Educator’s Notebook #487 (May 25, 2025)
INTRODUCTION
Teaching history today, on careers and curriculum, adolescence in an age of AI, and more
Much of interest this week.
In the features, find a profile of a school district that is holding the course with how they are teaching history in today’s political moment. Also in the features, I’ve elevated a piece that might otherwise land in the AI update; see a LinkedIn executive’s reflection on the state of the entry level job market. While the post seems more intended for businesses, in order that they might protect entry level positions for young graduates to learn skills that will help them advance, I think the post is also relevant to schools as a signal for what is important for students to learn while they are in school.
Several other posts also elevated from the AI section:
- A WaPo article on the sexting lives of teenagers. Teachers and parents need to know about this.
- A post in Leadership on the essential ingredients for building AI capacity in organizations.
- How we might grieve for how courses are changing in an age of AI
Of course, there is more in the AI update as well.
Also this week: three different posts on the plight of young men in today’s world: what’s going wrong, and what can be done. See also: several good posts on writing, another on the importance of reflection for educators, and the remarkable discovery that the hacking and extortion of PowerSchool was done by a 19-year old college student. Buckle up your cybersecurity systems in your school.
These and more, including a quiz on use of the semicolon, enjoy!
Peter
Semicolons are in decline. Read about it — and take a quiz on semicolon usage — in the Language section.
Browse and search over 15,000 curated articles from past issues online:
FEATURED
How One School District Teaches “Whole Truth History”
“District officials refer to the curriculum’s approach as “whole truth history.” A unit on the American Revolution has students read both the Declaration of Independence and a letter from Seneca tribal chiefs describing how victory in the Revolutionary War let the American government seize their land.”
“I'm A LinkedIn Executive. I See The Bottom Rung Of The Career Ladder Breaking.”
“There are growing signs that artificial intelligence poses a real threat to a substantial number of the jobs that normally serve as the first step for each new generation of young workers… Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder. In tech, advanced coding tools are creeping into the tasks of writing simple code and debugging — the ways junior developers gain experience. In law firms, junior paralegals and first-year associates who once cut their teeth on document review are handing weeks of work over to A.I. tools to complete in a matter of hours. And across retailers, A.I. chatbots and automated customer service tools are taking on duties once assigned to young associates.”
ADOLESCENCE
“Kids Are Sexting With AI. Here’s What Parents Need To Know.”
““We’re seeing teens experiment with different types of relationships — being someone’s wife, being someone’s father, being someone’s kid. There’s game and anime-related content that people are working though. There’s advice,” said Robbie Torney, senior director of AI Programs at family advocacy group Common Sense Media. “The sex is part of it but it’s not the only part of it.” Some confide in AI chats, seeing them as a nonjudgmental space during a difficult developmental time. Others use them to explore their gender or sexuality.””
ARTS
ASSESSMENT
A Critique Of National Standards
“Children learn when they are engaged and interested, when they want to learn, and engagement in the classroom cannot be legislated or coerced; it never results from drill. When engagement occurs, it results from the intelligence, creativity, and sensitivity of teachers who feel empowered to innovate, which power was stripped away by state mandates. Moreover, depriving kids of recess, adequate time for lunch, and some of the more enjoyable courses and assignments of traditional schooling for the sake of more study does nothing to improve math and reading scores. It just burns kids out and turns them off to school.”
CREATIVITY
“10 Essential Reads On Innovation”
“Artificial intelligence is making CEOs who have always thirsted for innovation even thirstier… The tough news is that the AI tools won’t be the biggest blockers of innovation success. The people challenges will.”
DIVERSITY/INCLUSION
What Can Be Done To Help Boys?
Younger Men Are The Loneliest People In The US
“Americans who experience daily loneliness are significantly less likely to report smiling or laughing a lot, feeling well-rested, or being satisfied with their personal freedoms and social connections than those who are not lonely. They are also half as likely to be classified as “thriving” in life.”
How One Group Plans To “Crush The Pro-Palestinian Movement”
McWhorter: On The Importance Of The “Black Smithsonian” At This Time
“Why Boys And Men Are Floundering” According To A Relationship Therapist
GOVERNMENT
Federal Judge Blocks Effort To Bar International Students At Harvard
Science Funding Is Cut To Its Lowest Level In Decades
Federal Judge Calls For The Reinstatement Of 1,300 Education Dept Workers
Government Orders End To Harvard’s Ability To Enroll International Students
HIGHER ED
“Some Students Weigh Leaving The US For College”
So You Want To Transition From Higher Ed To High School Teaching?
“First: Are you, and do you want to be, a teacher? Not a professor, not a lecturer, not a researcher, but a teacher. After all, teaching is not the same as professing. Professors can work in relative isolation, and often in an echo chamber; teachers must successfully engage with and enable others’ learning. It’s not impossible to carry on writing or researching as an independent school teacher, but it is difficult, rare and secondary to your work in the classroom. And contrary to the higher ed axiom that research and teaching are mutually supportive, these are two separate skills. A great researcher can be, and often is, a poor teacher. Teaching is a learned skill and a honed discipline of practice, not a side effect of completing a dissertation.”
LANGUAGE
The 4,000 Year Old Language That Spawned All Others
The Semicolon: A Fading Punctuation Mark (Quiz Included!)
““Do not use semicolons,” wrote Kurt Vonnegut, who averaged fewer than 30 a novel (about one every 10 pages). “All they do is show you’ve been to college.””
LEADERSHIP
“Making AI Work: Leadership, Lab, And Crowd”
“The key is treating AI adoption as an organizational learning challenge, not merely a technical one. Successful companies are building feedback loops between Leadership, Lab, and Crowd that let them learn faster than their competitors. They are rethinking fundamental assumptions about how work gets done. And, critically, they're not outsourcing or ignoring this challenge.”
PD
PEDAGOGY
READING/WRITING
An Immersion (“Reactive”) Approach To Teaching Writing
“What if we over-plan teaching writing? What if we plan for the wrong problems? What if lengthy lessons or time teaching deprives students of valuable experience? What if action should precede explanations? And what if all learning start with dialogue?”
In Praise Of Marginalia
“Did Usher Write His Own Commencement Speech? (Yeah!)”
SAFETY
WORKPLACE
“On Course Endings, AI Grieving, And Burnout From Humans”
Turnover In Schools Spiked COVID. Now It Has Improved For Two Years.
GENERAL
A.I. Update
A.I. UPDATE
A good law, OpenAI and Jony Ive, AI literacy, and more
The industry continues apace.
In the features, find a link to a write up about the law passed to criminalize non-consensual, intimate deepfakes. This is a good thing. It’s particularly important for educators because schools have been seeing adolescents creating these kinds of deepfakes since the technology arrived. It will be important for students — as young as middle school, where this is already happening — to understand how serious this is.
Also in the features, find Nicholas Carr’s essay exploring the emergence of AI-generated lies sounding more truthful than the truth itself. Carr’s essay excellently frames some of the issues behind our complicated epistemological moment.
Also this week: an excellent AI literacy framework from the OECD and European Commission, an important post from the Rithm Project on the affective experience of AI writing, and more.
These and more, enjoy!
Peter
How likely are these to support — or erode — human connection? Explore this in the post by the Rithm Project in Tech/AI: Social.
TECH/AI: FEATURED
New “Take It Down" Law Criminalizes Nonconsensual Intimate Deepfakes
“The Take It Down Act is the first federal law to include criminal penalties for creating and posting AI-generated deepfakes, as well as for threatening to post intimate images without consent. Both the creators of such images, and those who “intentionally threaten” to create them, will face up to three years in jail if the offense involves a minor, and two if it involves an adult. The law empowers the Federal Trade Commission to hold social media platforms accountable to remove such images.”
“What Happens When AI-Generated Lies Are More Compelling Than The Truth?”
“Mythmaking, more than truth seeking, is what seems likely to define the future of media and of the public square. The reason extraordinarily strange conspiracy theories have spread so widely in recent years may have less to do with the nature of credulity than with the nature of faith… When all the evidence presented to our senses seems unreal, strangeness itself becomes a criterion of truth. A paranoid logic takes hold. The more uncanny the story, the more appealing and convincing it can seem—as long as it fits your worldview. “Beauty is truth,” wrote John Keats, a romantic poet who understood that a rational, scientific conception of existence can never fulfill humanity’s deepest desires. Beauty, as we all know, is in the eye of the beholder.”
TECH/AI: EDUCATION
“AI In Education: What Parents And Caregivers Should Know”
12 Challenging Questions For AI-Based Learning Innovations
How Miami Schools Went From Banning AI To Embracing It
What Is AI Literacy? An Excellent Draft Framework For Primary and Secondary Education
“This draft is intended to elicit feedback from educators and stakeholders. We hope it sparks a dialogue about what AI literacy means and how teaching and learning must evolve in an age of AI. We also look forward to engaging with stakeholders over the next several months and invite you to provide feedback at in-person and virtual events hosted by the European Commission, OECD, code.org, and our network of international experts and organizations.”
TECH/AI: ETHICS AND RISK
TECH/AI: INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT
TECH/AI: SOCIAL
“Would You Still Cry If AI Wrote The Card?”
“Does the message lose meaning when you find out it wasn’t handcrafted? Or does the content still move you, regardless of how it was made? If our card game is any indication, the answer is: it depends.”
“AI Companions Are Already Mainstream”