“AI has basically ruined homework.”

Ethan Mollick (University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business) quoted in

“A New Chatbot Might Do Your Homework for You. But It’s Still Not an A+ Student”

by Emma Bowman in NPR, December 19, 2022

“The best way to think about this is you are chatting with an omniscient, eager-to-please intern who sometimes lies to you.” 

            Ethan Mollick (quoted in ibid.) 

“Skilled teachers who know their students, have seldom failed to notice a turned-in assignment that has the thumbprint of a little extra help from home or simply doesn’t sound like original work.” 

            Robert Pondiscio (see item #1)

“Educators are now administering the Turing test in reverse: What are questions that only humans can answer well? What kinds of thinking does writing make possible for us?”

            Richard Hughes Gibson in “Autocomplete: Coming to Terms with Our New Textual

Culture” in The Hedgehog Review, November 23, 2022

“Teachers want students to do more than just go through the motions of schooling. But teachers too often fail to recognize that their deployment of scripted school rituals fosters routinized relationships marked by hierarchy, control, distrust, and disengagement.”

            Eric DeMeulenaere (see item #3)

“If you were around in 1920, your attitude would have been, ‘Nature’s too big for humans to influence.’”

            Colin Waters, quoted in “The Next Epoch of Planet Earth Might Be Today” by 

Raymond Zhong in The New York Times, December 18, 2022

“Our lives are lived in conversations, and when we ask better questions we have better conversations.”

            Jim Knight (see item #6)

“Young people want to meet adults’ expectations. And sometimes making an exception can be a powerful act of love. But the latter has to be done in service of the former. Organizing systems so that every child is known by name, strength, and need is a place to start.”

            Joshua Starr in “Expectations and Exceptions” in Kappan, December 2022/January 

2023 (Vol. 104, #4, pp. 60-61); Starr can be reached at jstarr@leadered.com. 

In this Education Gadfly article, Robert Pondiscio describes ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence program recently released by OpenAI that can quickly generate remarkably solid paragraphs and essays, in any writing style, in response to a simple prompt. “Some find this thrilling,” says Pondiscio. “Others, mostly writers and teachers, are filled with existential dread.” Teachers and professors fear that students will be able to surreptitiously have the program do their homework and essays for them, and won’t do the hard work of learning how to think and write.

            Calm down, says Pondiscio. Remember how Google was going to make the drudgery of learning content knowledge irrelevant so schools could focus on higher-level “twenty-first century skills”? Here was E.D. Hirsch’s response: “The Internet has placed a wealth of information at our fingertips. But to be able to use that information – to absorb it, to add to our knowledge – we must already possess a storehouse of knowledge. That is the paradox disclosed by cognitive research.” To be able to analyze and think critically, students need to have extensive factual knowledge. In the same way, says Pondiscio, students still need to know how to write in order to take advantage of ChatGPT – and see the flaws in what it produces.

            However, Pondiscio worries about students who have not yet acquired essential thinking and writing skills, and believes teachers will need to be on their toes. But “skilled teachers who know their students,” he says, “have seldom failed to notice a turned-in assignment that has the thumbprint of a little extra help from home or simply doesn’t sound like original work. It will be no different for AI.” Besides, any writing assignment that can be churned out easily by ChatGPT may be too straightforward and needs to be refined or scrapped.

“Artificial Intelligence Is Not the End of High-School English” by Robert Pondiscio in Education Gadfly, December 15, 2022; for examples of what ChatGPT can generate, see these New York Times and Boston Globe articles.

 In this New York Times article, Zeynep Tufekci likens educators’ fears about ChatGPT to Plato’s worries about the invention of the alphabet – he thought people wouldn’t develop their memories and would “appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing.” The new artificial intelligence writing program is raising similar worries in high schools and colleges: that students will lazily use it to do their writing and won’t learn how to research a topic, analyze claims, synthesize knowledge, and express themselves clearly and persuasively. “Those skills,” says Tufekci, “will be even more important because of advances in AI.” 

            She booted up ChatGPT and asked it to write essays on several topics, and it produced answers that she found cogent, well-reasoned, and clear; it even responded to requests for details and revisions. But on more-complicated concepts, the program gave plausible answers that were just plain wrong. “Unless you knew the answer or were an expert in the field,” says Tufekci, “you could be subjected to a high-quality snow job. You would face, as Plato predicted, ‘the show of wisdom without the reality.’”

            Of course, schools have already had to deal with the glut of online information and disinformation, not to mention essay mills. Tufekci believes the flipped classroom is a good workaround: students listen to videos of lectures and do research at home and then write essays in class with support and supervision, sometimes collaborating with peers. ChatGPT might be used to generate the components of an essay for critical examination in class, in the same way that students in advanced math classes use calculators to solve complex equations, skipping laborious, already-mastered skills. 

            The problem is that this requires “already-mastered skills” and a good student-teacher ratio, without which “flipped classrooms could exacerbate inequalities,” says Tufekci. “In schools with fewer resources, students may end up turning in AI-produced essays without obtaining useful skills or really knowing what they have written.” This, in turn, could lead to draconian surveillance systems to keep students from cheating (themselves), undermining trust and a positive school culture. 

            In the age of AI and information overload, concludes Tufekci, “the ability to discern truth from the glut of incorrect answers will be precious.” Plato’s fear of the printed word missed the mark; having the Odyssey in book form – not having to memorize all 12,000 lines – didn’t degrade human intelligence and discourse. Similarly, Tufekci argues, “we would be wrong to think we should resist a process that allows us to gather information more easily… The way forward is not to just lament supplanted skills, as Plato did, but also to recognize that as more-complex skills become essential, our society must equitably educate people to develop them. And it always goes back to the basics. Value people as people, not just as bundles of skills. And that isn’t something ChatGPT can tell us how to do.” 

“What Would Plato Think About Chat GPT?” by Zeynep Tufekci in The New York Times, December 18, 2022

In this article in Urban Education, Eric DeMeulenaere (Clark University) describes how he and two high-school teachers started their school year in a way that shook up the usual get-acquainted/syllabus-review/rules-and-expectations ritual for a group of 27 seniors:

-   The classroom lights were out and the blinds closed.

-   At the rear of the classroom, a projector displayed the question, Why are we here?

-   On a side wall in bold letters were several signs with life aspirations, including: Write a novel, Hike the Appalachian Trail, Be a Mom, Live off the grid.

-   Chairs were arranged in a circle, and students sauntered in and sat near their friends.

-   The teachers stood in a corner, backs to students, talking among themselves.

-   Three minutes passed, and students’ chit-chat subsided to puzzled whispers.

-   Finally one teacher walked to the middle of the circle and read a story about a painful conversation he had with his father, who had returned after abandoning the family.

-   The teacher said, “I’ve only shared that story with four people before today,” and then, gesturing to the back of the room, added, “This is partly why I am here today.”

This was the kick-off for an innovative “Roots and Routes” class in this low-performing urban high school in central Massachusetts, designed to change the usual pattern of very few students going on to post-secondary education. The group was drawn from every achievement level in the school – potential valedictorians and gang members, gamers and teen moms – and all, says DeMeulenaere, were “woefully underprepared for college.” The principal’s charge to the teachers and DeMeulenaere was to help students prepare for and apply to colleges – and teachers had free rein to try different methods.

            “While this project focuses on the internal and micro-level interactions of students and teachers in a single urban school classroom,” says DeMeulenaere, “it recognizes that the classroom culture is deeply influenced by the larger school and community context.” This included a depressed economy, poverty, and segregation, along with inadequate funding for the school, poor administrative decisions, less-than-effective teaching in some classrooms, and insufficient counseling and psychological services. Still, DeMeulenaere and his colleagues hoped to change the distrustful relationships between students and their middle-class teachers by shifting school rituals associated with factories and the military to trust-building rituals drawn from the theater and places of worship. 

            DeMeulenaere describes three other experiences from the first week of the Roots and Routes project (which took place during the 2008-09 school year), all designed to “shake the students free from going through the motions of schooling…”

• The altar – At the end of the first day, students were given a handmade artist book created by one of the teachers and given several days to create their bucket list and a symbol that represented themselves on their life journey. When they were finished several days later, students placed their books on a table at the back of the classroom decked out with a black tablecloth and candles to resemble an altar. DeMeulenaere shared his aspirational list and symbol, and invited students to follow suit. After an awkward silence and some giggling, one student stepped forward, and others followed, clearly investing in the ritual that couldn’t have been more different from standard school protocols. 

“The fact that no one could even assess these projects,” says DeMeulenaere, “that teachers completed this task alongside students, and that everyone shared their books in the class disrupted the status hierarchies in this classroom and began to forge new relationships between teachers and students. And through a collective and  ritualized sharing, each member of the classroom community was recognized for their individual humanity rather than their status role in the classroom.” 

• The mountain climb – On a hot day shortly after this, students were driven to the base of the tallest mountain in the region, divided into three teams, and dropped off at different locations. With no maps, compasses, or assistance from the teacher accompanying them, students were asked to figure out how to get to the top of the mountain. In addition, each group had an egg, a helium balloon, a bag of ice, and an opened 50-pound bottle of water; the challenge was to get to the mountaintop without breaking the egg, popping the balloon, spilling any of the water – and before the ice melted. 

Each group got lost at least once, says DeMeulenaere. Students expressed frustration that the teachers wouldn’t help them and struggled with the four items, especially the water container. But all the groups came up with creative solutions, including using hair ties and plastic bags to seal the top of the water bottle and using sticks and belts to harness the heavy jug. All students reached the summit before their ice melted, and there was great celebration and euphoria, with the first arrivals cheering on the others. One high-achieving student who initially wanted nothing to do with one member of her group who she believed was headed for prison was deeply moved by the leadership he took and, in her college essay, said she “began to see myself and the people I grew up with in a new light.” 

• The permanent marker incident – At the top of the mountain, one of the teachers noticed that several students had used a permanent marker to write their names on one of the stone lookouts. Before they returned to school, the teachers gathered students in a circle and asked them to reflect on the incident without saying anything. Back at school, there was a lengthy discussion in which some students said it wasn’t a big deal (like carving initials in a tree, a way of capturing the moment), others saying they should tell the principal and accept the consequences. But the discussion wound up in a different place: several of the perpetrators paid for cleaning supplies and those students, accompanied by others who weren’t complicit, returned to the mountain with their teachers and scrubbed the stone markers clean.

DeMeulenaere and his colleagues continued in this vein for the rest of the year, including taking students through a high ropes course, visiting their families, and returning several times to the “altar” to discuss students’ and teachers’ aspirations. The result was a higher level of trust within the group, students seeing their classmates in new and more-accepting ways, and improved academic achievement. 

“Teachers want students to do more than just go through the motions of schooling,” DeMeulenaere concludes. “But teachers too often fail to recognize that their deployment of scripted school rituals fosters routinized relationships marked by hierarchy, control, distrust, and disengagement. This is even more pronounced in urban schools where differences in the socioeconomic and racial backgrounds between teachers and students foster even greater distrust… Teachers committed to social change need to think beyond curriculum redesign and pedagogical innovation and begin to re-envision the micro-level interactions of classroom rituals.”

“Disrupting School Rituals” by Eric DeMeulenaere in Urban Education, January 2023 (Vol. 58, #1, pp. 59-86); DeMeulenaere can be reached at edemeulenaere@clarku.edu.

 In this Kappan article, Samuel Miller, Sarah Stallings, and Salem Metzger (University of North Carolina/Greensboro) and Dixie Massey (Seattle Pacific University) describe how a group of fourth graders read and answered questions on a passage about the discovery of penicillin. However, the teacher could see that students didn’t believe that bacteria were everywhere – and even if germs were present, kids assumed that frequent hand-washing and hand sanitizing would take care of any problems. The teacher faced a classic dilemma: moving on with the curriculum or spending more time addressing an obvious misconception.

            The teacher chose the latter, showing a YouTube video on how bacteria grow in different foods. Students were intrigued, realizing that they shouldn’t eat certain foods after bacteria had time to grow. Kids began asking questions about how to observe bacteria, how long it takes them to grow, and the chemicals used to preserve food – and they asked if they could conduct an experiment. This was the first of a series of follow-up activities that continued for the rest of the school year, including:

-   Students made a list of places to look for bacteria in the school and chose 12 to test. 

-   They looked at bacteria under a microscope (after donning white lab coats).

-   A retired microbiologist visited the class for two hours and answered questions.

-   The visitor mentioned that soft drinks contribute to bacteria in people’s mouths. 

-   Students conducted an experiment, putting baby teeth in cups of various soft drinks.

-   Students discussed the findings and debated replicating the experiment.

-   Some students reported eating food with less sugar

-   Students grew vegetables, discussing growth patterns, nutrition, and bacteria.

-   Other questions popped up, including why mold grows on homemade tortillas, not on hamburger rolls; why families save their children’s teeth; and what is compost and how it helps plants grow.

-   At the end of the year, some students took plants home and tended for them. 

Miller, Stallings, Massey, and Metzger applaud this teacher for following students’ interests. When teachers follow a standard curriculum by the book, say the authors, they risk “leading students to predetermined answers.” In this fourth-grade classroom, “making students’ voices the foundation upended the basic fabric of traditional classroom life” – and the result was far more engagement and learning. 

This raises “a question important to any discussion of student agency,” conclude Miller, Stallings, Massey, and Metzger: “If students provide the lead for instruction, will teachers follow?”

“A Lesson in Motion Stays in Motion: If Students Lead, Will Teachers Follow?” by Samuel Miller, Sarah Stallings, Dixie Massey, and Salem Metzger in Kappan, December 2022/January 

2023 (Vol. 104, #4, pp. 48-53); Miller can be reached at sdmille2@uncg.edu. 

 In the second of a three-part series in Literacy Research Association, Maren Aukerman (University of Calgary) says that some education journalists’ stories on the current phonics debate are based on “only a partial grasp of reading research.” When science journalists write stories about astrophysics, says Aukerman, they read up on astrophysics research. “The field of reading is no less specialized,” she argues, “involving thousands of scholars using a variety of research methods in robust dialogue with one another… Reporters must understand more than just one vocal corner of this research landscape.”

            Aukerman focuses her critique on recent articles in Time and The New York Times, which she says are typical of other reporting on the subject. She takes reporters to task for these shortcomings:

            • Weak connection to actual research – The Time and New York Times articles didn’t cite peer-reviewed studies, she says, and relied heavily on the outdated 2000 National Reading Panel report, suggesting incorrectly that it aligns with the current phonics push. The Time article discusses the widespread adoption of LTRS training, failing to mention a rigorous study showing no positive effect on student achievement. “Both journalists often relied on the word of ‘science of reading’ advocates,” says Aukerman, “failing to verify those statements against research… By drawing mostly on vociferous advocates of one approach and bolstering their claims primarily with other journalism, journalists create an echo chamber which itself is disconnected from reading research.” 

            • Misunderstanding terminology – Both articles say “three-cueing” consists of asking students to guess unknown words based on cues such as a picture on the page. But three-cueing is “a framework for analyzing errors to understand children’s decoding attempts,” says Aukerman. “In fact, educators can use it to identify when a child over-relies on guessing. After identifying the primary nature of children’s errors, teachers can guide them into attending to new information so they no longer need to guess.” For example, if a child says mother in place of mommy, the teacher suggests sliding a finger under the word to sound it out. A student who pronounces said so it rhymes with raid is asked if that makes sense in the sentence, supplementing phonics-based instruction with sense-making. This interactive approach is supported by some (but not all) research.

            • Spurious claims that one approach is settled science – Both the Time and New York Times articles said flatly that systematic phonics is the most effective way to teach reading. In fact, says Aukerman, the research is mixed, with some studies finding that phonics-intensive programs like Orton-Gillingham and LTRS have no positive effects. “Moreover,” she continues, “little research examines whether systematic phonics ultimately improves comprehension, which is arguably the gold standard; studies that do examine this have failed to find clear benefits.” The research on the interactive approach is also mixed, but “journalists often have a double standard,” says Aukerman, “pointing out the current lack of evidence for the long-term efficacy of interactive strategies approaches, but staying mum about a corresponding dearth of evidence regarding the longitudinal efficacy of more-exclusively phonics-based approaches.” 

            • Overselling phonics – “There is likely a limit to how much phonics instruction children should receive,” says Aukerman. “Phonics skills instruction alone produces less benefit than splitting time between skills instruction and practice in applying those skills to real texts; 25 or 30 minutes of targeted skills daily may be the sweet spot, which is pretty close to the average of what teachers already report doing.” In addition, first graders who already know how to decode words benefit less from phonics instruction, while their peers who enter the grade with weaker skills definitely need more. There are disagreements among educators and researchers on:

-   Ways to make phonics more engaging and effective;

-   Whether to teach phonics beyond first grade, given diminishing returns;

-   Whether to push phonics down to kindergarten;

-   The kinds of texts to use with emergent readers;

-   Whether interactive strategies contribute enough to warrant implementation.

“Intelligent, informed people can disagree about these issues,” says Aukerman. “Reading researchers regularly seek to persuade other researchers without dismissing those who see things differently as not listening to the science.”

            • Lack of context about previous phonics implementation – Neither the Time nor the New York Times articles, says Aukerman, tell the whole story about the Oakland, California schools, where first Open Court (phonics-emphasizing), then Units of Study (balanced literacy), were dumped for not producing results. In the case of Open Court, some researchers found a negative effect on many students’ reading, especially as kids moved up through the grades and encountered more-complex texts.

            “The idea that phonics can fix children’s reading ills is at least 70 years old,” Aukerman concludes, “yet results from other large-scale phonics reforms have also yielded disappointing results, including during the Reading First era in the U.S. and as England’s recent national curriculum mandates have played out. And Canada, which has relied mostly on a holistic, less phonics-intensive approach, has generally had excellent reading scores in international test comparisons.” Across time and around the world, the idea that phonics solves persistent reading problems is a myth. 

            The third of Aukerman’s articles will be summarized in the next Memo.

“The Science of Reading and the Media: Does the Media Draw on High-Quality Reading Research?” by Maren Aukerman in Literacy Research Association, December 7, 2022; Aukerman can be reached at maren.aukerman@ucalgary.ca. 

(Originally titled “The Beautiful Question”)

            “Our lives are lived in conversations,” says Jim Knight (Instructional Coaching Group) in this Educational Leadership article, “and when we ask better questions we have better conversations.” Knight suggests collecting questions and continuously tweaking and improving them. Good questions, he believes, are:

            • Empowering – They signal that I believe you have something important to say and I want to hear it. Examples: Which option gives you the most energy? On a scale of 1-10, how close was that class to how you wanted it to go?

            • Authentic – The person asking the question is curious to know the answer. Leading questions (Don’t you think the students would be more engaged if you asked more open-ended questions?) aren’t authentic; they’re advice packaged as a question.

            • Respectful – A question should build connections and give the other person credit for having ideas and solutions. Given the time we’ve got today, what’s the most important thing we should talk about? You’ve probably thought a lot about this. What are you thinking you might do? What advice would you give someone else who was in your situation?

            • Invitational – It gently probes: What will it feel like when your students hit their goal? What issue, if faced, would make a substantial difference in your class? What leads you to believe…?

“The Beautiful Question” by Jim Knight in Educational Leadership, December 2022/January 2022 (Vol. 80, #4, pp. 78-79); Knight can be reached at jimknight@mac.com.

 In this Edutopia article, Youki Terada and Stephen Merrill list the K-12 education research findings they consider the most significant in 2022 (click the link below for details):

-   Teachers can be both rigorous and caring, exacting and empathetic, challenging and kind.

-   Highlighting texts is an ineffective study method, but learning and retention improve if students learn how to generate graphic organizers and quiz themselves.

-   Cramming doesn’t work for long-term retention; retrieval practice (quick quizzing) and spacing review sessions over time are far more effective. 

-   Spending at least 80 percent of the school day in general education classes improves reading and math achievement for students with disabilities. 

-   Sketching concept maps – doodling with a purpose – deepens comprehension.

-   Free time between practice sessions is as helpful as practice itself when learning a new skill. 

-   Classroom decorations should be relevant and supportive versus overwhelming and distracting. 

-   For young students, integrate play, “gently guided by adults,” into the school day.

-   To teach letter-sound correspondence, have kids act out combinations with whole-body movements.

-   Students benefit from watching videos of lessons and being able to hit the pause button to consolidate learning, replaying when needed.

“The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2022” by Youki Terada and Stephen Merrill in Edutopia, December 7, 2022

In this article in Language Arts, Sanjuana Rodriguez and six colleagues announce the 2022 Orbis Pictus Award winner, honorees, and recommended children’s nonfiction books:

-   Nina: A Story of Nina Simone by Traci Todd, illustrated by Christian Robinson

-   Call and Response: A Story of Black Lives Matter by Veronica Chambers

-   Classified: The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell, illustrated by Natasha Donovan

-   Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown by Steve Sheinkin

-   Latinitas: Celebrating 40 Big Dreamers by Juliet Menéndez

-   Unbound: The Life and Art of Judith Scott by Joyce Scott, Brie Spanger, and Melissa Sweet, illustrated by Melissa Sweet

-   Butterfly for a King: Saving Hawai’i’s Kamehameha Butterflies by Susan Roth and Cindy Trumbore, illustrated by Susan Roth

-   Make Meatballs Sing: The Life and Art of Corita Kent by Matthew Burgess, illustrated by Kara Kramer

-   Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana by Brian Mitchell, Barrington Edwards, and Nick Weldon, illustrated by B.S. Edwards

-   Planet Ocean: Why We All Need a Healthy Ocean by Patricia Newman, illustrated by Annie Crawley

-   Pura’s Cuentos: How Pura Belpré Reshaped Libraries with Her Stories by Annette Bay Pimentel, illustrated by Magaly Morales

-   Sakamoto’s Swim Club: How a Teacher Led an Unlikely Team to Victory by Julie Abery, illustrated by Chris Sasaki

-   We Must Not Forget: Holocaust Stories of Survival and Resistance by Deborah Hopkinson

-   What’s in Your Pocket? Collecting Nature’s Treasures by Heather Montgomery, illustrated by Maribel Lechuga 

“2022 Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children” by Sanjuana Rodriguez, Eliza Braden, Suzanne Costner, Sophie Ladd, Julia López-Robertson, Noelle Mapes, and Jeanne Swafford in Language Arts, November 2022 (Vol. 100, #2, pp. 155-160)

  Positive News Stories from 2022 – This annual feature from Future Crunch and The Progress Network lists positive developments in the last year, grouped under human rights, conservation, global health, decarbonization, development, and animals. You might be surprised on which person “arguably did more for the climate than any individual in human history” (see #50).

“99 Good News Stories You Probably Didn’t Hear About in 2022” from Future Crunch and The Progress Network, December 16, 2022