AI Is Not the Wave of the Educational Future

Q:  What is worse than spending ten straight hours grading narrative essays?

A:  Spending many of those hours grading narrative essays that are obviously generated via AI.

Q:  What is worse than grading AI-generated narrative essays?

A:  Knowing that the students who used AI will be incapable of and unwilling to write the MCAS essays when the state tests occur in five weeks.

I have been teaching for a really long time, and my areas of expertise are subject-specific, grade-based, and test-prep informed. The required state standards for my subject matter are no longer mastered in elementary school through no fault of the teachers and through the entire fault of the business-based school model that stresses social-emotional content over academic proficiency. This model has been crashing and burning for years now with no apparent slowing. The wreckage has been visible through both state testing and the rising need for academic triage.

You might be tricked into believing that I am untrained in the latest and greatest trends in my field. We "elderly" educators are just as savvy as (and, in some content, more so than) the newest churned-out crop of professional teachers. That's one of the benefits and also one of the curses of state-mandated professional development. Here's what you should never be tricked by: AI is not the wave of the educational future. 

Before you jump all over me with the "You just don't understand technology or how it works" blasphemy, I'm quite certain that technology has its place even in my field. After all, I use technology when I write. I rely heavily on an electronic classroom platform to post assignments and to do my planning and to track the standards. I integrate all kinds of technology-based lessons to teach, to reinforce, and to chart data.

Here's where I will go toe-to-toe with you: AI has zero place in graded writing at the middle school level. (Okay, at any academic level, but I digress.) Zero. And that's the grade that I am tempted to give my 20% or so students who clearly used AI (and also cheated with each other using AI). 

The irony of all of this, of course, is that technology is supposed to make our lives easier, more efficient, and less mistake-filled. Instead, these AI-generated narrative essays are grammatically muddled, difficult to grade, and full of topical errors. King Arthur's wizard Merlin working at Market Basket and driving a Tesla? Yeah, I doubt that, especially when the same key words end up in a dozen essays that all suck as much as the other AI-generated ones do.

Recommendation to parents: Buy your kids some pencils and pens (and please tell them that highlighters are NOT writing utensils). I'll provide the lined paper. We are going old-school for writing. It's a sad day when I would prefer to slog through handwritten essays by kids who never mastered holding a pencil (lest it hurt their fragile psyche) rather than grading typed essays using premade rubrics. I much prefer students who are willing to try and actually think than those who coast through a few key strokes and hit "print."

DON'T CALL IT UNTIL YOU CAN CALL IT

New Englanders, especially the old timers, are incredibly hardy. 

You know why we keep talking about the Blizzard of '78? Because it was fracking amazing, that's why. It thunder-snowed sideways for three straight days. It snowed so fast that the plows couldn't keep up with it (hence people abandoning vehicles on highways). Even though the sun came out and it was warm and beautiful when it all ended, the snowbanks were so tall that no one could see to drive around corners or through intersections. Everything was closed for a week or more. We all just walked everywhere, right down the middle of streets and freeways, and partied straight for a solid seven days.

Now, we have today's New England snow storms. Essentially, each is a non-event. The fact that the weather forecasters have the latest technology available and still cannot get it right is beyond me. Take last week, for example. It was 50 degrees, kids were playing outside without coats, and the air did not have that distinctive stink of snow. In other words, where I live would be a snow-free zone.

Superintendents all across the state panicked. Gawd forbid the parents actually have to get up in the morning and . . . gasp . . . plan. Newsflash: Parents plan anyway. We plan for possible snow days. We plan for early releases. We plan for all kinds of contingencies. 

What is absolutely worse than a snow day? A snow day without snow.

This was our big "blizzard" last week - we didn't even get a dusting of snow. Barely even a flake fell, and, when it hit the warm ground, it melted instantly. This was the dire event that forecasters hyped up so forcibly that even garbage collection was cancelled. Anyone who lives in New England and considers an amount of snowfall under a foot to be "a significant event" is either a Newbie or a moron. A foot of snow is chump change here in New England. A significant amount of snow starts around eighteen inches and goes up from there. 

Okay, so a few parts of the state, mostly to the south or along the coast, did see snow. Excellent. Bully for you. The rest of us lost a much-needed work day. Schools now have to make up a non-snow snow day in June, when we want to be on vacation or at sports camps or at the beach.

So, if you wonder why people still talk about the Blizzard of '78, it could be because people had brains back then. People didn't call off school or garbage collection or close stores or businesses or government offices until they actually saw snow, until it actually happened. Yes, we had to watch the television or listen to the radio or rely on phone trees to get the word out, but I'm pretty certain none of us was dumb enough to go to school in a blizzard nor stay home when it remained dry.

Yes, we're not just hardy, we old timers are practical, as well. Must be all the snow we slogged through.

TOTING AROUND MY STASH

I have an addiction. No, it's not that kind of addiction. I am addicted to buying (and reading) books. Despite having a backlog of about fifty physical books and probably two hundred e-books, I continue to trade in books at the Used Book Superstore and bring home more and more and more books.

I go to bookstores in other towns, states, and even other countries. Yes, when I was in Montreal, I went into a bookstore in an all-French neighborhood, although I have not spoken any real French since I left sixth grade.

It's a sickness.

Every time I visit family in North Carolina, I go in search of bookstores. I can't find the independent one I am looking for, so I end up at the Flying Biscuit cafe, instead. After I eat breakfast for lunch, I hit my back-up bookstore, Barnes and Noble. 

I don't need a book. I have a book with me and I have my phone with both Kindle and Nook e-books already loaded. But, I go in anyway. I peruse the magazines, decide that Taylor Swift graces too many covers for my sanity, then pick up a travel book for an upcoming trip to the west coast.

As I get to the register, the woman asks me if I have a membership. I do have one, for another few months, anyway, because my educator discount has been discontinued, so teachers get a free year of B&N premium. Turns out I get a free tote bag.

I need another Tote bag like Castro needs another cigar, so I almost decline, but, in the end, I agree to it, thinking it will be some cheap muslin or plastic thing. Instead, I get a choice of three different heavy-duty canvas bags. The nice ones. The twenty dollar ones.

Score! 

I choose a black and gold bag (Bruins colors), and I happily leave with my merchandise. Like I said, I don't need any more books, but now I have some great swag inside of which I can hide more books. So, I guess it all works out in the end.

SPRINKLING SOME COMMON SENSE

Signs like this should not be necessary:

"Do not drink drain clog gel."

"Refrain from sticking body parts into animal cages."

"Rat poison is not candy."

"Do not cross the road in traffic."

"Do not stick your mouth over the car tailpipe."

I think I may have encountered the ultimate example of human stupidity. Well, via signage, anyway. And I am still trying to figure out who on this crazy planet we call Earth could have attempted this so that a sign would ever be necessary.

I am at a hotel -- a newer, lovely Marriott in an area full of shops and restaurants and all kinds of cool places within walking distance. The hotel is mid-range financially, so I doubt there will be silverfish in the bathroom, and any available room service will not be delivered with white gloves. It's clean, it's modern, it's quiet, it's very comfortable, and it has some higher-end amenities. 

I really like the bathroom. It has a huge walk-in shower with a decent-sized rainfall showerhead, and there is a pass-through shelf where I can leave a rolled-up towel (or, I suppose, a mixed drink). I have tons of towels, considering that it's just me. I have plenty of room on both sides of the sink to set up my make-up and earrings on one side, and my dental stuff and hair stuff on the other. There is a huge light-up mirror over the sink along with an adjustable table-top magnifying mirror, too.

Therein lies the rub.

It is the adjustable mirror that first catches the problem with the bathroom. I see something over my shoulder but, because the mirror is at an angle, the view is actually of the ceiling. I stand and peer into the light-up mirror over the sink and catch a glimpse of the same thing but from a slightly different angle. Finally, I turn around and stare up at the top of the bathroom.

There is a fire sprinkler head in the ceiling. No big deal, right? I mean, that's where the thing belongs, in case of fire. It's not the sprinkler itself that is the curiosity. It is the sign that is stuck on the ceiling next to it:  "Contact with sprinkler will cause flooding." Still not a problem, correct? I have seen a soccer ball smack into a sprinkler head at an indoor arena and flood the entire sports complex, so it makes perfect sense to me. 

No, it's not the words that constitute the absurdity. It's the illustration on the warning. There is a coat hanger with a red line across across it.

That's right. A coat hanger.

This means that some moron in a Marriott hotel somewhere decided to suspend clothing on a hanger from the sprinkler head, probably even spun it around for fun, and proceeded to flood an entire hotel because once the system is triggered . . . 

Please, people, if you are that incredibly stupid, please, please, please stop breeding. Stop reproducing. Stop sending your spawn to public schools. Just. Stop. 

Stop, so that the rest of us can continue to experience the little hotel amenities that we have come to enjoy, like clean rooms and bathrooms with running water. Stop making signs like this necessary. And to the sign makers, please start producing signs that the rest of us can truly appreciate:

"If you don't know that this is NOT a coat rack, please drink this poison, stick your head in this tiger cage, or run across the track at a motor speedway."