Observations After Two Years Away From the Desk

I have just completed my second school year out of the full time classroom. Because of conference speaking, my edu-Twitter circle of friends, and substitute teaching, I still have the chance to observe the changes that are happening in education as not quite an outsider. Here's what I've noticed.

The post-Covid attendance and behavior issue is not getting better.

Before Covid, school attendance was always assumed. Kids may have faked an illness to get their parents to let them stay home for a day, or a parent may have decided their child needed a mental health day; but for the most part, kids came to school most days. Parents didn't plan a two-week European vacation during the school year and expect kids could just return and pick up with no negative impact. In the year after the pandemic restricted travel, we thought people were just itching to travel somewhere because they hadn't been able to. It turns out this thing that had once been a given (regular school attendance) was now viewed as optional in a way that did re-stabilize after that first year. Because it is an issue of parental attitude, I don't know what the solution is, but kids cannot learn if they are not present. It doesn't matter how many videos they watch or the fact that they "make up" their work; it doesn't replicate being taught in the classroom (and wouldn't it be sad if it did?). Something's got to change to return regular attendance to the norm.

Just as attitudes about attendance changed during Covid, so did attitudes about behavior. I'm not saying everyone behaved perfectly before; they certainly did not. But, most behavior issues could be addressed with normal routines, procedures, and consequences. And, with a few notable outliers in each school, a call to the parents would result in improvement. Now, the parent is much more likely to accuse the school of gaslighting, demand to see video, or claim that the teacher "shamed" their child. Parents have difficulty understanding what behavior contagion looks like when there are 25-35 kids in a room. The resulting chaos makes learning impossible. Even experienced teachers with well established classroom managements skills are finding it harder to keep control. May I recommend Tom Bennett's excellent book Running the Room. It reminds you that having an adult in charge is good for learning and good for the safety and security of students, and it is super practical.

Efforts at helping kids with anxiety are counterintuitive

One of the reasons behavior has gotten worse is that kids are more anxious than ever. This didn't start with the pandemic. The graph on self-reported anxiety remained at a relatively steady low/medium low rate until about 2012. While the angle of the slope did increase in 2020, it started with the ubiquity of the smart phone in teenage pockets, not with the pandemic. Access to social media was 24/7, so there was no escaping the bullies or the FOMO, and healthy social time with friends and family was reduced. Normal teenage anxieties ballooned into diagnoses of anxiety disorders and 504 plans for schools.

We began attempting to address this before the pandemic with the implementation of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs. The theory was that if we taught kids breathing techniques and mindfulness, they would be better able to self-regulate. We taught lessons about empathy and kindness. We hoped all of this would reduce anxiety, but these lessons took time, which had to be created by removing something. What got reduced? Music, art, history, and science. Since reading and math get tested, they are usually safe, but sacrificing the arts for SEL was never going to reduce anxiety. Stand alone SEL lessons don't help anyway; those lessons should be weaved throughout during teachable moments, not taught in isolation.

So, what did we try next? Reducing the workload. Less homework should result in less anxiety, right? Easier classes should reduce the pressure and alleviate anxiety, yes? Eliminating writing standards to focus on student self-expression should serve as therapy, shouldn't it? All of that is well meaning, but it doesn't work because it's not how human beings are made. When we make classes easier, the unintended implicit messaging is "You can't handle this," decreasing their self image. When we eliminate homework to help with anxiety, their already anxious minds tell them, "Your teachers think you are weak." It has the exact opposite effect that we intend.

It's counterintuitive, but the best way to help a student deal with anxiety is to give them something challenging to do. Accomplishing things makes students feel . . . well, accomplished. Meeting a challenge makes them feel competent. When did we forget that there is satisfaction in a job well done? Doing hard things is the antidote to anxiety, not the cause of it. 

Schools are reckoning with the effects of EdTech

I'm going to admit to feel conflicted about this one. I was part of the committee at my school that adopted our one-to-one laptop program 16 years ago. I helped pick the tech and was a cheerleader for the pedagogy changes that came with it. So, when I read the research about the negative impacts of EdTech, I believe it, but I am also inclined to say, "We did some really great things with it."  And we did - especially in the first few years after adoption. Using the SAMR model, we had kids doing things and interacting with the world outside of the school walls in a way that wouldn't have been possible before. 

But the energy level required to keep up that level of great tech use was unsustainable in the end. So, they devolved into mostly digital note-taking devices (and distractions) with occasional good uses. Some schools are opting to eliminate their tech altogether, but that is, in my opinion, an overreaction. We have a tendency to swing the pendulum back to the other side rather than find the sweet spot between the two extremes. We want to still have those projects that require computers; we just don't want them to be sitting in front of them at all times. So, maybe we should go back to the carts of laptops that could be checked out when the lesson or project requires them. It would certainly cost schools a lot less than one to one programs, and much less time would be invested in computer hand outs, trouble shooting, and end-of-year collection. Just a thought.

Generative AI is a real problem - like even more than we anticipated it would be

I remember the first time I heard about ChatGPT, although I didn't know its name yet. It was fall of 2022, just one year after the endurance test that was hybrid teaching; so we were still exhausted and suffering from post chronic stress disorder (not a real diagnosis, but it should be). We were in a department chair meeting, and principal said, "There something coming out that we're going to have to think about. It's a program that will allow students to ask for a report on a topic and tell it what level it should be at so it will sound real. And it will be harder to catch because you can't just Google some of the sentences and find it on a website." We all agreed that sounded terrible and wondered how the English department was going to handle that. Little did we know that it would affect so much more than essay writing. 

If you are reading this, you don't need me to tell you how quickly this spread. Some students view their chatbot as a friend and ask it for advice. Math homework is no longer an exercise in skill practice. Some have been so brazen as to take a photo of their test paper and upload it to an AI and let it take their exam for them. Lest you think the answer is to collect their phones on the way in, some teachers have posted that their students turned in a burner phone so that they could use their real phone during the exam. As with all new tech, there is a naive sector that says, "This will be fine. We'll just teach them to use it well." That didn't work with social media or phones, but here we go again.

I wish I had an answer to this, but I don't. So far, the best I have come up with is to build a time machine and go back to shake some sense into Sam Altman before he starts OpenAI, but I don't think that's the solution. 

I'm sorry for the negative tone here; it's just that there are some real problems to be solved. 

But I have a few reasons for optimism. 

• College students around America have been booing speakers who reference AI in their speeches. I'm not okay with the rudeness of booing a speaker, but I do find it heartening that the young are not fully on board with artificial intelligence. After the novelty wears off, students might crave real experiences. 
• There are groups called Do Hard Things clubs - started by students who didn't like the low expectations people had of them. They may not be the total solution to the anxiety epidemic, but they are certainly going to help.
• There are still a small number of students who will turn in cheating when they see it. 

Teaching is hard, and the developments of the past few years have made it harder. Graduation is either here or coming soon for most of you.  Rest well this summer. You have earned.