jamminjava.bsky.social
Light of the world, shine on me, love is the answer. Call me Quinn.
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the unexpected upshot of people thinking there are no consequences for what they say online is that a lot of people are now really good at telling on themselves
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i get why they do: control is seductive. power is intoxicating. ageism is rampant; young people are constantly denigrated.
you have to throw all that out. you have treat them like humans.
because if you treat them like robots, are you really surprised when they get robots to do their writing?
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the basic problem with this approach is that it goes against all conventional wisdom. it recasts students not as subjects to rule and police, but as equals whom i just happen to have more knowledge than, and with whom am willing to share that knowledge.
frankly, too many teachers want to be cops.
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you know, the things they're *supposed* to do. they things we are supposed to be *teaching* them are important. but you can't just tell someone that something is important without backing it up, you have to show them. you have to *make* them care.
and i do, and that's why i never get AI papers.
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i don't push them in any direction, it just has to be a formal research paper dealing with some topic from their major. and they go *absolutely apeshit* with it. go to the library and check out physical books. deep-dive into academic articles. go over their drafts with friends and classmates.
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an they give me absolutely *fantastic* papers. the growing research on rTMS therapy. regulation of puppy mills. how music influences plant growth. social media's effect on cognitive functioning. papers on why access to safe abortion matters. papers on why DEI is necessary. papers on *why AI is bad*.
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we return to the things we've learned and combine them. what's important for you to talk about in regards to this subject? what's the specific form your audience expects it to take? what method will you use to convince that audience?
everything builds on everything else holistically. no busy work.
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now the final project: the research paper. what the university actually *wants* you to learn, the "correct" way to write. other teachers dread half their submissions will be AI.
not me.
by now they understand what writing is, and why it's important they *never* give their voice to someone else.
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we're three projects into the semester and they've created three things that matter *to them*, things no AI could do, because no AI has experiences, or understanding of forms, or a vested interest in any argument over any other.
in short, we've put the humanity back into humanities.
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now they're beginning to make connections. there's something of voice in this. there's something of genre in it. there's connecting to your audience. there's the angle only *you* can have, which isn't regurgitating existing knowledge but rather creating *new* knowledge.
no AI can do that, either.
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this is harder for some than others. how does a computer scientist connect to, say, Klara and the Sun? how does a business major? a nursing student? we discuss their ideas, we hone them to a finer point, and they find there's always *something* they can say that connects to their academic interests.
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and in class we analyze on a text for a couple of weeks, applying these concepts to the words and seeing what meaning we can draw out of them with each one.
the third project is an argumentation paper: make some claim about the text that ties into your major.
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unit three is argumentation. we start to move out of the sandbox into more scholastic things. how can you best make your point? what are some methods you might use? we look at Eliot, Saussure, Derrida. we break down their ideas, demystify them. we show why different approaches have their advantages.
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i teach them the importance of *why* the shapes of things matter, just as i taught them why their own voice mattered. those things are foundational to good writing, and we tend to teach them very poorly, or as afterthoughts. i make them the centerpoint of my first two projects. that's why they care.
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most aren't "writing" in the traditional sense. i get songs, films, artwork. interpretive dance. experimental computer programs. once i got a laser etching, that was pretty fuckin' rad.
AI can't do most of that, and even if it can, they don't want to use it because this project is *fun as shit*.
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the next unit deals with genre. forms, shapes of media. why are certain things shaped the ways they are? why does this help to connect with an audience?
the project here is that they must choose a medium and a genre and produce an artifact in that genre that shows their understanding of it.
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these are *heavy* papers to read. it's a psychic toll. i've cried more times than i can count. i bear that gladly because i know this is a story they *needed* to tell. this was the thing in their soul that needed to be let out. and now it has, and they begin to *understand* why writing is important.
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i get *incredibly* personal stories. BIPOC people *always* talk about their relationship with race and some moment that made them aware of how things were different for them. LGBTQ+ people *always* talk about their identity and their struggles with it. women give me papers about their sexual abuses.
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the first major assignment is a story about some community that they learned something from. a paper about *them* and *their* experience. a paper that cares *who they are*.
no AI can write that paper, because it requires empathy. that's what's missing from the classroom. and that's why they use AI.
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my first unit deals with the concept of voice. what makes your writing YOUR writing? what differentiates you from other students, other people, other writing?
answer: because you care. you have a story to tell. you have an opinion to share. you have something in your soul that needs to be let out.
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because what will happen here is that since you have given them leeway and kindness for being human, they will do the same in return.
you have now constructed the conditions under which you can begin to anti-AI your classroom. if you've made it this far, congratulations. that was hard, i know.
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classic pedagogy says that you shouldn't share anything personal with your students. i'm here to tell you that axiom is horseshit. students need to see you as a human being, not some scholastic flesh robot that lords over them with grade dread.
be personal. be funny. be too much. be *wrong*.
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if you can manage to throw away decades of teacher assumptions and do this, you're now ready to proceed to part 2.
and that is you expect the exact same thing from yourself.
you treat *them* as equals, and you treat *yourself* as an equal. you give yourself leeway to fuck up and be human.
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now maybe you miss a class because you're sick, or your mom died, or hell, you just don't feel like it today. fine. i don't need to know the reason. i trust you are making a good decision for yourself.
this is the foundation. trusting your students rather than assuming an adversarial relationship.
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in fact i tell them that on the first day of class. i don't need to know why you missed a class or two. i'm not going to take attendance. i'm not here to run an adult daycare. that is exhausting, you paid for the class, either you want to be here or you don't, and neither option is my problem.
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trusting your students doesn't mean shit if that trust is provisional on arbitrary pedagogical models and standards. it is not a methodology, it is an ontology. you either believe college students are adult human beings that make good decisions about their lives, or you don't.
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remember when that "against cop shit" essay was running through pedagogy like wildfire? i remember at least three professors at my institution directly referencing it in various contexts.
then the AI boom dropped and all of a sudden everyone decided no, actually we should be cops again.
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this is a careful, deliberate process, but it is doable. but only if you are also willing to throw away a LOT of what you assume about teaching first.
the first step is both the easiest and the hardest: you have to stop being a cop in the classroom. you have to trust them.
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i've said it before and i'll say it again: we do not account for the immense damage The Daily Show has done to politics by convincing liberals all you need for opposition is a funny joke about the other side's hypocrisy
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also, are we really going to feign surprise at this? all political logic eventually ends in argumentum ad baculum, it is the foundational logical fallacy of all systems that put any humans above any other humans.
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i choose to interpret this as good news for the opposition.
time to start "persuading" nazis.
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correct, with the single exception that the last part never happens.
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you ever think about a burrito the size of a sleeping bag
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i like hamburgers so that must mean i hate hot dogs
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when they said "immigrants are coming to steal your jobs and have sex with your wives" this is undoubtedly not what they had in mind
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god you look so good
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go full throttle and cast Kanye you cowards