Educator’s Notebook #523 (May 17, 2026)
INTRODUCTION
On Childhood, the Arts, PD, and More
An excellent week.
In the features, find a concise reminder of how leaders can support teachers and a thorough reflection on alternative grading. Both are detailed and practical.
In the rest of the issue, childhood and early adolescence seem a theme this week. From the report on the State of Childhood (in the Adolescence section) to the “Childlore” nostalgia (in Elementary) to several posts on phone bans, find a wealth of reflections on being a kid today.
In the STEM section, find what appears to be a remarkable scientific breakthrough: the discovery of a new circulatory system in the human body that may reconcile some elements modern and ancient medicine. It’s a humbling reminder that there is much more to the world than we know.
Also, an excellent AI Update this week at the end.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
Haven’t read it yet? Add this to your summer reading list for you or your team (or your faculty). Discounts are available on bulk orders of ten or more at the publisher Solution Tree.
Browse and search over 16,000 curated articles from past issues online:
FEATURED
Compassion Based Teacher Retention
“If you are leading in a high-pressure environment, consider this reflection: In the last two weeks, have my leadership actions: Protected my teachers’ time? Protected their dignity? Strengthened their voice? Reduced unnecessary pressure? Increased their sense of belonging?”
“Reflections On A Year Of Alternative Grading”
“Nothing beats building relationships. If you follow this blog regularly, you might reasonably think that I’ve run out of ideas. That’s because I just wrote at some length about the importance of building relationships with students. There, I wrote about how building solid relationships with students is the best way to deal with the ever-shifting issues that face our profession: Nothing beats having solid relationships with students. Not the best slides, the most innovative activities, the most alternative of grading systems. If students don’t trust you, none of the rest matters.”
ADOLESCENCE
ARTS
Excerpt From William Kentridge’s New Autobiography
What Is The A-Corp, The Business Entity For Artists?
How The Looping Music Is Built In The Award Winning “Mexodus” [Video]
ASSESSMENT
CHARACTER
ELEMENTARY
“What Childhood Folklore Did You Learn As A Kid?”
“What’s wild is how many of us grew up doing, drawing, singing, and believing the exact same funny little things: Miss Susie had a steamboat, Batman smelled, the floor was lava, and stepping on cracks broke our mothers’ backs.”
How To Talk With Parents Of K-8 Kids (2018 Survey Results, n=2,000+)
HEALTH
Hantavirus Is A Test. How Much Did We Learn From The Pandemic?
“4 Ways To Trick Yourself Into Taking A Walk”
HIGHER ED
A Massive Study Of Earnings Increases After Bachelors Degrees
“The study, conducted by the Postsecondary Commission with the help of independent research firm Mathematica, looked at the earnings of more than 900,000 students who enrolled in bachelor’s, associate, or certificate programs at public colleges in Texas between the 2008-9 and 2018-19 academic years. The findings confirm many previous studies that getting a college degree is profitable over time, said Stig Leschly, the founder and president of the Postsecondary Commission.”
HUMANITIES
On Novels As Empathy And Self-Understanding Machines
Is Lord Of The Flies “A Harmful Distortion Of Children’s Nature”?
On “Hyperion” A Sci-Fi Tale Inspired By The Canterbury Tales
An End Of Year Project For History Students
Should Protest Be Allowed In The Classroom? An Essay
LEADERSHIP
LEARNING SCIENCE
PD
“How To Coach When Time Is Short”
“Effective instructional coaching doesn’t have to require weeks of intensive work—sometimes four conversations are enough.”
“How Do Teachers Learn Beyond ‘Best Practices’?”
What Makes For Satisfying PD On Instructional Practice?
PEDAGOGY
READING/WRITING
On Recent Lists Of Best Novels
More On AI’s Voice In Writing
How Many Full Books Are Assigned In Average ELA Classes?
“Survey data suggest that most secondary ELA teachers did assign at least one full book to students during the 2024–2025 school year. However, the findings reveal a more nuanced picture. Survey results suggest that full-book reading remains peripheral in most secondary ELA classrooms; 9 percent of teachers did not assign any full books, and about two-thirds of teachers assigned only one to four books. Teachers’ reports also suggest inequities to accessing full books: Teachers who served more historically disadvantaged students consistently assigned fewer full books—a pattern that begins as early as elementary school.”
SAFETY
STEM
A New Circulatory System: Scientists Discover New Infrastructure In The Body
“That interstitial spaces exist in and under the skin and between and around the body’s organs had been observed going back more than a century, but they were assumed to exist in isolation from one another, like a patchwork quilt. Theise and his colleagues published their first observations of these spaces in 2018. Their findings in the 2021 tattoo-ink study implied that the body’s interstitial spaces were parts of a vast interconnected whole — what scientists now call the interstitium.”
TECH
“‘Screen Time’ Needs A New Tune”
“Cellphone Ban Led To Improved Learning, Attendance In Florida District”
What’s The Middle Road On Tech In Schools?
GENERAL
A.I. Update
A.I. UPDATE
Does AI Help or Hinder Learning? Isn't the Answer Obvious?
A week for countering polarization in discussions…
I grow weary of polarizing headlines. Maybe you do, too? Seems every week AI will destroy the world or save the world. We see it elsewhere: in politics, in recent pandemic decisions. We seem to be all or nothing. I even remember this as a kid when in the car: someone would crank the air conditioning, and the car would be freezing. And then they’d turn up the heat, and it would be suffocating. So it was a relief to see the obvious conclusion in this week’s review of the impact of AI on learning: “ChatGPT’s cognitive effects are contingent on pedagogical framing.”
There’s a similar take on AI’s impact on the economy. One side is “AI will take all the jobs”, and the other side is “AI will create all the jobs.” The feature post by A16z appears to lean on the latter side, but actually suggests that the economy will really simply evolve and the amount of work is likely to remain similar to today.
All that said, the changes to our lives are and will be significant. Even with AI as a normal technology, per last year’s philosophical framing.
It’s a short but diverse collection this week, including a new book out specifically on AI in fundraising.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
Andreesen Horowitz looks at the long term impact of technologies on the workforce. See the feature for more.
TECH/AI: FEATURED
A Systematic Review Of The Impact Of AI On Learning
“Analysis revealed that, ChatGPT supports cognitive development when embedded within inquiry-oriented and scaffolded instructional designs, especially through processes such as metacognitive regulation, argumentative reasoning, and idea generation, which in turn produce synergistic gains across both critical and creative domains. However, in unstructured contexts, researchers observed asymmetrical patterns favoring creativity over critical thinking and joint declines across domains, both of which often triggered cognitive offloading. These findings highlight that ChatGPT's cognitive effects are contingent on pedagogical framing.”
“The “AI Job Apocalypse” Is a Complete Fantasy”
“Of course AI will absolutely eliminate some tasks and compress some roles (and there’s some evidence that that may already be happening). The shape of the labor market will change, as it always does when a transformational technology is unlocked. But the claim that AI will produce economy-wide, permanent unemployment is unhelpful marketing, bad economics and worse history. To the contrary, productivity gains should increase demand for labor, because labor becomes more valuable. Here is our argument why.”
TECH/AI: EDUCATION
What Some Stanford Profs Say About AI And Education
“We’re trying to put forward tools and research where AI becomes part of new expressive capabilities for students, rather than information dumpers into people’s heads.” Victor Lee, Associate Professor of Education”
“The Easiest Way To Stop AI Plagiarizing”
“When students turn in a writing assignment, I take their paper (long, short, doesn't matter) and I send it to Claude or ChatGPT with a simple prompt: Take this paper and create a five-question knowledge comprehension quiz based on the information in it. Next day, every student gets a quiz. On their own paper.”
How A HS English Teacher Includes AI Literacy In Class
Is It Cheating For Teachers To Use AI In Their Planning? (No.)
AI Detection False Positives Are The New Witch’s Mark
Three Kinds Of Students In An AI-Enabled Age
“Curiosity is the whole game”
TECH/AI: ETHICS AND RISK
On The Feeling Of Being Harvested By AI For The Future
“A parallel set of memes has emerged to capture the sense of powerlessness. In the United States, Silicon Valley tech elites identify as high agency, while the rest of us are bots condemned to the permanent underclass. In China, ordinary workers describe themselves as shechu (“corporate cattle”) and jiabangou (“overtime dogs”). These workers have long used the viral term “involution” to capture the feeling of being trapped in a cycle of meaningless competition. In both countries, those disaffected by A.I. identify with the gaming meme of the NPC, or nonplayer character. They feel like the background role in someone else’s video game, existing only to fill the world, not to shape it.”
How Will AI Affect The Economy? “What Will Be Scarce?”