"AI in education is inevitable." No it isn't. That's not true.

why is harvard’s grading policy national news? who cares?

Is this satire? Not partnerships with historians, or museum curators, or archivists—businesses! In a modern world history course?! At what point will people stop seeing garbage like this as “real world experiences” and start seeing it as “subsidized worker training for Fortune 500 companies”?

I was chatting with a math prof who encourages students to use AI. I said it's harder in history as it hallucinates citations, quotes, etc. Therefore I actively discourage it. But math might be more accurate? He said that it regularly provides false answers and students need to check carefully.

My two cents: everyone studying and making education policy should know education history. Since that seems unlikely, I’ll settle for requiring Groundhog Day: nearly every “new” reform has already been debated, tried, renamed, or memory-holed.

Also can't help but wonder if the choice to have practitioners' names on the document is a way to deflect criticism of AI in literacy education, and of this framework, as being out of touch with the needs of teachers. (Even though teachers were voicing such critiques at the initial convening...)

I get that you can't make an AI framework without upsetting someone, but why go through the trouble of convening researchers and teachers only to ignore their actual input and hastily push out something that rehearses the usual flimsy speculation about AI's potential uses in education instead?

Gotta say, having been in the initial convening on which this framework was to be based, these recs feel way out of step with the serious concerns folks were voicing about AI's commercial capture of education, teacher deskilling, short-circuiting of reading/writing processes, environmental costs.

I very much understand the challenge of producing this kind of guidance in a fraught and changeable time, but I'm afraid I see this as fundamentally flawed in centering AI throughout the discussion rather than human writing/communication. Without grounding in the human, everything is reactive to AI.

Yes. It has a "here's how to deal with AI because you're going to have to" which skips past "What if I don't want that presence in my classroom?"

Read through this framework this morning. I know a lot of work went into this from a lot of great folks, but have to be honest. In my view, this is a disappointing direction to be heading for NCTE, and I don't think of this as a helpful tool at all for our work right now.

May He be the only Co-Pilot the school leaders need amen 🙌🏾 #EduSky

To make a living as a writer you’ve got to keep moving to the revenue source. My conversation with @thelincoln.bsky.social on the past, present and future for writers and writing open.substack.com/pub/bibliora...

My Roman Empire is that the daycare I send my 2 and 5 year old to rebranded its “Arts & Crafts Room” to a “STEM Lab” last year.

universities have the brainpower, resources,+ community obligation to develop on-site secure NON PROFIT learning management systems + ed tech overseen by actual educators, not data-extraction censorious surveillance profiteers! VOID THE CONTRACTS theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/mamdani-wi...

For folks wanting more context and history on Canvas & Instructure, @mattseybold.bsky.social and American Vandal are indispensable: theamericanvandal.substack.com/p/historyofc...

This has been the hardest, most demoralizing week of my entire career. I’m grateful to @marcusluther.bsky.social for the opportunity to reflect on Sunday afternoon, before the chaos.

It’s not a fringe movement either, there’s serious backing, politically and financially.

To be clear, this isn't just Catholic social teaching. This is doctrine.

you know what's great? a college seminar

Much of the West is decided that education isn’t a public good, because there is no public good; educational institutions are spaces for the subsidized development of tech products, political projects, managerial careers, and personal brands. Disciplinary fights over audience share pale beside this

Minneapolis / St. Paul Local Bluesky folks: Please do come out for One Subject Press One-Year Anniversary Party! Friday, May 15, 6-8 pm at wonderful local bookstore Inkwell Booksellers Company in Minneapolis. www.inkwellbooksellersco.com/events/one-s...

RIP to OpenAI's Study Mode. "It was always a ruse, a PR exercise masquerading as pedagogical safeguard, but something bigger is happening at OpenAI. Their focus now is on enterprises, startups, and venture firms—but no mention of students, who still comprise the majority of ChatGPT users."

it’s not even a conspiracy theory

“How do you believe your faith informs how you show up as a teacher?” One of the joys in talking with @zachczaia.bsky.social was his generosity when I tossed a question I hadn't at all anticipated in preparing for our conversation—but one that felt meaningful. (His answer? Also meaningful!)

"And I just always want to hold out hope for that..." A really thoughtful (and important) explanation from @zachczaia.bsky.social about why the lens of good/bad "teaching" is much better than good/bad "teachers"

So much fun talking with @marcusluther.bsky.social !

“If you ask tobacco companies to help write your school’s policy on cigarettes…you’re going to end up with guidance on how to smoke responsibly in school.”

"Nowhere is it written that a multinational conglomerate with a market cap of roughly four trillion dollars is fated to command our public schools, or to grant fellowships to the leaders of those schools, or to monetize the inefficient children who attend them." www.newyorker.com/culture/prog...

I’m not proud of it but if Forrest Gump started talking to me on a bench I’d have left

The Spring workshop hosted by my union (that they charge us for) seems totally fine with all this.

New piece up on Substack: zachczaia.substack.com/p/i-dont-tea...

Wonderful conversation! And definitely a great way to start a Friday morning before teaching a 12th grade English class.

I don’t know what saving either the profession or the discipline means, if it doesn’t involve preserving pathways to full careers. If the institutions best placed to do so, however troubled, are not willing to make that commitment, then it is delusional to think those less well placed will step up.

Has either a discipline or a profession ever been built wholly on 1-3-year stints of gig work? And, at that, gigs open only to those 0-7 years out of their training, on the pretence that this is preparation for a career? Because that’s where we’re going. To a great extent, it’s where we already are.

We’re arguing about content. We need to be arguing about labor.

New piece "Having the (Awkward AI) Conversation" is out: zachczaia.substack.com/p/having-the...

I think if I were to send the head of legal at Grammarly a note that said I broke into his house and took his wallet, but in future, he could opt out of me stealing his wallet, that would go great and they would be fine with that 👍🏻

"My choosing not to use AI as a tool is not because I don’t understand it, but rather it’s because I do understand it." 🙏 from @susangbarber.bsky.social muchadoaboutteaching.com/developing-a...

“The Teacher/Writer series challenges the prescriptive and standardized educational status quo, and fires the imaginations of those hungry for greater depth as both teachers and as writers.” And that’s just the preface! This is going to be an excellent read. onesubjectpress.com/good-teachin...

@annieabrams.bsky.social "In English class, teachers can show students what has moved others to use language with care and pleasure, and invite them to join a long tradition of people who have found a way to say something new." So grounded. So sane. thepointmag.com/examined-lif...

IDK seems like a bad idea to offer cover to a social arsonist…also Common Sense Education and OpenAI partnered to produce an industry-friendly AI literacy curriculum so 🤷🏼

Drew Bent, the education lead at Anthropic: "'We’re at a point now where we need to make sure that these things are backed by outcomes and figure out what’s working and what’s not working.'" Convenient that *now* is the time for evidence, once these products are released and pushed into schools.

New piece up on Pope Leo's "Drawing Maps of Hope": zachczaia.substack.com/p/discerning...

"We should also imagine new tripartite forms, such as AI ethics boards that place organized labor and civil society (including the Church) across the table from technologists." @sohrabahmari.bsky.social Yes. New essay up in @commonweal.bsky.social . www.commonwealmagazine.org/future-chris...

Everything is so stupid

"Big Tech and data center developers appear to be siting data centers in vulnerable communities...These locations show a troubling trend - they primarily impact working class and Black and Latine communities."

Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone will have Always Been Against This has won the National Book Award. This is a deserving, necessary win. His words need to be on all of our minds and in all of our hearts. "When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?"

I’m good in the hood.