Deskwork
By ice rivers
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I'm an institutional guy.
I spent 55 consecutive years sitting at school desks or looking at others sit in those desks.
Many a desk contained a heart with initials.
Other desks said "Fuck you".
It was a continuous challenge to keep those desks clean.
I remember walking by the desk of one of my students who didn't like reading. He had taped his copy of "To Kill A Mockingbird" to his desk and was punching the book as I walked past.
We had a talk after school that day.
I learned that he liked to hunt. I listened to some of his stories. For the rest of the year, he listened to mine. He eventually became a taxidermist.
As a teacher, I was a great learner.
Everybody is an expert on those desks and what happens in and around them. We all sat in them and thus we are entitled to our opinons of them which entitles us to our opinion of education and of teachers and of high school hallways.
For almost all of us, our perceptions of the desks and the schools are currently pretty worn out and cropped up by our biases and wishful thinkings about the way things are as compared to "my day. when things were a lot different...when we walked five miles to school every day etc."
I learned during my tenure that if you missed ONE Day of school, you were behind what was happening within the school. Schools and educatiion change every minute of every day. Desks are about the only things that remain constant although we even got rid of them a few years ago in the midst of COVID. Hell, we even abandoned the brick amd mortar.
As an institutional guy, I became accustomed to a schedule and sticking to that schedule. I grew accustomed to rules and enforcing those rules. Order and discipline baby.
Over the years, I became a more skillful teacher in a more thoughtful environment. I reached my peak the year I quit my day job which was 2008. My last moments in the classrom were far less dramatic than might have been portrayed in a movie. I packed up my stuff and headed out the door. I did ask for one favor. I told my main office buddy Joanne to make an announcement. As I walked to my car, the last thing I heard was this...."Mr. Rivers has left the building".
One of the reasons that I left was because teaching was becoming no country for old men. I had the privilege and challenge long enough. My generation of teachers (known as Tier !) needed to step aside for younger blood. I was a the very top of my game.
Many of us went out as mentors. I have several official and unoffiicial proteges still in the business, still attempting to carry on even as national interference and norms have seemingly become obstacles to learning and teaching or so I'm told.
I don't know.
I'm not there.
I'm a retired English teacher now. I identify as a writer.
As such I have two dogs in the fight regarding education and composition.
It's obvious to me (as obvious as an Elephant in the room) that the suddent meteoric advent of AI into mass consumption including public education is and should be a matter of national/international concern.
I needed to hear and learn what was going on in the modern classroom.
I contacted one of my remaing unofficial proteges who is now amongst the senior members of the Dept. I asked him how the challenge of AI was being addressed. This is his response.
"We are working on adjusting to ChatGPT and the like. We are going to have to embrace it, I think.
I have already introduced some AI-assisted research search engines, like elicit.org, but haven't decided how to work around or work with AI-written papers. We are working with a generation that is struggling with some real apathy, and they love shortcuts and rallying against having to think. Many would love to have AI do the thinking for them (and some do; others can't even be bothered). "Can't be bothered" is the phrase of the year and it's sad. Sorry, I don't mean to bitch. Honestly, kids are still kids though a little less so as we enable certain behaviors.
Honestly, I have been reading some about how some teachers and professors are incorporating AI into the classroom, even to the point of forcing students to use (and then cite) it as a source. I have some colleagues who have been using it to create lesson plans, though most of the ones I have seen lack any originality (of which you were always the master).
I do worry about what AI will do to education and learning. Computers, especially those in phones, have already changed learning and brain structures ("wiring") - the way teens think, interpret, and interact.
It is a strange new world; let's hope I'm brave enough for it."
Yes it takes more bravery than ever to teach these days. Artificial Intelligence is just another factor that will have to be thrown into the mix with guns and bombs and cell phones and TikTok and somehow calibrated.
I'm still at a desk.
My desk is a lot safer and a lot newer than the desks that I used to occupy, yet the challenge remains the same.
Teach
Learn
Create
Pay Attention
Change
Connect.
I've still got time even as the illusion of permanence grows more ethereal each and every day.
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