We Need to Rethink AI in Education

I promise I’m not the stereotypical cranky, old teacher who doesn’t want to try new things. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. I was an early adopter! (Read through any of the first posts of this blog.) This isn’t just a case of me saying “no” before looking at all the options.

The fact is, I really and truly believe we need to rethink the use of AI in education. In fact, I’ve been trying to warn educators and parents for quite some time.

After talking with teachers, I know that many are worried about how to deal with students using AI to cheat. Those same teachers have to use AI to grade student work, because of an unrealistic workload. But cheating and grading with AI are two of the lowest level problems we have with AI.

My bigger concern is using AI to deliver instruction or tutoring to students, and that’s the main focus of this post.

When we use bots to stand in for DEEPLY HUMAN INTERACTIONS, we create problems for children. I am begging educators to push back on this!

Let’s take a step back and think about learning.

Learning is deeply personal and relational.

When you think about how a brain develops– how learning occurs for each individual– every single child is learning about the world, navigating their surroundings, acquiring new information– and building upon previous learning. A very simplified example: I cannot teach a student to write a complete sentence, if that child has not yet spoken complete sentences.

Students crowd around a rectangular table to view another student's project (student presenting has back to the camera)

Multi-age students gather around the table of one student’s presentation on the invention of paper. PHOTO (c) 2019 Michelle K. Baldwin All Rights Reserved

As educators, we know there are building blocks to each new skill and concept, and so many of those building blocks – how they are initially acquired, stored in short and long term memory, retrieved, etc. — can appear in a child’s life very differently than they do for another child. Because of these differences in experience, how we teach students new material must be personal and relational. The more context I can help them create, the better the student is able to create their own “container” for the new learning.

More importantly, the better I know my students, the more effective I can be in helping them to build their own context — observing them during a learning activity, checking for and monitoring understanding, and adjusting the learning activity in real time to meet the needs of every single child.

I have the ability as a teacher to do this at Anastasis, because it’s how we intentionally planned the school experience and culture… and we set up smaller class sizes, without which, I couldn’t possibly be this responsive to all students’ individual needs. But… the key concept here is intentionally planning an environment where we know our students well enough to help them to have deeply personal learning experiences. Students learn with and from each other, across age/grade levels even, and those experiences teach us so much more than simply “how to” or “what is.” Personalities shine through. Strengths and growth are regularly celebrated.

And yes… I know. Deeply personal learning experiences can be messy, time-consuming, and are anything but efficient. But…

LEARNING is just that… sometimes messy, often time-consuming, and absolutely anything but efficient.

So much of US education today is about systems and efficiency. (There’s an argument to be made that it’s the same issue in many parts of the world, but I do not have experience with enough international schools to write about that, so I won’t.) The daily school schedule is a system that we know doesn’t work well for every kid. In fact, we have loads of research on start times and how much more sleep teenagers need than younger children, yet there are still many, many high schools who start earlier than recommended. Why?

We have some research measuring the impact of homework for elementary students and 6-12 students — yet the system often ignores the research findings to continue using homework in ways that don’t support learning. Why?

Many schools continue using grades to rank and sort students, rather than provide feedback and narratives that explain what a student knows and is able to do. Some schools grade behavior with the same measurements intended to show academic growth, resulting in artificially inflated or deflated scores based on behavior. Why?

The answers to all those “Why” questions often have to do with the systems we have put in place.

I get it. There are millions of children in the US, and they are all currently* guaranteed a free and appropriate education. It takes huge systems to be able to educate that many students, and we’re always looking for the next best thing to be able to educate the masses in a way that is efficient, both with time and money. Resources are spread very thin, and yet we still manage to educate children in the United States. (I’ve written a lot about how the quality of that education varies greatly from school to school, state to state… but this post has another focus.)

 

In trying to live within the systems we have created to educate millions of children efficiently, we have often sacrificed what is best for kids.

We sacrifice what is best for kids- human children – for what is best for the systems. Again, we create schedules of 7 to 8 hour school days with compulsory attendance and very little leeway for kids who get sick, who do not have enough to eat, who may not have a stable home life… the list here goes on and on. And yet, in many education systems, we ignore the human parts of our children and treat them as if they are small containers we need to fill with as much information as we can in each school year.

Red plastic puzzle box with different shapes for young children to learn how to sort shapes and fit into specific shaped holes

Square Block, Round Hole – Photo by Michelle K. Baldwin CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

We have long known that the system doesn’t work for everyone. Too often, we insist that kids fit the system, instead of creating something that works for the kids.

 

Instead of changing the system, we keep trying to create new tools to make the current system even more efficient.

In doing so, we further remove the humanity from the equation, and present kids with ideas like AI tutors.

(For the purpose of this post, I’m going to suspend my urge to rant for multiple paragraphs about the ethics of AI tools- their overconsumption of vital natural resources, and how they scrape (read here: steal) copyrighted work from creators who make a living from their craft. AI tools depend upon creators who have NOT consented to their work being used to train any AI tool. Unless you’re training an AI tool on your own work, and only your own work, I will not agree that you can use any AI tool ethically. </end rant>)

I’m not going to call out any single company trying to sell AI tools to schools, because there are a lot of them, and I am not going after a specific company in this.

What I absolutely want to do is BEG educators to stop, take a breath, and think through the moral implications, as well as the potential of extreme harm, in using AI tutors with students. 

I’ve read advertising copy from several companies trying to sell AI tutors to schools, especially those with large class sizes, as a solution to helping meet each student’s individual needs. Some examples (paraphrased from several so as not to target any one specific company):

  • Do you feel like you need more of YOU to be able to get around to each of the students in your class to help them understand a lesson?
  • Are you struggling to help each one of your students to understand the directions for an assignment? 
  • Is it a hardship on you and the other students in your class when a student has been absent and you need to get them caught up?
  • Do you lack a teaching assistant who can help keep groups of students busy while you work with a small group?

Use our AI tutor for any of these situations! Our tutor will ask your student what they need and then deliver personalized instructions and explanations to get them back on track!

 

When I was a younger teacher struggling with too many classes, too many students, and not enough time in the day to make it all work, this would have seemed like a gift that could solve so many issues.

As a more experienced teacher, I see it for what it is. Maybe because I’ve seen snake oil salespeople come and go with the edtech tools that were supposed to make my life as a teacher easier… and learning better and more innovative (!) for students… it’s easy for me to see through the charade.

But an AI tutor is a poor substitute that tries to replace a necessary human interaction. It’s not personal. It’s not relational. You cannot get a true tutoring experience through a simulation.

Let’s break down the harms that come with an AI tutor.

1. Children – including teenagers- do not have the ability to FULLY comprehend abstract concepts.

Abstract thinking is developing in the brains of children through adolescence and even young adulthood. Lacking the ability to fully comprehend abstract ideas, kids can have difficulty discerning between a human interaction and one with a bot. They can verbalize, “I know it’s not real,” and yet we find some young children trying to have conversations with a puppet, for example, as if the puppet has the ability to respond independently of the puppeteer.  Older kids can verbalize that they know Siri or Alexa aren’t real people, but they might respond angrily or with frustration at the bot when they don’t get the response they’re looking for. It doesn’t make sense to be angry at software or hardware, but this is not an uncommon phenomenon.

Bots that “converse” or “teach” children are programmed to be simulations of human interactions. For a child without a fully developed prefrontal cortex, this can create a disconnect between what is real and what isn’t real at time when those distinctions are very important learning milestones.  While kids are more naturally skeptical than they’re usually given credit for, continually blurring the lines with something programmed to SEEM real sets the stage for bigger problems.

2. Anthropomorphization of responsive programs can cause real harm to children… and even adults.

Humans tend to anthropomorphize THINGS, and there’s very real harm to our mental health when we are unable to balance this with real-life experiences. Sure, many of us do this with our pets as well, but at least a living, breathing pet can have an authentic response, not a programmed response.

We see this with kids toys sometimes, but most toys can’t simulate authentic, real-time responses. That’s what makes them toys. Mix the two together… some of us even had a Pet Rock growing up! All it did was sit in a box. So disappointing, right?

I was a young teacher in the 1990s, and so many of my students (7th-12th grades) had Tamagotchis or NeoPets. These virtual pets were advertised as a wonderful opportunity to teach your child about the responsibility of caring for a pet. Kids were obsessed with them! Most of the adults dismissed the virtual pets as just another fad and didn’t think much more about them… until someone’s virtual pet died. Maybe the family went on vacation, and the Tamagotchi was left behind. There were all sorts of these kinds of scenarios, and most of the adults brushed off the kids’ concerns with “but it’s not even real.”

What I observed as a teacher: Some kids were fine. “No big deal. I’ll just start over.” However, there were several kids who were devastated that their virtual pet had died. We had to have a conversation with school counselors (who sometimes weren’t as responsive as I had hoped) about helping a child process that the pet wasn’t real… that the child wasn’t a horrible person for letting this happen, etc. Many of the adults dismissed the very real feelings of guilt and loss these kids experienced over a virtual entity. Those kids grew up to make memes about how sad they were when their Tamagotchis died. It’s treated as a joke now, but many of us who were teaching back then observed those kids and their sadness.

And the thing is… kids’ feelings are real. How they respond to something that feels like guilt, loss, or grief is very real, and it affects their overall well-being. Even if you, the adult, disagrees whether something is traumatic or not, a kid’s brain registers trauma regardless of what adults think and feel about the situation. When you cannot separate what is real and what is “virtual,” the lines are blurred again… but the emotional and mental health aspects can and will be very real problems.

If you have not read about the Eliza Effects: Pygmalion and the Early Development of Artificial Intelligence by Lawrence Switzky, I highly recommend you do.

There are apps, programs, games, and other tools that have been developed to sell to kids (or FOR kids) to make money without any consideration to the very real impact those tools have on the well-being of children.

Think I’m overreacting? These are just some of the most recent headlines. 

AI friendships claim to cure loneliness. Some are ending in suicide. (This article is behind a Washington Post paywall)

Are AI Chatbots Safe for Children?

There Are No Guardrails

AI Companions and the Mental Health Risks for the Young (This article is behind a New York Times paywall)

I know that all these headlines reference at least one or two of the same individuals. There is a tendency in our culture to blame the victim in a way that diminishes the potential for harm from these tools. For me, if these AI chatbots are harmful to the mental health of even one kid… what are we even doing?!?

 

3. AI Bots/Tutors cannot solve problems outside of their programming, and it absolutely matters WHO is doing the programming and packaging of these tools.

(Also… what about student data/privacy?)

I’ve been in education for nearly 30** years, and I can tell you there is always an issue of trust between teachers and community. Children are precious. We cannot allow just anyone to spend hours a day with an impressionable child, right? That’s why teachers are required to be licensed after having been educated in child development and teaching methods. Most schools require its teaching staff to have at least a bachelor’s degree in education, and many schools require ongoing education in order to continue teaching.

So…

  • Who is programming the AI tools? Which groups of people do they represent?
  • What are the implicit biases of the people programming the AI tools?
  • Are there actual certified teachers involved in the programming?
  • Are there actual certified teachers on staff at all in this AI company?
  • Has your district administration done its due diligence by reading all the End User Licensing Agreements (that are often longer than most humans could possibly read)?
  • What exactly is stipulated in the contracts schools sign in the use of AI tutors and other tools?
  • How can these tools make accommodations for students with an IEP? A 504 plan?
  • Can you guarantee students and their families that this company selling you its AI tools will protect student privacy?
  • What is the policy when the AI Tutor leads a student in the wrong direction, or provides factually incorrect information? How does it affect the student’s work/grades?
  • What is the policy when harm is done by an AI Tutor?
  • Can a family opt their child out of a class or teacher using an AI Tutor?

 

Years ago, I worked in the technology department of a suburban public school district. The questions above, although this was long before AI, are similar to the considerations we discussed in meetings with vendors before we would even think about deploying a new ed tech product in our schools. We could not purchase or sign contracts to use a student email product, for example, without ensuring that the laws about student data and privacy were being followed to a “t.”

I know there are lot of educators who work for different AI companies. I hope they’re able to answer some of these questions that would help people feel that their children and their privacy are safe. Past experiences and interactions with ed tech entrepreneurs remind me that a lot of ed tech companies don’t consider these things as much as they want to find a niche market where they can sell a “quick solution.”

 

5. Human Teacher vs AI Tutor – who gets actual face-to-face time with a human is an educational equity issue.

We already know that our educational system is not equitable. By tying school finances and funding to property taxes, schools in the United States vary greatly in resources allocated for students. This is an issue that affects race, kids who live in poverty, kids with special needs, and so much more. 

Now throw in who gets actual face time with a human teacher? Who gets assigned an AI tutor? The “learning gap” will continue to grow into an insurmountable chasm.

If you’re skeptical about this point, please take a look around at the most expensive private schools in your area versus, say, a small rural public school.

Again, I ask… which students will have more face-to-face time with a human teacher if an AI solution is proposed? 

As I mentioned above, tutoring is a personal and relational experience. If a student is struggling with the directions given by a teacher, sure. An AI Tutor Bot could repeat the instructions. But, as a teacher, I have a lot of tools already where I can share the written directions, accompanied by an audio file of ME reading the instructions, available without having to use a bot. I’ve done this in products like Seesaw, Google Classroom, Apple Classroom… or something as analog as having the instructions written on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. I don’t need to use AI as a more expensive and problematic substitution for technology we already have.

Maybe the student needs a more in-depth explanation of what we just learned. An AI tutor doesn’t know WHY that student needs more explanation. Maybe they didn’t sleep well the night before. Maybe they’re hungry. Maybe they need to move around the room. Maybe they didn’t have context for the new concept. There are endless reasons why a student might need more explanation, and an AI tutor cannot read that in a child… NOR DO I WANT IT TO TRY. If a kid needs more explanation, I can bring them into a small group. I can partner that student with other students to learn together. There are numerous options available… why bring in a technology with the potential to do harm when I can solve that problem without it?

Human issues need human solutions… and kids need humans who care about them enough to know this.

 

Final Thoughts

I’m going to return now to my first main point in this post. Learning is deeply personal and relational. As I sit here typing this, soooo many faces of so many students are in my thoughts, thinking about their unique personalities and special gifts they bring to the world. I’m absolutely a better person for having them, even for a tiny bit of time, in my life… and I hope they feel that I KNEW them and helped them learn.

If you’re not designing education around the kids in front of you, you’re trying to make the kids fit a system.

What we have learned at Anastasis is, that challenging the system– the status quo, thinking about the kids as the starting point… all of that is possible. When you design a living curriculum around the needs of children, the learning IS personal and relational. Kids feel successful, and we see proof of growth in every one of our graduates.

If we really want to improve education, AI is not going to save us.

Getting back to really knowing our students, cultivating relationships in the name of helping students grow and learn, and holding true to what learning means to THEM… well, that’s a pretty good start.

Oh, and that FUNDING thing. ALL kids deserve to be in safe, clean, healthy buildings where the adults know who the students are- not just their names, but really know them. We can’t do that when our schools are overpopulated and underfunded.

 

photos of Kelly Tenkely and Michelle Baldwin on a dark blue background; text: "Dreams of Education"

Dreams of Education Podcast

Kelly Tenkely and I discuss learning on our Dreams of Education podcast. We talk a lot about AI in education in episode 9 (released 12/5/24) and episode 10 (scheduled for 12/12/24).

 

NOTE: A lot of what I’ve written in this post is based on my experiences as an educator: a public school teacher, a private school teacher, an education technology/professional development coordinator, an adult ed teacher… and an endlessly curious learner. I’ve cited some (not all) sources in this post for expertise I don’t have. I’ve also made statements that, to me, seem to be common knowledge amongst most educators– and didn’t include citations for those. If you feel that some of these issues aren’t common knowledge and do require citations, by all means, please add them in the comments. Or write your own blog post. 🙂

 

*Let’s hope that free public education remains free and appropriate.

**That number might be over 30 by now. I stopped counting.

The Importance of Service Learning

At Anastasis Academy, service learning is just a part of who we are. It’s vital to helping students understand their identity within a community, but also to learn about other people and places. We value getting kids out of their own bubbles to expand their experiences and get to know other people, and we feel that it broadens their sense of self in such positive ways. Most importantly, we help our students to honor the humanity in all people– noting that we have so much more in common than we might assume.

Service learning can be tricky.

If we approach these opportunities from a place of privilege from which we are “blessing” others with our presence, especially with language like “serving the less fortunate,” we create a kind of dichotomy for the kids where they see themselves as “more fortunate.”  This type of mindset is extremely unhealthy and often deeply steeped in racism and classism. Regardless of the demographics of a school, this savior-like mindset manifests some really ugly ideas around serving your community, and it reinforces dehumanizing tropes about how people live.

Sometimes, the intention of service learning opportunities can come from a desire to do good for people in your community, but making assumptions about what other people need without listening or learning first is really misguided. Good intentions can cause more problems than they solve, and we should be able to look at our intentions with some humility. Additionally, there are often people already doing the work within a community, and it’s much better to ask around, see who is already doing the work, and ask if they could use any help. If they say yes, then this is a great learning opportunity to listen to someone who has the experience. If they say no, it’s an equally great learning opportunity that you don’t always have the skillset to do what is needed.

 

Taking the time to do service learning right must be planned with a well-defined vision.

When service learning is planned carefully, including a lot of scaffolding for students, kids learn that serving others in their community is something an involved citizen does regularly… that when we take care of each other and learn from each other, we are all better for it. Service learning looks different from that perspective. It might involve working with our actual neighbors, local businesses and organizations, with similar visions of community outreach.

At Anastasis, service learning has looked different for each age group of kids, but the process was the same when we did it well.

We work very diligently to cultivate relationships with our service learning partners. The key to successful partnerships is an ongoing relationship… a “one and done” trip in the name of service would seem more like checking some kind of “do-gooder list.” That wasn’t the kind of process we were looking for when we first started. Ongoing partnerships meant committing to regular visits and learning about how our students could best learn from our partners. Our service learning coordinators, a role I have held for only a few years at Anastasis, spent a lot of time working with organizations to see what might be a “good fit,” and how we might best partner with them in helpful ways.

Over the years, some of our learning partners needed assistance fundraising or collecting and organizing items with the community– organizations such as food banks, family services, women’s and children’s shelters, etc. Sometimes, the act of service was spending time with people in different types of programs. Depending upon the age of the students, the partnerships might look different from class to class. We prepared students in advance about their learning partners, doing research or sometimes bringing in organizations as speakers before we made our first trips.

Bowling With Grandfriends – photo by me, March 9, 2016

One of my favorite examples (pre-Covid): our youngest students in the school visited nearby assisted living facilities on a monthly basis. Over time, we built relationships with the residents, affectionately known as our grandfriends, and looked forward to every visit. Prior to our first trip, teachers would spend time with their students discussing the value of elders in our community, the stories they share with us, and what it means to them when young people visit them and are eager to learn. It was important to help younger students understand a little about the aging process. At first, especially for kids who don’t have regular visits with older relatives or friends, an elderly person might be intimidating to a five or six year old child. Sometimes, we brought in older community members to share stories with the class at school. The more we were able to “front-load” and prepare kids for their first visits, the more successful the relationship with our service partners.

For activities to share with our grandfriends, we played games or made crafts that we could do together, and that also gave us time to get to know each other better. Sometimes, we’d practice some songs, especially from popular music in the 1940s or 50s, so we could sing something that our grandfriends knew and loved. Bonus… our kids learned new songs and spent time thinking about why lyrics about “a bicycle built for two” might have been more popular during that time than a popular song now.

 

What our students gain from our service learning partners is invaluable.

The service learning trips might seem unimportant to someone on the outside… maybe even “non-academic” or an interruption to instructional time. What we have witnessed through the years, however, is that these opportunities enhance every part of our students’ learning.  Even the youngest students in our school (usually 5 year olds) can speak to the impact of interacting with organizations outside our school.

One day, my class of “littles” visited our grandfriends and ended our activities with everyone singing “You Are My Sunshine.” The kids had been practicing the song for a few weeks, so they could remember all the words to the single verse and chorus they were planning to sing. One of their grandfriends that year was a mostly non-verbal woman who didn’t interact much when we played games; but the day we sang that song, her eyes were bright, she was smiling, and she sang along. The kids noticed and could not stop talking about it for the rest of the day. When we arrived back at school, they ran into the office, “Mrs. Tenkely! Mrs. Tenkely! Ya-Ya SANG with us, and she was smiling!!” One of the little boys in that class was so happy for Ya-Ya, that he cried happy tears.

This is one example of kids, even five or six years old, realizing that they can have a positive impact on another human being, just by being there and interacting. How we view service learning can help set kids up with wanting to make a difference… to be part of something bigger than themselves… even if it’s actually a small activity like singing together… that culminates in learning about others and partnering together for something good.

I have sooo many anecdotes* of kids realizing they matter when it comes to the people in their community; but most importantly, I could share even more stories of students seeing how much the people in their community matter as well.

If we want to help students become good citizens, we have to help them see that we’re all a part of a community, and that every single person in the community is important— how we care for, look out for, help, and advocate for each other makes the community better for us all. At a time when we think our society is so divided (or divisive), partnering with people in our community can be important first steps into bringing us all back together.

I cannot tell you the number of times kids have returned from a service learning trip – regardless of what it was – with excitement about meeting new people and having new experiences. Knowing they are part of the collective humanity helps them find purpose, and for that, I’m profoundly grateful to be a small cog in this operation.

 

Interested in more information about service learning… or wondering how you can make it work in a school that doesn’t look like Anastasis? Let me know!

 

p.s. Kelly Tenkely and I discuss learning environments, teacher and student agency, service learning, field trips, and much more on our podcast, Dreams of Education. I hope you’ll give it a listen!

The Illusion of Control

I fully admit it… I have long referred to myself as a control freak. For a long time, I avoided the terminology, because I am a people pleaser, and no one really likes to be controlled. But lately, I was using the term as a badge of honor? Or maybe as an excuse?

This morning, I was listening to part of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle. The episode is “When You’re Tired of Holding Up The Sky,” and one of the topics they discussed was control. As they were discussing the idea of being a control freak, Glennon Doyle gently corrected her sister and suggested using the term “over-functioning* individual” in place of the more derogatory term. Throughout the discussion, they explored how damaging control can be for the one doing the controlling, as well as for those being “controlled.”

Control is just an illusion anyway. We think we can control people and situations, but it’s not actually true.

One of the issues that arises for people who are considered an over-functioning individual is being all things to all people. It leads to heightened anxiety, disappointment, and burn out. For those under the umbrella of an over-functioning individual, there is a loss of agency, a lot of resentment, and sometimes complacency… even if none of this is intentional. Some relationships carry on with these patterns without any acknowledgement or realization that it’s even happening. Most “control freaks” are caretakers in some shape or form, and control can become part of their personality. For me, in many ways, it became an obsession with thinking I could control the outcome of situations… usually in maintaining peace or safety.

Marionette by Victoria Nevland CC BY-NC 2.0

I see this kind of control happening in a lot of schools, and I have even worked in some schools and organizations where the attempt to control people created quite hostile spaces. In schools, we have created environments of control that can be truly unhealthy – physically, emotionally, and mentally. I think we see the following as results:

  1. There is little to no agency for kids. Students are controlled to such degrees in school that they do not even have the freedom to respond to their most basic bodily needs –going to the restroom when they need to, drinking water when they are thirsty, eating when they are hungry, etc., let alone have a voice in their learning.
  2. Burnout is a major problem in teacher retention. Yes, there are a lot of societal issues with the current US national teacher shortage, including an ongoing global pandemic, but burnout has been an issue for teachers for as long as I can remember.
  3. There is a hierarchy of control that trickles down to students  – students are controlled by teachers and admin, teachers and admin are controlled by school board, community, parents, lawmakers, etc. Those who are controlled tend to exercise their own sense of control on others.

Of course, these are all generalizations and are not happening across the board in every part of every school. However, I think we see themes of control throughout the concept of what school is, and we have to ask ourselves: Is this a healthy environment for learning to occur?

I know that there is immense pressure on teachers and administrators to be all things for kids, and the stress of those expectations is breaking people. Within a school, there’s often an expectation that teachers and administrators will have everything planned to a T and executed perfectly. There is no room for vulnerability, trust, or even space to make a mistake. “We expect nothing less than your best!” <– This is counterproductive to the learning process, but also… it’s not sustainable. We cannot give 100% of ourselves at all times, and trying to live up to that is a surefire way to get people to quit… or drive them to illness.

If it’s unhealthy for the adults involved, think about what it is doing to our children. 

High levels of control tells kids that we do not trust them to ever do the right thing… that they are not capable of learning… even simply existing… without an adult around to tell them what to do.  Oh, but somehow, when they turn 18 or so, we expect them to leave the high control environment and just magically know what to do. They’re adults now, right?

Kids need a safe place to learn… to make mistakes with someone guiding them through. The act of discovery in learning is exciting and wondrous, and kids can be trusted with this responsibility.

  • What if we were able to loosen the control a bit? What might it look like to trust a child to learn without restrictions everywhere they looked?
  • How can we teach children to manage their freedoms, instead of restricting them up to the point they become adults?
  • How do we build trust with kids, knowing full well that they are going to make mistakes and some bad choices along the way?
  • What if, instead of trying to prevent any and every “bad” scenario from happening, we eased up a bit to help kids learn self-discipline and self-regulation along the way? For example, you cannot learn to regulate your emotions if you’re immediately punished for an emotional outburst, right?

 

If you are an adult, think about what it feels like when someone tries to control you. It’s not a great feeling, especially if you think of yourself as a fully realized and capable human being. As a teacher, I’ve definitely felt the thumb on my back in some environments, as well as the exhilaration of autonomy in others.

Where did you feel you were most trusted to do your job? How did you react when you were met with trust and appreciation instead of the heavy hand of micromanagement?

Now think about what the classroom environments feel like to kids.

What COULD a classroom look like with more trust and agency for kids?

Expect that there will be mistakes. Expect that kids are going to make some wrong choices. And honestly? You probably will, too, right? We are human. We need the space to be human along with all the grace and compassion that we can give each other.

Learning environments can and should be places where kids feel safe … but we don’t have to use control to get there. I know, because I have been fortunate enough to be in a place that values who we are as individuals. We start with WHO WE ARE and go from there.

 

Moving forward…

I’m going to stop calling myself a “control freak.” For me, it’s an excuse to let my anxiety take charge of my brain, thinking I can plan for and meet every challenge of all possible scenarios. It’s not true, and it only drags me down physically, emotionally, and mentally. It’s no picnic for others around me, either.

As a teacher and consultant, I truly enjoy working with other educators to help them think through possibilities, share what has worked in previous environments, and help others to learn to relinquish control.

What about you? I’d love to hear how you are creating a positive learning environment, free from the need to control everything, in your organization!

 

p.s. Kelly Tenkely and I discuss learning environments, teacher and student agency, giving up control, and much more on our podcast, Dreams of Education. I hope you’ll give it a listen!

 

* edited on 10/17/24 – mistakenly used “high functioning” in place of “over-functioning”

Dreams of Education Podcast

Dreams of Education Podcast

It’s happening! As Kelly has noted numerous times:

Does the world need another podcast? Probably not, but we’re doing one anyway!

The Dreams of Education podcast is coming your way soon!

Anastasis doesn’t have a building right now, so we are not in session. The last school year was rough… really rough. For a lot of reasons, many of which I can’t put in print yet, we were unable to make this school year happen. So, Kelly thought it would be a good idea to capture our history, how we were able to start a school from the ground up, and share with anyone who feels like listening!

We recorded our first episode today, and it was fun walking through memory lane… but it was also very rewarding to think through how we started and what we were able to build as a community.

In the meantime, if you want to wander through the archives here or at Kelly’s blog, Dreams of Education, you’ll find a lot of the stories we’re planning to discuss more in depth on the podcast. Hope you’ll join us for the journey!

Finding A Learning Path

In the middle of July, I found myself sitting at my dining room table on a video call with several educators talking about embracing uncertainty.

Earlier that month, Dave Cormier had been talking on Bluesky about something called “ShrugCon“, and I was curious, especially with the title “Embracing Uncertainty as a Pedagogy of Abundance!” I signed up and then found myself listening and participating in some really great conversations. There were so many crossovers and connections to what these mostly post-secondary educators were discussing to what we have been doing at Anastasis for the last fourteen years – I was so excited!

It’s so encouraging to hear professionals share their stories of teaching and learning, but especially so when they are challenging the status quo that leaves so many students in its wake. I kept thinking about how challenging it can be to be a changemaker when it comes to schooling. As a society, we haven’t budged a lot on what school looks like – what learning looks like, and that is something that gnaws at me often.

From one ShrugCon discussion, this quote from Jennie Blake stuck with me for quite some time:

“It’s like you are all in a forest, and instead of letting people find their path, you insist on dragging them straight through the undergrowth to get where you think they should be.”

A Rough Pathway (photo by me)

Uncertainty might be one of my very favorite things about teaching in a school that is an inquiry model. There are no sets of boxed curriculum… and instead of a very prescriptive set of standards with scope and sequence guides paving the way, teachers and students are asking questions within our inquiry blocks to help move the learning forward.

Traditional models of schooling with traditional written curriculum have all students following the same path at mostly the same time and same rate (generally speaking). Those models assume, if students all work hard enough, they can all get to the same place. The path is paved for the students. Some of them stay on the path easily, but others are getting dragged, as Jennie put it, through the undergrowth, with little thought at all — is this even a path these kids need? Want? Should this individual child even be on this path right now? Have we sacrificed the incredible wonder that comes with discovery and forging our own paths for a model that moves kids along in an orderly and efficient manner?

I know I’ve written a lot of posts about this… so many, that it seems self-serving to link them all here; BUT, the fact that we’re still having these conversations means that the topic is important.

Learning is greater… more wondrous… more fascinating than just marching through a textbook to get to the end.

If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to see pathways evolve in nature, there are often myriad ways to arrive at the same destination: some are a direct path, some take the long way, and some are forged through dense trees and undergrowth. I see a lot of these paths when we hike. Some are made by humans, and some by animals. Choosing which route to follow up to a lake, for example, can be such an incredible adventure! Sometimes, it can be too scary, and I want to take the more established path. The choice, though, is mine. When I’m on a new hike, I like to go with more experienced hikers, or at the very least, consult a guide.

We can do this with kids and learning, too! We don’t have to lay it all out for them without any choice or agency. At Anastasis, we’ve been helping kids to forge their own paths, and I can’t ever imagine going back to a traditional model. In saying that, I also have to give credit to all the hardworking teachers in traditional models who help their students every day to bring learning to life outside of a textbook.

I still wonder, though, what if all teachers had the freedom and autonomy that I’ve had at Anastasis? What would it look like for ALL kids to create their own paths in their learning journeys?

This is my wish for education as move forward. We don’t have to be so rigid and unyielding. We can do better.

Thanks to Dave Cormier and the University of Windsor for facilitating ShrugCon. I always feel energized after conversations like these, and it’s uplifting to know that others know we have to do better for all students.

 

 

Time to Redesign

Hi there… it’s me.

I’ve been trying to decide how to continue using this space for a while now. Considering I haven’t posted for two and half years, it’s safe to say that I haven’t been successful in figuring that out.

I feel like living in a global pandemic has broken something in me fundamentally, and for the longest time, I really didn’t know what I wanted to say. A blog without a purpose just doesn’t work for me. However, I still pay my yearly hosting fee, because I know that I want to keep the history of posts and comments — there’s still value there for me.

Digital Identities sketchnote by Guilia Forsythe

Digital Identities: 6 Key Selves* by @bonstewart at #change11 – sketchnote by Giulia Forsythe**

In the last 4 years, I’ve deleted my Facebook account, stopped posting to Instagram (although I still lurk and sometimes connect with friends there)… and now with Twitter devolving into whatever it is, I am feeling a deep, DEEP sense of disconnection. Where social media used to connect me to wonderful friends and great educational/personal growth opportunities… I now feel more isolated than ever.

In the digital sense, I feel like I’ve lost my identity.

Yesterday, I needed to find some information, and I remembered that I had written a blog post that contained some of that information. And it hit me right then and there… I need to come back to this. Even if no one reads or connects with me here, this is a place over which I still have some control. It’s where some of my best ideas live, as well as some of my worst, and I think I can still move it forward.

So, I’ve decided it’s time to redesign the blog – change the look and maybe the direction a little bit. Because I’m currently semi-retired, it needs to reflect more of who I am now and what I have to say. I’m not entirely certain of what that’s going to look like, but I at least have a goal.

I hope to be back with a new look and direction in 2023… and I wish for you rest and all the light and love that exists. Be good to yourself, friends. We all deserve it.

Michelle

 

*You can read more about Bonnie Stewart’s “Digital Identities: 6 Key Selves of Networked Publics” here – http://theory.cribchronicles.com/2012/05/06/digital-identities-six-key-selves/ (Note: I’m interested in thinking about how these ideas have changed, or not, over the last 10 years since she shared this talk and post.)

**photo/sketchnote credit: “Digital Identities: 6 Key Selves of Networked Publics, @bonstewart #change11 [visual notes]” by giulia.forsythe is marked with CC0 1.0.

 

 

#VirtualMusEdChat

Are you a Music educator teaching virtually for any part of the 2020-21 school year? Me too!

I thought it might be a good idea to start a chat that specifically deals with challenges and celebrations of teaching Music virtually – whether it’s a hybrid model or all virtual.

I’ll host #VirtualMusEdChat Wednesday nights (weekly, for now) at 8pm ET (GMT-4). You can participate live in the chat or any time that works for you.

For now, the plan is to share resources, discuss what’s working/what’s not working, and generally support each other through this unprecedented situation due to COVID-19.

Update: Our #VirtualMusEdChat home page is now live.

 

If you’re new here, I am Michelle Baldwin, and I have been a teacher at Anastasis Academy since 2011. Since Anastasis was founded, I’ve taught Music every school year, but I have also been a classroom teacher. This year, I’ll be teaching Music only. Anastasis Academy is an inquiry-based model with Reggio and IB themes and philosophies, and that has carried over into our Music classes, as well.

photo of the blog author

Photo taken by http://www.marcysingerphotography.com/

Please Stop Using TikTok

**UPDATE: Please note this post has nothing to do with the Trump administration’s policies or views of Tiktok. I wrote this post in March (2020) after watching our network activity while TikTok was running in the background of student devices. If you’re still interested, please read on. My hopes are that wherever TikTok lands on this issue, it will be more secure and less invasive on users’ devices. 

A couple of days ago, I retweeted a TechCrunch article about the CEO of Reddit and TikTok.

tweet by @michellek107

Tweet by @michellek107

(I know there are a lot of issues with Reddit, but that’s not the focus of this post. )

I am and have been for the last 15 or more years an early adopter of many social media platforms, as well as technology in general. In other words, I’m one of the last people you’d call a technophobe. I do NOT balk at the latest popular fad with kids… in fact, I generally try to learn as much as I can about them.

All of that to say… this is not a #getoffmylawn post trying to spoil fun, light-hearted videos that are all the rage. I loved Vine when it first came out and could easily find myself down a Vine rabbit hole where time disappeared. There were some seriously funny people making some really great content!

When Vine disappeared, there was a pretty big hole for content creators who wanted byte-sized entertainment. Another platform that started to fill that void was musical.ly – I had a lot of students who were super excited about lip-synching their way into their friends’ views.

I had some reservations about musical.ly, mostly because the terms of service (privacy for kids) were somewhat concerning. Alex Zhu and Louis Yang, Musical.ly founders, saw the potential and the popularity of this app and dreamed that it could be the next big social network.

A year after my students were buzzing about musical.ly, I read that it had been sold to Bytedance Technology and re-branded as TikTok. It became exactly the platform Zhu and Yang envisioned.

Again, I had privacy concerns for kids, as did a lot of other people. As a result of that pushback, ByteDance/TikTok added some privacy settings, and that seemed to calm a lot of nerves.

But then I started working on our school’s firewall/proxy server and noticed all the activity generated by TikTok. Even when the kids weren’t actively using the app, there were a lot of connections to sites that have been identified as “malicious” or associated with data collection dumps. At the very least, it is essentially spyware, even when running in the background, but not active. At worst, it could be installing malware without you (or kids) knowing.

Sometimes, even when the app isn’t even open at all, the device is still pinging those malicious websites. I tested this while holding a kid’s iPad. I closed all the apps myself. When I downloaded the app on my own device to test what was happening from the point of installation, the app created an account for me, even though I didn’t allow any of those permissions. I deleted both the account and the app right away from my device.

I know that kids aren’t going to understand the severity of this situation, but I’m hoping that adults will do better. Here’s why:

Every time I talk with people about security risks, I often hear excuses along the lines of “Well, I don’t really care. I don’t have anything to hide.”

That’s not only ignorant, but dangerous. You DO have things to hide. I fear that our lack of concern about data privacy enables the mentality of “there’s no such thing as privacy anymore.” Do you ever use an internet-connected device to access financial information? What about your health information (including connections with a physical activity tracker)? Most of us have. And even if, somehow, you have managed to avoid any online financial or health transactions… you’re allowing an unknown entity to harvest your personal data for purposes unknown.

Yeah, yeah… I know Facebook mines your data*. I know Instagram**, owned by Facebook, does this.  I know Google and Apple*** do it, too. But they’re fundamentally different.  The kind of sites TikTok communicates with is the differentiating factor. While Facebook/Google/Apple are still collecting your personal data, they aren’t communicating with malicious websites or installing spyware/malware. And yes, even Mac and iOS devices are vulnerable to malware attacks.

I’m definitely not giving any free passes to Facebook, Apple, or Google. But there have already been major concerns calling out ByteDance’s practices, including lawsuits:

https://www.vox.com/open-sourced/2019/12/16/21013048/tiktok-china-national-security-investigation (if you only read one of these links, read this one.)

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tiktok-lawsuit/tiktok-accused-in-california-lawsuit-of-sending-user-data-to-china-idUSKBN1Y708Q

https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20997199/tiktok-bytedance-musically-lawsuit-coppa-settlement-children-data

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-accused-california-lawsuit-sending-user-data-china-n1094781

 

Think I’m being too alarmist? I know this is a long post with a lot of linked material, but I’m begging you to read at least some of those links. We are putting an entire generation of kids in a position where their data is being used without their INFORMED consent as a standard practice in our schools. Encouraging the use of TikTok takes that risk to the next level.

If you don’t care about your own data privacy, I know I probably won’t convince you. However, if you’re an educator with any type of influence, please do anything you can to help parents and children understand the HUGE implications of using an app like TikTok.

 

Like to deep-dive into (somewhat) dry reading about data privacy? Read here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-540-34351-6_12

* I deleted my FB account two years ago, btw.

**Did you know, if you disable the microphone setting that you can’t do InstaStories, but you’ll also notice fewer targeted ads? I got tired of seeing ads for things that I had only spoken about minutes earlier.

***I don’t use voice-activated devices in my classroom (and neither should you), nor in my home. I only enable Siri in the car while I’m driving, for safety purposes.

Hard Reset

In August, I started my 24th year in education. (I think my math is correct there.) It was the first time in nine years that I wasn’t in the classroom full time. August 20 was our official first day of school at Anastasis, and it felt a little odd not to have a classroom.

And now it’s December 3. My last blog post was from June. I feel like I’ve been slacking, but I really haven’t. I guess it takes about five months for me to adjust to a new role with new responsibilities. I’m hoping to do better and write at least once a month in this space.

My new role at Anastasis is exciting! I’m taking over the tech position in our school from Kelly Tenkely‘s many, many roles. I also continue to teach Music and will direct our annual theater production in the spring. And something I’m really excited for… I’m working with our Anastasis teachers on a regular basis! Part of that responsibility includes coaching, co-teaching, and teaching a mathematical exploration class (more on this in another post!)  in every classroom at least once a week. I loved having a professional development role in the past, and it will be so amazing to live in that world again!

Because Anastasis is not a traditional education model, our titles aren’t either. The written title on my business card has been “Inspiration Engineer.” I love that title. Even though my official title falls somewhere between instructional coach and administrative lead, those words don’t remind me of my mission every single day. Inspiration Engineer does.

As I gear up toward my 50th birthday this coming January, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on my physical, mental, and emotional well-being. A few years back, my oxygen ran out, and I had to rethink how I was living my life. I allowed my professional life to take over every aspect of myself, including the way I viewed who I was.

I recently listened to a podcast by Rob Bell (The RobCast – episode 204) where he talked about the concept of menuha. In Hebrew, menuha means “rest,” “ease”, or “tranquility.” I found myself nodding along numerous times as Bell talked about this concept of rest in a culture that glorifies busyness. As I was listening, I kept thinking back to the work ethic that was instilled in me – which isn’t a bad thing – but how there is very little room for rest. For slowing down. For intentionally taking the time to stop, reflect, and simply move more slowly.

My brain doesn’t like to slow down. I wake up, sometimes multiple times in the night, with a to-do list forming in my brain. I can’t fall asleep if I read before bed – too many thoughts spiraling. Thanks to some mind-numbing repeat television shows, I can bore myself to sleep most nights. Slowing down and providing my brain some rest is one thing I can do for myself.

If you do a search for people and their top five regrets late in life, working too much is right up there. For so many people, there’s never a choice about how much to work. Bills have to be paid. Your family needs to eat. Work isn’t an option… it’s a necessity. For me, I can say there is definitely a discrepancy between the amount of work I do versus what I really need to do to help provide for our basic needs.

So this year includes another “hard reset.” Re-focus. Re-prioritize. What can my health and my body realistically handle… and what leads me down a path of “too much?” Where is menuha prioritized in my life?

Stepping out of the classroom was a good first attempt. I’m also working only four days a week, instead of five. Fridays are now titled “Free-Wheeling Fridays” on my calendar… even if those Fridays are more about down time and rest than any actual free-wheeling.

Pikes Peak view

My view of Pikes Peak from home CC licensed photo Michelle K. Baldwin

Maybe because I’m edging up on a big birthday, or maybe with age comes more contemplative thought, I’ve just been thinking more… I don’t want to look back at my life and regret working too much. I want to be able to enjoy simple things. I want to be more present at home and with my husband. I want to enjoy our gorgeous view from home, sit and cuddle my dogs, do nothing else, and not feel guilty about doing nothing. <— When I can achieve zero guilt for sitting and doing nothing for a few hours, I will feel successful. I’m not there yet, but there’s hope.

So… that’s what I’ve been up to lately. How about you?