“We didn’t ban calculators. We taught math differently. We didn’t ban the internet. We taught research differently. So why are we trying to ban AI instead of doing the same?” We’ve been here before. I was a young teacher when the internet showed up in classrooms in the 90s. Educators panicked. Teachers worried it would make students lazy, that it would only be used for cheating, and that memorizing facts and dates would go out the window. They were right. Sort of. The internet did change things. But it didn’t destroy learning. It made us rethink what was worth teaching and how we wanted to spend instructional time. It pushed us away from memorizing trivia and toward analyzing, questioning, creating, and connecting. The same thing happened with calculators decades before. There was real fear that students would lose the ability to compute. But what actually happened was that students stopped getting stuck in multi-digit calculations and started spending more time doing real math. They m...
“Straddling the line between a physician’s care and a salesman’s zeal, educational consultants wield the dual tools of empathy and persuasion to navigate the complex world of education.” I’m climbing towards 30 years of service in education. I’ve worked directly with Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment and educational consulting for the last 12 or 13 years. I’ve learned that those of us serving educators as an internal or external consultant are placed in a unique position. We bring with us lots of knowledge and experience; which causes me to feel like a physician. We observe, diagnose, and provide a prescription. On the flip side, we are faced with the idea that we have very little “mandate power.” We can encourage and support educator development, but we can’t force it. In this respect, I feel more like a salesman, peddling curriculum and strategies like they are the cure for all the ills in education. An Educational Consu...