I’m not gonna lie – this school year took it out of me.
If you didn’t already know, in addition to being a writer, I also teach writing at a small community college. Most of my course load is composition (those first-year writing classes that no one would take if they weren’t required to) with a few Humanities and Creative Writing courses sprinkled in. It’s always been a struggle, especially in those comp courses, to get students to care about writing and understand why it is still such an important skill (hint: teaching writing is about far more than teaching them to write).
A few years ago, though, my job became exponentially more difficult. A new tech was on the market, and now students didn’t have to spend much time at all on their writing. Or their thinking. Or their thinking about writing. No more moments of discomfort – because this new tech could think and write for them. And suddenly, I began spending too much of my time providing feedback to a software that is no more intelligent than predictive text. (While it’s easy to tell the difference between student writing and writing slopped together by something else, it’s not always super easy to prove.)
Now, I’m not so old (or old fashioned) not to understand that there are tasks that I would absolutely pass off to something else to free up time to do the things that I actually want to do – but those things are laundry and the dishes. Those roomba-like lawn mowers also seem like a stellar idea.
But learning? Sitting in those moments of discomfort while figuring something out? Creating?
Absolutely not. I love those moments. I’m eager for them.
So it’s a little bit tricky for me to understand what has happened to make students SO uncomfortable with discomfort that they risk failing an assignment or a course…or even expulsion – just to avoid it. (Not to mention they are paying to take these classes. If anyone is devaluing the degrees earned in college, it is not the institutions providing them – it’s this tech and people who choose to use it for this purpose.)
The workarounds for teachers are not simple. The more we try to create assignments that a large language model can’t respond to, the better that LLM gets at faking being human. Aside from sitting students in a classroom, removing all access to tech (which isn’t then accessible for some disabled folks), and making them hand write their papers in front of us (which can’t be done in an online course, not to mention completely flies in the face that writing is a process and takes time and thought and revision…), there’s not much we can do aside from threatening a failing grade if they are caught. And this year demonstrated more than ever that a failing grade is not enough of a deterrent to stop someone from outsourcing their homework (and therefore their learning).
I do refuse to use this tech – in my teaching, in my writing. Not because, as I was called in a professional development session, a tech-denier. (I’ve spent my whole life learning new tech after new tech – and embracing most of it.) But because this particular tech robs me of the joy. And if I need more of anything in today’s world, it’s joy. Joy in watching a concept finally click in a student’s mind. Joy in crafting narratives and exploring worlds and relationships on the page. (And don’t even get me started on the joy stolen due to copyright infringement and the environmental impact of this particular tech…)
But then, I’m also a person who is still in awe of sunrises and sunsets. Who loves sitting around a campfire telling stories and laughing. Who enjoys camping simply because it gets me away from all that tech. And this year, maybe more than any in a while, a weekend of camping with friends to celebrate the simple things in life is just what I needed.
Note: I had intended to write a blog about camping. My fingers took me another direction. Apologies. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Ami Maxine 