Postmortem on a Digital Year

I'm just beginning to chart a new course for next year.

I have always been a teacher (and a person) who is technologically forward. I loved using computers as a kid in the '90s and I carried that through into my teaching where I have pushed for digital writing portfolios, digital notebooks, online discussions, more tech in the classroom, etc.

But all this last year, I felt the ground shifting beneath my feet. The tech... it isn't helping. While so many school districts went one-to-one on devices years ago, my massive (and massively underfunded) red-state district is finally lumbering into the 21st century. It's only in the last few years that we got smart boards and laptop carts. The irony is that while we're finally catching up to ed tech trends of the last decade, the rest of the country is starting to figure something else out: this tech isn't so good. From parents starting to opt kids out of tech to the risk of AI turning all students' brains to mush, education leaders are now advocating against screens and chatbot access.

In my neck of the woods, I see a school culture of all screens all day. While some of the best teachers at my school are huge advocates of AI and incorporate not just into their teaching and personal lives but encourage others to do so through PD and coaching, I see how this has given the not-all-star teachers around me permission to sit their students in front of laptops and ignore them. In my English department, cynicism is at an all time high. Kids aren't reading because they aren't being assigned books. When I ask those teachers about why they haven't assigned reading all year, they say the kids won't read, don't read, and would just cheat with AI if they were asked to. When I walk down the halls, glancing in rooms (because I'm nosey), it's just students sitting on their phones or staring at school laptops, drool slowly falling from one corner of their mouths.

In my classroom specifically, I noticed three new things this year: 1. in Creative Writing, an elective in every sense of the word, students were cheating with AI, some of whom DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE between having something written for them and writing it themselves and when I told them they had to come up with their own ideas and write those ideas down looked at me like I'd just asked them to shoe a horse. 2. In AP Seminar the instances of AI cheating went from a few maybes to a lot of maybes and more than a few definitelys. 3. The little fuckers aren't any better at actually using computers. If the argument is that all this tech use is preparing them to be in a digital workforce, the ones making that argument have another thing coming. So many students don't understand the basics of how files are saved. You would think that after a year in my tech-heavy writing class they would at least know how to use MS Word, but... don't test them on it!

As a parent, I want something different for my kids. I want them to have the same opportunities I had (I mean, most parents want something better for their children, but it's become abundantly clear that what's happening in school right now is so much worse that I'd be happy to settle for the same). I want them to engage in discussions with their teachers and peers. I want them to read books that open their eyes to the world around them and the depths within them. I want them to make friends, listen to lectures that bore them and occasionally enlighten them, struggle with something they don't know how to do and level up their personal grit by sticking to that hard thing. I want them to use their hands as well as their minds. I want... I want them to go to school and fucking learn!

If I'm going to give my students what I would want teachers to give my kids, I'm leaning towards doing something radical. Pen and paper. Not just no phones, but no screens. I'm well aware that for AP Seminar, this poses a unique challenge.

But I like a challenge... and I have no interest in sitting complacently while education is replaced with assignment completion.