I transitioned to a new job this week. It’s amazing. Continuing my long-standing tradition of never writing about my day job, that’s all I will say about it. I’m also barred from discussing my oldest guy’s big adventure plans, even though we’re very proud of him. The younger guy had a health setback last week but is back at school.
If Ian’s health is okay and he can return to college this fall, I might be an empty nester this fall. I aspire to be an empty nester, though I will be super weepy about it.
It’s Friday, so five quick posts are coming your way.
Department of Education No More
Today, the president signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. If he can’t get congressional approval to eliminate the department, he’ll fire everyone until McMahan is the last remaining employee. The wrestling lady will sit at a desk in an empty building, doing crossword puzzles.
During his speech today, Trump used NAEP figures to justify eliminating the Department of Education. He said, 70 percent of students can’t read or write on grade level! All that is true. Last week, he eliminated the IES department, which administers the NAEP exam, so that’s perhaps the last time we’ll have that kind of information about student progress. Cutting the IES department was one of his stupider moves. Firing the quant guys is never a smart decision.
Was Trump able to make this bold move because he was backed by parents who were disgruntled by excessive school closures during COVID? I get it. I’m still disgruntled.
Trump repeatedly stressed funding for special education, high-poverty schools, and Pell Grants for low-income students. We’ll see. Last week, the wrestling lady didn’t know what IDEA was.
Read more at Apt. 11d, The newsletter
Apt. 11d 
“Do you know what else is making our kids dumb? AI and cheating.“
We have to drastically change the way we teach, and professors aren’t up for that. Even the classroom itself is an artifact of the past. I’m in the twilight years of my teaching career, and I have to rethink everything I’ve been doing. It’s crazy. (And I’m not talking about content – content is still the same. I am talking about delivery of content so that students will learn.) One thing I’ve been doing is to stop giving quizzes. I call them “memory exercises,” and I explain to students that it’s not about getting a grade; it’s about relearning how to learn and how to retrieve information without the help of a technology tool. We rely so much on these technologies because we “streamlined” a lot of workflow because of higher workloads/expectations. But in the end, all the streamlining/technologies don’t help us save time. They take up more time than ever.
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Last year I heard college admissions people talking about all of the AI in the application essays. I don’t remember where, but I recall one person addressing a crowd of admitted scholarship students with something like “congratulations on being among those who did not use ChatGPT to write your essays.”
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There was an article in the Chronicle complaining that there was nothing to do about AI, where the prof basically knew a student wrote a paper with AI but gave him an A anyway, because the student lied well. This is not the way to go! But as Wendy says the other approaches are very time-consuming. In my online classes I now do oral midterms (on Zoom) and am very upfront about the fact that if I suspect AI I will meet with students for as long as it takes, and may require them to do various exercises (print out hard copies of primary sources and mark them up, record themselves reading and analyzing texts out loud – I haven’t tried this yet, just threatened it).
In online discussion boards, I have fantastic conversations with my nontraditional students who can only take classes online and enjoy talking to each other, and my good traditional students know what AI sounds like and avoid it like the plague on the boards. But my active participation in monitoring these boards – and taking the time to call out and meet with students who seem to be using AI (and being very careful to allow them to defend themselves, because I know I am not a perfect detector) – and the added time for midterms – all adds up. I know for sure that two students dropped right after I sent a balanced “let’s talk about your work” email. One student who has actually come in to meet with me twice (and acknowledged genAI use) is learning how not to use it and I have *maybe* convinced him that no one will hire him if all he can do is cut-paste-click-cut-paste.
I try to think of it as the kind of adaptation we all did during the pandemic – I never knew how to teach on Zoom but I learned! – and for other types of technology (learning powerpoint was not something I did in grad school!) It sucks but teaching involves constantly being on top of changes.
af (at some point I will learn how to post as myself rather than Anonymous)
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