AI (well, LLMs to be precise) has dominated my life for the past eighteen months. Every aspect of my career is now infused with the reality that my students have now the ability to generate a poem, an essay, or a reading reflection in seconds.
The existence of LLMs has made me question my very purpose as an English Language and Literature teacher. The thing about being an English teacher that makes LLMs so challenging is that my subject has two prongs, and LLMs allow students to pretend that they can do both:
1.) Students need to be able to display knowledge and understanding of the content of the course. This might look like the ability to define literary terms, to identify the tone and register of an essay, or explain why no one who actually understood the novel would ever hold a Great Gatsby-themed party, no matter how great they look in the clothes.
2.) Students need to be able to demonstrate that they know how to write. Maybe this will fall by the wayside now that LLMs do this work for them, but for the moment, I am required by BOTH of my mandated curricula (more on that below) to asses students for their ability to choose words, put the words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into longer pieces.
In short: I need to know how to function as an educator in an AI world. This blog will be a record of my journey. I'll post my ideas here (note: I am not specifying that they will be GOOD ideas). I'll try to keep up with educating reporting on the subject, and generally just grapple with my purpose along the way.
Before we begin, I had better get some stuff out of the way: my "inconvenient truths," if you will. There are a million reasons why my situation may be different than yours and, because of this, my learnings and observations may be more or less useful to you as this blog goes on. Here we go:
1.) I am in my early 50s. While I assume the world sees me as a lithe, energetic sprite with my finger on the pulse of what is current and exciting with the youngs, you may not agree with that assessment. I am a greying teacher in the twilight of my career, trying to cope with the biggest shift in education in a generation.
2.) I try my best, but I am a slow adopter of new technology. My presence on Blogger, a site which peaked in approximately the Year of our Lord 2003, might have already given this away to my more astute readers. Look, it's my summer. If I have to spend it thinking about ChatGPT, I am not learning Substack too.
3.) I am in Canada, and therefore do not generally face political pressure about the novels or content that I teach the way that some in other jurisdictions might. I feel very grateful for this.
4.) I deliver both the Ontario Ministry Curriculum and the International Baccalaureate Curriculum.
5.) I teach at an independent school*. This means that the students I teach (this is not always the case, but mostly) are coming from a place of financial stability and physical safety. Every child I work with knows that they can count on regular, nutritious meals, warm clothes in the winter, and a place to sleep at night.
6.) As of right now, I do not use ChatGPT or other LLMs to do anything related to my teaching. I'm not using it for anything I write in this blog. Maybe that will change as I learn through this blog. Maybe it will have to change. We'll see.
So, that's where we're starting. Come with me on this journey, if you'd like to. I hope you find something here. It's going to be a mess!
Alison
*In Canada, we often use the terms "independent school" and "private school" interchangeably. They both do rely on tuition funding, but they are different. A "private school" may be a for-profit enterprise. An "independent school" is not-for-profit, is overseen by a board of governors, and any surplus money at the end of the year goes back into the school. My school is inspected and accredited by the Ontario Ministry of Education, The Canadian Association of Independent Schools, and the International Baccalaureate.
