Educator’s Notebook #478 (March 2, 2025)
INTRODUCTION
Portrait of a leader, writing instruction, guides for the college process and more
An excellent week!
In this week’s features, check out the post by the Aurora Institute on creating a portrait of a leader. Many schools have pursued a portrait of a graduate and found it helpful for designing curriculum and program. How might a portrait of a leader (or a portrait of a teacher) inform the professional workplace?
Also in the features, find the obituary for Peter Elbow, the remarkable professor who propelled writing instruction away from rigid academic conventions and towards more flexible formats. The obituary describes the gradual evolution of college writing programs in ways that are instructive to us all.
Elsewhere, find a helpful set of guides for the college application process, updates on anti-DEI legislation (and pushback), excellent writing resources, and more.
Last, my thanks to those who attended the session at NAIS reflecting on ten years of the Educator’s Notebook. I’ll be sharing insights from the session over the coming weeks. Just to warm up, below is a visualization of the total number of articles shared on each category in the newsletter. See the recent AI sections on the right.
This week, let me know if you’re at SXSWedu. I’d be glad to meet!
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
Articles per category in 470+ issues of the Educator’s Notebook.
Browse and search over 14,000 curated articles from past issues online:
FEATURED
On The Introduction Of Free-Writing To Help Teach Writing
“Peter Elbow, an English professor whose struggles with writer’s block led him to create a new way of teaching freshman composition that emphasized free-writing exercises, personal reflection and peer feedback over rigid academic conventions that often stifled students, died on Feb. 6 in Seattle. He was 89.”
Have You Tried A Creating A Portrait Of A Leader?
“By defining the key attributes and competencies needed for transformative leadership, the Portrait provides a resource to guide professional growth and as a foundation for targeted training programs. By embedding the Portrait attributes into key areas of organizational strategic planning — such as professional development, recruitment and succession planning — organizations can cultivate a sustainable leadership pipeline at all levels, capable of advancing personalized, competency-based learning even during times of transition and uncertainty.”
ADMISSIONS
One-Page, Grade-By-Grade Guides For The College Application Process
“Wondering about when to take a college visit road trip? Trying to make the most out of your child's summers? The EA College Counseling team has you covered with downloadable resources to help you navigate the world of college admission. Explore our resources below. View all to see our full catalog, or filter by grade to see content that's catered to your child. As always, please feel free to reach out to your EA college counselor with any questions along the way.”
ADOLESCENCE
ARTS
Leonardo Da Vinci Museum Set To Open In Colorado
What Musicals And Plays Work In Both London And NYC?
CHARACTER
Global Generosity In 2024, By The Numbers
Six Stories Of Persisting When All Signs Point To No
“[Marie Curie] tutored the family’s children during the day, and in the evenings, she read and studied subjects like physics and mathematics, driven by the faint hope she’d one day get the chance to do the work that she wanted to do.”
DIVERSITY/INCLUSION
"6 Big Companies Ditching DEI — And 6 That Are Sticking With It”
How Some Colleges Are Changing Their DEI Curriculum
“AFT Sues Education Department Over Anti-DEI Guidance”
“Institutional Neutrality Is Censorship By Another Name”
GOVERNMENT
Ed Dept Launches An “End DEI” Website For Soliciting Complaints
UChicago Law Professor: Dept Of Ed Letter Doesn’t Hold Up
“The Supreme Court’s affirmative-action decision in 2023 did not render racial diversity an unlawful interest — indeed, it described that interest as “commendable” and “worthy.” …The Department of Education can, of course, criticize speech it disagrees with. But the First Amendment does not allow the government to restrict speech based on such disagreement, including by conditioning funds… Schools should comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action. They should be prepared to eliminate similar policies that treat people differently based on race. But schools should not cave to the Department of Education’s indefensible further demands, and the courts must curtail this blatant overreach.”
HEALTH
HIGHER ED
HUMANITIES
“Christianity’s Decline in U.S. Appears to Have Halted, Major Study Shows”
Conspiracy Theories Were A Part Of The Founding Of The USA
“It was a claim that grew in popularity. Five years later, a speaker at a Boston town meeting declared that a “desperate plan of imperial despotism has been laid, and partly executed, for the extinction of all civil liberty.” In 1773, Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hutchison bemoaned the “artful and designing men” who had convinced a gullible public that the British government intended to enslave North American colonists.”
Stanley Fish Is Still At It: Now Reviewing Movies And The Law
LANGUAGE
PD
READING/WRITING
Robert Caro Reflects On 50 Years Since “The Power Broker”
“Caro leafs through the pages, and it all starts coming back. He points to a passage relating to some moment of New York political intrigue too arcane to even make his book (about Moses’ 1929 investigation of the City Trust Company). “This was a thing no one knows about—I had to decide to leave it out,” he says, as though he still rues every such omission.”
Scattered Reflections On Student Resistance To Close Reading
Those Little Free Libraries On People’s Lawns? They Make A Difference
“According to this study, 92% of students had greater access to books because of Little Free Library boxes, 49% read more frequently (an average of 1.1 additional days per week), and 88% of children have built their own at-home book collections.”
C. S. Lewis’ Advice To Young Writers Looks Familiar Today
“1) Turn off the radio.”
STEM
Private Companies Are Now Landing On The Moon
On Kids Who Do Incredible Math In Their Heads, But Fail In Class
“In a series of experiments, Duflo’s field staff in India pretended to be ordinary shoppers and purposely bought unusual quantities of items from more than 1,400 child street sellers in Delhi and Kolkata. A purchase might be 800 grams of potatoes at 20 rupees per kilogram and 1.4 kilograms of onions at 15 rupees per kilogram. Most of the child sellers quoted the correct price of 37 rupees and gave the correct change from a 200 rupee note without using a calculator or pencil and paper. The odd quantities were to make sure the children hadn’t simply memorized the price of common purchases. They were actually making calculations. However, these same children, the majority of whom were 14 or 15 years old, struggled to solve much simpler school math problems, such as basic division.”
“The Rise (And Fall?) Of The National Science Foundation”
SUSTAINABILITY
TECH
On The Game “Civilization” And Our Current Civilization
More States Are Adopting Cell Phone Bans Statewide
Revisiting Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves To Death”
WORKPLACE
GENERAL
Brilliant: What Are Cozy Games? This Article Was Turned Into One.
Rediscovering Craft In An Age Of Optimization
A History Of Things Designed To Look Like Books, But Aren’t Books
A.I. Update
A.I. UPDATE
All about Deep Research
The ongoing AI arms race continues across the major tech companies. Over the past few weeks, this has been manifest in the release of three different “deep research” models, models that take 5-30 minutes to more deeply explore a topic and return longer, more thorough, more sourced responses. In work that I have been doing, I have found them quite useful for gathering published research, though the models remain inconsistent and require intentionality and guidance for the greatest benefit. In the features, check out Understanding AI’s comparison of OpenAI and Google’s Deep Research modes.
Also in the features, find a helpful narrative of how three different teachers use generative AI to save time.
These and more, including robust sections on education and on ethics and risk, enjoy!
Peter
Survey results on the quality of AI generated research. See the feature for more.
TECH/AI: FEATURED
How OpenAI’s Deep Research Is Changing Research For Professionals
“Seven out of 19 respondents… said OpenAI’s response was at or near the level of an experienced professional in their fields. A majority of respondents estimated it would take at least 10 hours of human labor to produce a comparable report.”
How Three Teachers Use AI To Save Time
“As an Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition teacher, Garbarg has to read dozens of student essays. Providing targeted feedback for every student can be time-consuming. So she started experimenting with using AI tools to expedite the work of providing personalized feedback for students’ writing. Now, Garbarg reads all her students’ essays to get an overall sense of their “glows and grows.” Then, she puts students’ writing into a generative AI tool… and instructs it to write feedback based on a set of criteria and her thoughts.”
TECH/AI: EDUCATION
Five Use Cases For AI In Formal Instruction Design
Estonia Puts ChatGPT In Every High School
A Reflection On Writing, AI, And Finding The Right Word
“Sure, there’s a difference between writing a poem and cleaning up a garbled email, between writing a love letter and a Google ad. For some tasks, employing the use of an A.I. assistant might save time without levying a commensurate cost in humanity. Maybe.”
“Can AI Effectively Coach Teachers?”
California State University Systems Gives ChatGPT To All Students And Faculty
“The CSU system, which serves nearly 500,000 students across 23 campuses, has announced plans to integrate ChatGPT Edu, an education-focused version of OpenAI’s chatbot, into its curriculum and operations. The rollout, which includes tens of thousands of faculty and staff, represents the most significant AI deployment within a single educational institution globally.”
TECH/AI: ETHICS AND RISK
Could AI Trigger A Nuclear War?
Wow. Here’s An Infographic Of How Much Energy ChatGPT Uses Per Day
How Do Therapists Feel About Faux AI Counselors?
“Early therapy chatbots, such as Woebot and Wysa, were trained to interact based on rules and scripts developed by mental health professionals, often walking users through the structured tasks of cognitive behavioral therapy, or C.B.T. Then came generative A.I., the technology used by apps like ChatGPT, Replika and Character.AI. These chatbots are different because their outputs are unpredictable; they are designed to learn from the user, and to build strong emotional bonds in the process, often by mirroring and amplifying the interlocutor’s beliefs. Though these A.I. platforms were designed for entertainment, “therapist” and “psychologist” characters have sprouted there like mushrooms.”
“When AI Thinks It Will Lose, It Sometimes Cheats, Study Finds”
Do We Need To Regulate AI Against Persuading People?
TECH/AI: INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT
Maybe AI Isn’t Actually Better At Creativity Or Empathy
“Research pitting people against AI systems gives AI an edge by asking us to perform in machine-like ways.”
Economics-Based Thoughts On The Rate Of AI Adoption
Introducing Perplexity Deep Research
Introducing Google Advanced Research
Introduction OpenAI’s Deep Research
TECH/AI: USES AND APPLICATIONS
In An Age Of AI, Your Expertise Is More Important Than Ever
“Vibecoding” With AI - Watch How You Can Make Apps With No Coding Experience
“I am not a coder. I can’t write a single line of Python, JavaScript or C++… And yet, for the past several months, I’ve been coding up a storm.”
OpenAI President: 4 Steps For How Best To Prompt ChatGPT
“1. State your goal… 2. Specify your preferred format… 3. Warnings and guardrails… 4. Context dump.”
Scientists Took A Decade - AI Took Two Days To Solve Difficult Problem
“AI Inspo Is Everywhere. It’s Driving Your Hairstylist Crazy.”