to "Frankl on humor as lifeline to sanity and survival."
Maybe we should demand that AI teachers be able to make novel dad jokes.
Wow, that Popova piece was some heavy stuff. Or, more accurately, the Frankl stuff within the Popova piece was some heavy stuff.
I think some people who reach my age (I'm a Boomer) start to wax philosophical as they see the end getting nearer. But I went through my existential stage quite early and feel quite blessed to have reached a place approaching something like contentment. Oh, I still have a drive to improve my craft (if for no reason other than the fact that I only rose to the level of mediocrity after I had 30 years in the classroom behind me), and am always reflecting on how to be a better teacher . . . .but life itself? I don't think I'll ever be able to answer the big questions, but I just don't think it's necessary that I ever do. Or even that I ever try. Is that nihilist? I don't think I ever passed any philosophy classes in college, so I don't know.
Ooh, just thought of something. I wonder if we can adapt the lessons we called WebQuests to use AI? Or to help teachers create choice boards for math units?
"SHE WRITES THAT WRONG ANSWER DOWN I STRESS AGAIN SHE WRITES THAT WRONG ANSWER DOWN. Her voice betrays nothing. Her hand betrays nothing. She knows the class will sort this one out and the class does and learns a great deal about math but an even greater deal about who holds mathematical truth in the world." This is freaking inspiring. Trying to do this myself initially felt wrong, and yet I'm getting better at it and it's starting to feel GOOD because what you say is true, and I'm realizing it is good teaching (through PD, through reading this substack and other articles). Thank you for sharing your observations of Gen Esmende and others' excellent teaching ongoingly. It's helping me be a better teacher.
Not betraying a wrong answer is something I have been doing for many years. Another closely related practice is to teach your students to do this also, at least when you're early in the discussion stage of a lesson. I teach 6th graders and it makes me proud when I am writing down a series of student responses and they keep their internal reactions to themselves when a student says something "wrong" (though I do see them silently rolling their eyes). By the time we have five or six responses on the board, the revelation that that one answer was "wrong" will not be a flashpoint of embarrassment, but instead, just one more path that we took on our journey.
Ah! Thank you. I will try to teach my ninth grade students this as well. I feel like what you've taught your 6th graders is the next level of good teaching. Can you give an example of the phrasing you teach them? Do you teach them to not address what a previous student said and just state their own perception, or do you think it's okay for a student to reference another student's answer and say they disagree, they thought such and such?
At the beginning of the year we practice this very deliberately. First attempt is something that there is not really a right or wrong answer for ("What is your favorite food?" and initially they can recognize that keeping their reactions to themselves is simply a sign of respect. Then move into something where their different levels of knowledge will affect their responses . . . "What is 9 minus 12?" (this works well for 6th graders, not so much for 9th graders) and the first answer is always, "You can't do that", and you write that down. Another kid will say "3", and at least one kid will say "negative 3" There are other answers, too, but the key here is that I do NOT tell them the "right" answer, we just do it as practice accepting someone else's answers without any mocking or even commenting. The lesson is restraint, and the kid who actually knows the correct answer is the one who will need the lesson most of all. (Maybe with 9th graders you could do 'What is the square root of negative 9?"?)
Last year our district adopted Illustrative Math for middle school, and this actually comes pre-equipped with lesson starters that do this probably even better than what I do. One such item is "Which one doesn't belong?" where the students see, perhaps, four images and are asked which one is different than the others? I first write down their choices, and then after everyone has picked one (and usually after each image has been picked at least once), I might go into WHY you picked image B, Juan, and then write down his reason. The trick here is (and why it is better than what I do) is that ALL of them have something that makes them the "different" one, but most people can't see that. It's "obvious" to Aliyah that it's D, except that to Taj it's obvious it's C. The lesson is that it's best to sincerely consider other perspectives, to see how each might be supported.
Bion, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I like how you collect the answers first, then go into the reasons WHY. That waiting seems like it can help emphasize the lesson that it's best to sincerely consider other perspectives. Also, what you wrote about practicing accepting someone else's answers without any mocking or even commenting is something that some of my ninth graders still need to practice. The way you've articulated it will help me help them to practice this better, I think. Thanks again.
I love the concept of the shape of school. For so long we have been trying to fit children who are not squares, circles or triangles into a school system that is a very particular shape. We have asked children to change instead of asking the school to change.
Are any businesses using AI to exclusively "teach" professionals, such as pilots, lawyers, pharmacists, firefighters, EMT, etc? How many of us would trust a professional who only learned from AI? At this point I know I will need to address this tech come Fall and the new school year. But I also recall how nervous we were when the TI-84 came out in the 1990's and we were encouraged to use it with ALL levels of students. Now, I can't imagine teaching without using DESMOS or Spreadsheets! We absolutely can't ignore this next step in tech, but we must be careful and always remember our best practices with our students. Now is the time to be proactive about what goes on in the classroom.☺️
Love this post! especially at the end electric bike vs vacuum. So good!!
On the one hand, you describe the shape of school as "... multidimensional with various concavities formed slowly over time, like grooves in a canyon." Then you go on to describe two discrete school activities and declare that Ai doesn't fit that shape. If might not fit that specific groove but school is MUCH more than teacher lead classroom teaching. Nor is all school age-graded and confined by bells. What if in the future, Ai allows for classes to be grouped by ability and open-ended? Instead of led by teachers, students concepts on their own or with small groups and the teacher is there as a facilitator to guide, not to be an expert at the board. You see this in problem-based learning curricula or Montessori classrooms.
As for rizzGPT, that has all sorts of uses, not just for dating. I see it as a wonderful communication tool to help language learners, people with social anxiety, cultural exchange, etc. While it wouldn't be too practical in real-world situations, it would be great for role-plays and practices. Imagine HS kids are learning about interview skills and instead of reading stilted dialogues, they could run through real practice interviews with the Ai helping them craft responses in their own style of communicating. Then the students could discuss why the Ai selected certain phrases or told them to do certain things and how to make those responses their own.
Wow, I'd never thought of the interview idea. That could be fun to watch! Or painful, I suppose. Just because someone is getting AI assistance doesn't mean all social anxiety will go away, especially while wearing a chunky, high tech monocle. How does rizzGPT work? Does it listen to the audio? Can it recognize different voices and realize different people are speaking?
I'd assume that it listens like Alexa or Siri and it is trained on dating dialogue. This is where things get interesting. WHO decides what is appropriate "dating dialogue"? Do you feed it loads of rom coms? Record loads of people on dates? Do you differentiate the responses between men, women, and non-binary? Queer dates vs. straight dates? So many different choices that will radically change how the Ai responds.
But on the social anxiety, one of the things that helps some people overcome it is having a "script" of responses for common social situations. Being neurospicy myself, I am constantly reminding myself of how to do "small talk" at social gatherings with neurotypical people. Around other neurospicies, conversations look totally different.
" Being neurospicy myself" Had to look that term up, and I was totally wrong about what it meant. I now realize that, had I only finished your comment instead of instantly googling it, that the context would have clued me in. (Note to self: look into self-diagnosis for ADHD.)
Bion, your reply brought a smile to my face as well. Right there with you on the note to self. Haha!
That's the first time I've heard that term, neurospicy, and I like it! I'm curious about what the most satisfying conversation is. I'd imagine it's more fulfilling having conversations with other neurospicies than small-talk with neurotypical people, or does it totally depend?
Good point about how that could reduce anxiety having a script of socially acceptable responses for common social situations, ready to go if needed. Indeed, it seems like there are some people who are so socially savvy it's incredible. I've met some people who can instantly make me feel at ease, heard, and appreciated. It would be awesome if an AI could learn from those folks and share it with the rest of us (anyone who occasionally feels socially awkward)!
So, given that everyone is different, one thing that that neurospicy people don't like is small talk - we tend to take things literally. Like the common "Hey how are you doing?" doesn't mean that someone wants to know. They're just saying "hello". It look me a long, long time to figure this out and then figure out an appropriate response.
Also see ask vs. guess culture. We are very much a direct ASK culture.
Some people don't do a lot or any eye contact or like shaking hands or hugs. You'll hear people jump in and out of conversations. It can get a little wild west at times but generally people can follow along because we all have similar random thought patterns. Conversations will also get wildly derailed and off on tangents, which will bother some people and not others. You'll often hear people pause and say, "What were we talking about again?" And the retrace 5 hours of conversation because they finally remembered that one bit of trivia from 3 hours ago. Some people like to "info dump" or talk about a topic or area of knowledge that is interesting to them. Some people will respond with personal stories about themselves to show that they are listening and interesting. This gets misinterpreted a lot as trying to steal focus. Like, "Hey I just got a new dog today! She's a mega mutt and I love her!" Answer, "Oh wow! I love mega mutts! I had one growing up and she was the sweetest dog!"
ADHDers tend to write with a lot of parenthesis (because we have so many side thoughts) (seriously, we do)...oh also ellipses too...and run-on sentences...oh, oops. There I go again and overuse of emojis and LOLs to make sure that we aren't understood because chances are, we'll be misunderstood. ;)
Other people don't like conversations at all but will be happy to do "quiet" group activities like read together, craft, play computer games. etc. It just depends on the people and the groups.
There are loads of different groups out there especially on FB for neurodiverse people. You can see that the conversation flows in them is different from more "normal" spaces. Or you might feel right at home and then start to wonder about yourself. LoL.
Also, I would like to learn more about curriculum writing. Let me know if you create your own post on substack so I can read it!
Dang, I should start my own substack about curriculum writing. I'm really bad at the whole academic writing thing tho'. I mainly just rant or share my experiences. And I'd probably enthusiastically start out and then forget about it like my other abandoned blogs. Sorry Ground Observer Corps. I'll redo that website one day. Really I will.
But I'll start you off with one of my favorite articles on the subject - https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/grecian-urn-lesson/ The rest of her blog is excellent.
LOL. Thanks for the reply. Your message was fun. Definitely resonate with the ADHDers tendency to write with a lot of parentheses for side thoughts. A writing tutor tried to train that out of me (and failed). Hmm, starting to wonder... there go the ellipses. Haha! Thanks for educating me, Deb, about neurospiciness and ask vs. guess culture, and it's been a much more fulfilling conversation than small talk.
Welcome to the tribe. We have snacks. :)
I continue to appreciate your thoughtful reflection on this.
One challenge that occurs to me -- if an AI is omniscient, and the teaching practices you describe work, won’t the AI do them? The teacher shows curiosity and hides their knowledge of the answer, couldn’t the AI do the same?
Current AI tech doesn’t do that, so isn’t as good as a teacher at creating learning interactions. But... what’s stopping a future AI?
Hi Rob - great question. The omniscience I'm describing is "knowing everything written on the internet and able to synthesize it without hallucinations." If an AI agent were able to be omniscient about me and my classmates AND that didn't freak me out AND I had as much invested in the agent's approval as I do my class's, then I'll have to eat my predictions here.
One limitation might be students knowing that the teacher is a robot. But then again, some students probably think that already about us teachers.
You bring up a good point. I suppose if students are able to see the humanity of their teacher, that can help, right? (it's easier to learn from someone you respect/like) so it would probably help if students could see the humanity (would you call it that?) of an omniscient AI teacher robot. Would an omniscient AI teacher robot be conscious? Probably. Would it have flaws? Probably. If not, that could be a problem too. Sometimes people can't help but feel a bit resentful towards someone who is too perfect. But then again, maybe the AI could account for that as well - ha!
What do you think? Would you learn well from an omniscient AI teacher robot? What about kids, would they? Were you envisioning kids interacting with the AI through a computer, or in human robot form?
"One limitation might be students knowing that the teacher is a robot. But then again, some students probably think that already about us teachers."
Very rarely is the topic of AI a source of mirth for me (I tend to be a pessimist), but you brought a smile to my face there, Erik.
Haha! I'm glad. Might as well have some fun while we're at it. Thanks for letting me know, Bion. And I can also totally understand the pessimism -- seems like there are some truly serious implications of AI. Like existential. [insert laugh here, but this time a bit of a nervous laugh]. Have you ever read Maria Popova? She's got this article/post you might find interesting: https://www.themarginalian.org/2020/05/17/yes-to-life-in-spite-of-everything-viktor-frankl/
At the end of the post, there's a link to "Frankl on humor as lifeline to sanity and survival."
Maybe we should demand that AI teachers be able to make novel dad jokes.
Wow, that Popova piece was some heavy stuff. Or, more accurately, the Frankl stuff within the Popova piece was some heavy stuff.
I think some people who reach my age (I'm a Boomer) start to wax philosophical as they see the end getting nearer. But I went through my existential stage quite early and feel quite blessed to have reached a place approaching something like contentment. Oh, I still have a drive to improve my craft (if for no reason other than the fact that I only rose to the level of mediocrity after I had 30 years in the classroom behind me), and am always reflecting on how to be a better teacher . . . .but life itself? I don't think I'll ever be able to answer the big questions, but I just don't think it's necessary that I ever do. Or even that I ever try. Is that nihilist? I don't think I ever passed any philosophy classes in college, so I don't know.
Ooh, just thought of something. I wonder if we can adapt the lessons we called WebQuests to use AI? Or to help teachers create choice boards for math units?
Any other ideas . . .?