There, I said it. That’s my hot take. We need to get rid of AP courses.
Why? Because they’ve been pushed down the throat of our education system for the past twenty years, pitched as an equity solution because we should be offering the best content to everyone.
I agree 100% with that statement. Every student needs access to the same high-quality, highly relevant, highly personalized content and pedagogy. We need our teachers to be the very best, to create authentic, engaging learning environments that not only teach our students how to learn and grow but also how to be good people and participate in society.
That’s not what AP tests or courses do. They certainly don’t do it for most students.
I know the argument for having AP courses is that they are more rigorous and require more from students. But the reason they do those things is because of the AP test students take at the end of the course.
And they take that test to earn college credit. And that is the only reason. No one takes an AP course because it sounds exciting or they want to be a professional AP course taker.
They take them so they can pass the test and get college credit. Which doesn’t happen for most of them.
Getting college credit after taking an AP course is a crap shoot, at best. At worst, it’s a waste of time. This isn’t a new argument, and I’m sure it will continue to be argued long into the future. Students hate it, and some professionals have noted the need for improvement in the system or even other companies entering the arena to give the College Board some competition.
I don’t want competition. I want the AP system gone. It isn’t serving the purpose we need, which is rethinking and redesigning Tier 1 instruction in ALL classrooms for EVERY student.
That’s the goal.
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“The month of November makes me feel that life is passing more quickly. In an effort to slow it down, I try to fill the hours more meaningfully.” – Henry Rollins
Is it just me, or are the short work weeks the ones filled with craziness? It’s been a crazy busy week around these parts, and it’ll be even crazier as we head toward Thanksgiving.
Innovation spreads faster when you can observe it happening. Seeing is believing.
Alice Keeler has a great FigJam activity on gratitude you can use with your whole class (FigJam, btw, is my recommended replacement for the soon-to-be-extinct Jamboard)
Finally, I wonder if the Manifesto of the Idle Parent could be modified into a Manifesto of the Idle Teacher. Certainly, we should push our students to do more and more of the work on their own as they grow, giving us time to help those who still struggle. Oh, and give us time to drink coffee…
BONUS: I’ve been jamming to this album from Azymuth, a Brazilian jazz-funk band. It’s fantastic and makes for great background music while you work
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Catlin Tucker continues to lead the way in blended learning. Her most recent post outlines the three pillars of high-quality blended learning.
Tucker describes the three pillars of successful blended learning are student agency, differentiation, and control over the learning pace. Student agency involves giving students meaningful choices in their learning process, such as content-based choices on subjects or topics and process-based decisions on learning approaches or resources, fostering a sense of responsibility and engagement.
Differentiation, the second pillar, requires adjusting teaching methods to address each student’s unique needs and abilities. This could involve varying assignments based on proficiency levels or providing structured guides for students who need additional support. The final pillar is student control over the pace of learning. Misalignment between the pace of learning and the learner’s needs can lead to disengagement or distraction; therefore, granting students autonomy over the speed at which they learn enhances engagement and success. By integrating these pillars, educators can create robust blended learning environments, enhancing student engagement and improving educational outcomes.
As the new school year begins, it’s essential for teachers to equip themselves with the right tools to navigate the challenges ahead. Among these tools, books can be a great source of inspiration, guidance, and self-care. Here are ten books that every teacher should consider reading as they embark on a new academic year.
The Happy Teacher Habits: 11 Habits of the Happiest, Most Effective Teachers on Earth by Michael Linsin
This book provides practical strategies for teachers to maintain positivity and effectiveness in the classroom. Linsin emphasizes the importance of habits in shaping our lives and offers insights on how to develop habits that lead to happiness and success in teaching.
Quote: “Happiness isn’t something that just happens to you. It’s a choice. It’s a decision you make every morning, that you’re going to have a good day.”
Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by Rafe Esquith
Esquith shares his innovative teaching methods and the extraordinary results they have yielded in his classroom. His passion for teaching and advocating for his students is infectious.
Quote: “Real success is when a teacher is able to work under the hardest conditions and still turn out to be a great person. That’s real success.”
The Self-Care Solution: A Year of Becoming Happier, Healthier, and Fitter–One Month at a Time by Jennifer Ashton, M.D.
This book is a must-read for teachers who want to prioritize their health and well-being. Dr. Ashton provides a month-by-month guide to self-care that includes diet, exercise, and mental health strategies.
Quote: “Self-care is not selfish. You cannot serve from an empty vessel.”
The Power of a Positive Team: Proven Principles and Practices that Make Great Teams Great by Jon Gordon
Gordon’s book is a guide to maintaining positivity and unity within a team, making it a great read for teachers who want to foster a positive learning environment.
Quote: “A positive team is not just about being connected to each other. It’s about being committed to each other.”
Educated by Design: Designing the Space to Experiment, Explore, and Extract Your Creative Potential by Michael Cohen
This book encourages teachers to advocate for creativity in the classroom. Cohen provides a roadmap for designing a creative space that encourages students to explore their potential.
Quote: “Creativity is not just about making ‘stuff’, it’s more importantly about developing a creative thinking mindset.”
The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life by Parker J. Palmer
Palmer’s book delves into the heart of the teaching profession, exploring the inner lives of educators. It’s a powerful read for teachers seeking to reconnect with their passion for the profession.
Quote: “Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher.”
Teach, Breathe, Learn: Mindfulness In and Out of the Classroom by Meena Srinivasan
Srinivasan offers insights into how mindfulness can help teachers manage stress and foster a peaceful classroom. It’s a practical guide for teachers seeking to achieve work-life balance.
Quote: “When we cultivate our own mindfulness, we’re actually benefiting our students indirectly because we’re modeling what it looks like to be present.”
The Burnout Cure: Learning to Love Teaching Again by Chase Mielke
Mielke’s book is a lifeline for teachers feeling the strain of burnout. It provides strategies for maintaining enthusiasm for teaching and advocating for the profession.
Quote: “We can’t control the kids or the content or the new initiatives or the old initiatives, but we can control how we think and feel about them.”
The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller
Miller’s book is a testament to the power of reading and the impact a passionate teacher can have on their students. It’s a must-read for teachers who want to inspire a love of reading in their students.
Quote: “There is no program, no method, no teacher who can create readers. What we can do is provide the conditions that allow reading to happen.”
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown
Brown’s book explores the concept of vulnerability and how it can lead to greater connection and a more fulfilling life. It’s a powerful read for teachers who want to foster deeper connections with their students and colleagues.
Quote: “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.”
Each of these books offers unique insights into the teaching profession, self-care, and maintaining a positive attitude. As you prepare for the new school year, consider adding these books to your reading list. They may provide just the inspiration you need to make this year your best yet.
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Cuban begins by recounting his career journey, which spans from his start as a high school teacher in 1955 to his time as a district superintendent and later as a professor at Stanford. He emphasizes that his career, while marked by many successes, was also filled with failures, which he believes are often overlooked in discussions about career progression.
Cuban writes, “While on the surface my long career as an educator appears as an unvarnished success albeit a modest one, it was a zig-zag path with cul-de-sacs and, truth be told, a road pitted with potholes of failure.” He argues that failures are an integral part of success and that society’s tendency to avoid discussing failures does a disservice to the reality of most people’s career trajectories.
He shares several instances of his own failures, including being rejected for teaching positions, struggling to connect with certain students, failing to reduce racial tensions in a department he administered, and being turned down for numerous superintendent posts and a deanship at Stanford’s School of Education. He also discusses his failures in getting published, with many of his submissions being rejected by publishers and editors.
Cuban emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and learning from failures. He quotes several famous figures to illustrate his point, including basketball star Michael Jordan, Winston Churchill, and Maya Angelou. He writes, “Defeats were doors that closed in my face. Yet other doors opened.” He explains that failures can lead to new opportunities and that persistence in the face of failure can lead to eventual success.
In conclusion, Cuban states, “Looking back at my career and the mix of success and failure make clear to me how complex the interaction between winning and losing is.” He underscores the importance of adopting a growth mindset and learning from failure, making it clear that success and failure are integral parts of any career journey.
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According to a survey conducted by the Walton Family Foundation and Impact Research, the use of AI tools among teachers has seen a significant increase, growing 13 percentage points from winter to summer. The survey found that 63% of teachers are now using AI, up from 50% in February. On the other hand, student participation has also increased but at a slower pace, rising from 33% to 42% during the same period.
The survey results revealed that a large majority of teachers (84%) who have used ChatGPT reported that the AI technology has positively impacted their classes. As the use of AI in education continues to grow, Common Sense Media announced plans to develop an in-depth AI ratings and reviews system to assess AI products used by children and educators on responsible AI practices and other factors.
The article also mentions that while some districts have blocked ChatGPT and other AI-powered tools, others are exploring how the technology can improve education workplace practices. As interest and use intensify, many education professionals are searching for guidance and credible sources of information on ways to safely and effectively incorporate AI.
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Mary Beth Hertz, a high school teacher, leverages AI to educate her students about the nuances and biases inherent in artificial intelligence. She encourages her students to interact with ChatGPT, fostering a deeper understanding of AI’s strengths and limitations. In her entrepreneurship class, ChatGPT is used as a tool to refine mission statements and business pitch language.
Paul Wilkinson, a teacher of secondary English and social studies, employs AI to devise learning challenges for his students and provide them with comprehensive feedback. He uses AI to create curriculum-based content, formulate rubrics, and offer personalized feedback to each student. He also designed a reflection assignment to enhance students’ metacognitive skills.
Mick McMurray, a teacher specializing in marketing and entrepreneurship, uses ChatGPT as an assistant for student assignments. He crafted a series of ChatGPT prompts for a high school marketing class project, leading to an engaging “choose your own adventure” reading experience for the students.
Of course, the article underscores that while the use of generative AI in K-12 settings is still emerging, it holds the potential to boost student creativity, enhance writing skills, and provide students with a clear understanding of AI’s limitations. The educators involved believe that when used wisely, AI tools can serve as valuable partners in the learning journey.
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I finished up the Licanius Trilogy this week. What a complex, mind-bending journey into a new realm of fantasy and magic. I came away with a couple of favorite characters and a new way of thinking about how to write epic fantasy.
If you’re on Goodreads or Storygraph, let’s connect and see where our reading journeys take us.
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In the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence (AI), we are constantly faced with new challenges and ethical dilemmas. One such issue has recently been brought to light by a study published in The Guardian. The study reveals a concerning bias in AI detection tools, particularly against non-native English speakers.
These AI detection tools are designed to identify whether a piece of text has been written by a human or generated by an AI. They are increasingly being used in academic and professional settings to prevent what some consider a new form of cheating – using AI to write essays or job applications. However, the study found that these tools often incorrectly flag work produced by non-native English speakers as AI-generated.
The researchers tested seven popular AI text detectors using 91 English essays written by non-native speakers. Over half of these essays, written for the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), were incorrectly identified as AI-generated. In stark contrast, when essays written by native English-speaking eighth graders in the US were tested, over 90% were correctly identified as human-generated.
The bias seems to stem from how these detectors assess what is human and what is AI-generated. They use a measure called “text perplexity”, which gauges how “surprised” or “confused” a generative language model is when trying to predict the next word in a sentence. Large language models like ChatGPT are trained to produce low perplexity text, which means that if humans use a lot of common words in a familiar pattern in their writing, their work is at risk of being mistaken for AI-generated text. This risk is greater with non-native English speakers, who are more likely to adopt simpler word choices.
The implications of these findings are serious. AI detectors could falsely flag college and job applications as AI-generated, and marginalize non-native English speakers on the internet, as search engines such as Google downgrade what is assessed to be AI-generated content. In education, non-native students bear more risks of false accusations of cheating, which can be detrimental to a student’s academic career and psychological well-being.
In light of these findings, Jahna Otterbacher at the Cyprus Center for Algorithmic Transparency at the Open University of Cyprus suggests a different approach. Instead of fighting AI with more AI, we should develop an academic culture that promotes the use of generative AI in a creative, ethical manner. She warns that AI models like ChatGPT, which are constantly learning from public data, will eventually learn to outsmart any detector.
This study serves as a reminder that as we continue to integrate AI into our lives, we must remain vigilant about its potential unintended consequences. It’s crucial that we continue to question and scrutinize the tools we use, especially when they have the potential to discriminate or cause harm. As we move forward, let’s ensure that our use of AI in education and other sectors is not only innovative but also fair and ethical.
For more details, you can read the full article here.
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The open crowdsourced collection by #creativeHE is a dynamic compilation of 101 innovative uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education, created in early 2023. This collection embodies collective creativity and the spirit of experimentation, offering a range of ideas in their nascent stages that could potentially revolutionize learning, development, teaching, and assessment. It emphasizes the importance of diverse perspectives and a collaborative community of practice, providing numerous examples of inventive AI applications in education.
As educators design new learning experiences and unique engagement opportunities, this collection serves as an inspiration to push boundaries, collaborate radically, and innovate for a transformational student experience. The collection is expected to grow as educators continue to experiment and evolve their practices in the realm of AI in education.
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![by Donalyn Millerand - The Book Whisperer: Awakening The Inner Reader in Every Child (Paperback) Jossey-Bass; 1 Edition (March 16, 2009) - [Bargain Books]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/518G+WAd9-L._SL160_.jpg)
