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Matthew and Val talk with high school English teacher and parent Christina Andrade Melly about AI in classrooms, student shortcuts, teacher tools, screen habits, and what parents should ask when AI shows up in schoolwork.
Two Factor Parenting is a conversation between two parents navigating technology's role in raising kids. He's the early adopter and tech optimist. She's the skeptic who asks "but should we?" Together they tackle screen time, AI, social media, and all the parenting decisions that don't come with a manual.
Two parents. Two perspectives. Raising kids in the age of screens, AI, and chaos.
May 16 audio only
00:00:13 Val: Hi, everyone.
00:00:15 Matt: Hello.
00:00:16 Val: Welcome to episode six, which is our second part of our two part AI in schools episode. Um, we did an interview with our friend Christina Andrade Melly She is a teacher in Saint Louis and it ended up being a really, really wonderful interview. We started off talking about AI in schools, not only from student use perspective, but how teachers are implementing it. And then we ended up discussing a lot of broader topics in education.
00:00:56 Matt: Definitely more holistic for sure. Yes. Yes.
00:00:59 Val: It was such an interesting interview. Whether you are a parent, a teacher, an administrator, or.
00:01:05 Matt: Even a student. She had a great little hint right at the end. She did a little thing of don't do this.
00:01:11 Val: Yeah. so it was a wonderful interview and we really hope that you all enjoy it.
00:01:20 Matt: Yes. Enjoy.
00:01:23 Val: Welcome to part two of our AI in schools. Uh, two part episode. we hope you enjoyed the first part. We focused mostly on edtech, physical devices in classrooms and some of the. Systems that students use And we had talked last time about how we interview this episode. And we have our friend Christina here. It's so good to hear from both of you. It's so good to be here. Yay. Um, so, Christina, would you mind introducing yourself a little bit and just kind of your experience, and especially, I would love for you to mention your advocacy work and things like that. Absolutely.
00:02:09 Christina: So since we met in college, I've been busy. You guys have been busy. Um, I'm Christina Andrade, Molly. I teach high school English in, Saint Louis, Missouri. I've been in the same classroom all fifteen years that I've been. Yeah, it's it's been a lot. Um, and what's kind of cool is I teach in the school I graduated from. So if you add all those years together, I have, I mean, close to thirty years of experience in one district in one place. So it's been really interesting to see how that's all grown. that's my day job has been teaching English for the last lots of years and in the summers, on the weekends, as soon as that day job finishes, I've been really active with the teachers union. So the Missouri National Education Association. I'm one of two directors in that organization. So I advocate on a state and national level with legislators for education policy that serves all of our kids. Um, and I was incredibly fortunate. I was the twenty twenty three Missouri State Teacher of the year. I love teaching and I love talking about teaching and talking about how we can make our public education system something that serves all of our families better.
00:03:24 Matt: Mhm.
00:03:25 Val: Uh, you are also a mom.
00:03:29 Christina: So I am.
00:03:30 Val: So not only are you like an amazing classroom teacher and a teacher advocate with the teacher union and the teacher of the year for the whole state of Missouri, you are also a parent and you also have to think about your own kids, in a lot of these topics. So that's really a reason why we thought of you first and why we wanted to talk to you about this. so if you want to start us off, just kind of what is your experience or what has your experience been with dealing with chat, GPT or other large language models? Um, Gemini or other ones from your students in the classroom?
00:04:15 Christina: Mhm.
00:04:16 Val: So.
00:04:19 Christina: A couple of years ago was the first time that we really started to see any large language model use in the classroom, right? It's really sort of a toddler age right now. And when it first came out, there was a lot of panic in the English department. Is this the end of of sort of literacy as we know it? Are the students going to no longer write? What is this going to look like? Are we going to have to go all the way back to paper and pencil? Um, so I think that there was a lot of that fear initially, And such is the way of technology, right? You know, that there, there were teachers who kind of freaked out when, well, we're going to be typing or we're going to have the computer labs or when the Chromebooks come in, you know, with each technological advance, there's kind of that fear about it. I would say that that students use sort of very, very gradually built. But then this year, I feel like has skyrocketed to the point that even on very simple assignments, um, my juniors have been reading novels for the last handful of weeks, for example. one of their assignments is fold this bookmark, um, take notes on bits that interest you, plot points, character motivations, conflicts, themes and include the page number and students have used, built in AI to even answer that level of question. And so all of a sudden there's really been a spike in use by students, not by every student, but it seems to be very much like a hot and cold that either students don't really use it at all, or they use it for every task that it's available to them. So that's been really sort of strange to see that change.
00:06:00 Matt: it's like, they don't even have an opinion, which is kind of scary because you're hoping to have, you know, at least a human connection. And that I feel like that's been such a big theme for us. Our little phrases learn to human first and it's just it's okay. Just answer the question. You're not in trouble. Like what was what was interesting to you? That's it.
00:06:23 Christina: Yeah, it's, it was, it was sort of sort of shocking. And you have to build this space for them where it's okay to be wrong and it's okay to not get it right the first try. And, and almost it's okay to not finish quickly. For a lot of students, there's a task orientation versus sort of a learning orientation in terms of what motivates them. So like, let me finish this thing and then I can get back to whatever else I wanted to do, which unfortunately with teenagers is typically, technologically related also typically social media or want to play my game. the students definitely see ChatGPT or Gemini, you know, or different tools. They see that as something that can speed up their work as well. But unfortunately, if they don't have something worthwhile to go to after that work, it just sort of eats their attention away with social media, they're just back on a phone, even though the phones are illegal to have out. Um, they'll still try to find a way to get into it though.
00:07:19 Val: So we talked about last time is enforcement of phone policies.
00:07:24 Christina: you know, in bands don't really work. They just sort of find ways to get around them. Um, we used to have students in previous years, they would use, uh, Grammarly, which has an AI component to it to suggest to help strengthen their writing. And when we banned that, then they sort of stopped using that tool and they just started wholesale, using LLMs to, to generate writing. So that was sort of an unexpected consequence also, I think of a ban.
00:07:51 Val: Hearing that. I think especially if you have younger kids looking ahead, it feels disheartening. It feels.
00:08:01 Christina: Terrifying.
00:08:02 Matt: it feels like a mountain. It feels like there's a huge mountain. And and weirdly enough, the mountain grows and you're sitting there going like, wait a minute, how do you how do you defeat that?
00:08:15 Christina: I don't know if the two of you feel this way, but parenting to me always feels like this mirror being held up. Um, not always a flattering. Right. Like I, I hear things coming out of my kids mouths. They're four and six years old, so they're still pretty little. But I'll hear things or I'll see behaviors and I'll think, oh gosh, that's what that looks like. I don't I don't like that at all. And I know that guy. Yes.
00:08:36 Val: Or we'll point at each other and I'll be like, mhm, that's you. Or like, that's me. I'm like, oh, that's where they got it from, huh? Like, yeah, you're like.
00:08:46 Matt: I'll accept that one. I got that. That's me.
00:08:48 Christina: Yeah. That. Yeah, that one's mine. though. So it's almost like.
00:08:53 Val: A lot.
00:08:53 Christina: Of the, a lot of the unhealthy attitudes that that unfortunately, the, the youths are picking up from all of us as adults. those attitudes have been there and AI is just sort of letting them run to their natural conclusion. Right. That the, the training that all of us have is get it done, get it done fast. You can do more stuff. Um, get it done fast so I can go watch my show, get it done fast so that I can get on my phone. Right. and the kids are absorbing those lessons from us. so when it comes to like, what, what do we do with this? something that we'll talk about a lot in our house is there's, there's a value to doing stuff the slow way, there's a value to doing stuff the hard way. But then that means that like we as a family have to do it that way also. You know, we, we do we reserve time for reading books like yes, before bedtime is always, always books. Um, we'll cook stuff, you know, and talk about, well, yeah, we could buy this, but we're going to cook it, you know, and, and sort of show by doing those things that aren't actually related to schoolwork at all. The slow way, the hard way that there's a value to it, that there's some honestly, some delight to it. Because if we just tell the teenagers, no, don't use the AI to get it done as fast as you can, that's not the most important thing. But then we don't actually live that and like, show them why that's valuable. I it's going to fall on deaf ears. It's not going to change their behavior.
00:10:22 Matt: It is so much more holistic. But yeah, go ahead.
00:10:25 Christina: Yeah.
00:10:27 Val: I think you're a wonderful mom for doing that, by the way. I think that's great. Um.
00:10:33 Christina: I don't always look wonderful when we've baked muffins and there's like, flour in the kitchen, I'm like, oh my God, what did we just do?
00:10:40 Val: Why did I do this to myself? This is what you start thinking.
00:10:44 Christina: I could have just bought a dang bag of the muffins that come in fours, and now I have six hundred mini muffins. Oh, girl, that's.
00:10:52 Val: Like our breakfast every morning.
00:10:55 Matt: That is. That is the breakfast of champions.
00:10:58 Val: Yeah. I feel like even though Matt have tried to parse out certain certain specific topics, you know, whether it's AI friendships, AI relationships, you know, AI in schools, AI in your home, we, we essentially keep coming back to a lot of foundational principles. I guess I'll say, um, a lot of what you talked about too, is kind of in the back of my mind because it's coming up in a book that we're reading that we're going to, you know, do a review for, but, you know, things like resiliency, and frustration tolerance, things like that. Like, we're not even just doing it the slow way, but I'm really trying to teach you the value of you can do hard things. And I know we say to kids, you can do hard things, but like actually working through something hard and the value of that and it's worth it. but despite whatever topic we seem to be talking about, we do end up coming back to these foundational things. and it's so interesting that you hit on it too. I'm like, yeah, this is why we're friends. Yes. One hundred percent.
00:12:17 Christina: There's this, um, volleyball coach in our building and years and years and years ago, she got all of her players, these little wristbands that said, how I do anything is how I do everything. And that's like a I keep coming back to. Right. That just like all of the ways, whatever realm we're kind of in, those underpinning values of that it's okay to mess up. And if it's hard, I'm going to keep going. And even if I fail, I'm gonna still have value. whatever arena you're playing in, those things still hit.
00:12:48 Matt: Mhm.
00:12:49 Christina: Right. It really is all connected by those values.
00:12:52 Matt: and it's surprising to keep hearing that theme. I think the author's, uh, Cal Newport and like there's this thread that keeps like pulsing of we gotta pause, It's okay to slow down. let us be the human we are right and appreciate those. because when we do get on this acceleration path, then there's almost more of a purpose and Val You've kind of hit on this a couple of times of just like, hey, it's a tool. Allow it to be a tool. you know, there's a separation we have to keep. So. Mhm, mhm.
00:13:26 Val: so then that's kind of the student side of it. So then how about the teacher side of it? So the teacher.
00:13:33 Christina: Side is interesting because as a tool, AI has so much potential. Um, like thinking about coming into the classroom for, you know, a fifteen year career. Um, teachers now do a million things that we didn't fifteen years ago. I mean, let alone going back to, you know, thirty years ago. Um, the level of differentiation, customization, um, I mean, translation services, language development, addressing, um, different abilities, different modifications and accommodations and special needs and accelerations, um, and content needs and accountability needs and accreditation and middle management and administrators and coaches. I mean, the, the number of decisions and things that fit into a teacher's day has exponentially grown. Um, and there's no way to get it all done, I think in any era. Teachers have never been able to get everything done in the day, but particularly now, um, when we're in this moment, particularly where public education is, is under pretty constant attack, um, there's a lot of pressure on teachers to sort of fix all of society's ills within the classroom. And if not, we're going to take your funding away and you're still going to have to fix society's ills within the classroom. So AI has been helpful in my classroom, addressing some of those things from tools that can level reading for, I mean, a for different grade levels. I can make a twelfth grade accelerated reading, I can go back to a sixth or a third grade reading level if, you know, if programs we have that can determine our students reading level says, yeah, you're, you're working with a range like this in our class. Um, translation has really improved. I've been able to use AI to create sort of very quick pre-assessments on learning targets so that within, you know what, I could have built myself and taken two or three hours. Now I can build in thirty minutes, I can assess my students. I can say, okay, I've adjusted these, this now is going to tell me what I want to know. And now I can go and like, teach or like make small groups based on exactly what they need. So it has a lot of promise for teachers. Um, but it has to be that tool sort of to do those specific tasks.
00:15:57 Matt: And, but I would assume then there is also an element of actually having to do that yourself first to understand what was underneath it. Right. And I, and I run into the same thing with my data scientist of. Yeah, no, I know it can build it. I know, you know, but I really need you to know the guts of why you're going down these directions. Yes. Because it's become almost the easiest thing in the world to build anything.
00:16:22 Christina: You can vibe code it.
00:16:23 Matt: like, yeah, you can vibe code, whatever. But when you put it into the field, you got to be ready for what you're going to get back because you can give you all kinds of promises and magic. Um, that you quickly run into issues immediately.
00:16:38 Christina: Exactly. And just to understand, I mean, to use a really basic example, if I'm building even something as simple as a multiple choice quiz, I have to be able to look back at it and understand, okay, one of these is the right answer. And then these are the distractors. Like, why is the right answer the right answer? And do I want distractors that are just nonsense? Do I want distractors that are like testing my students to see if they have a concept flipped, right? Like, but they don't, you know that they can't recall the difference between a simile and a metaphor, for example. Yeah. do I want to test comprehension? Do I want to test vocabulary? So understanding those pieces of it is so important. some colleagues kind of goof up when they didn't have those foundational understandings. They were newer in the classroom and they just said, oh yeah, I'm just, I'm just having AI make this whole thing for me. And it's a really uncomfortable moment. My student teachers were like, I, I didn't, I didn't like that. Is that how we're supposed to do it? And so we were able to have a really healthy conversation about that too.
00:17:36 Matt: So now I am kind of curious then about this because you see always the headlines of like test scores continue to drop or multi, decade decline or whatever it may be. Right. Fortunately, I don't have like the exact citation here. It just seems it's fascinating that we have all of these tools. We have all of these, techniques. Then it's clearly there's some macro element in here, that is pulling down the whole thing. you could do whatever you want there. But then there's another thing dragging it down.
00:18:10 Christina: I think we're in a moment where there are a lot of there are multiple systems that are doing that. Um, there was a congressional hearing some weeks ago that, uh, included someone testifying and saying, you can actually look at states test scores, and they uniformly drop the year or two after wide scale adoption of one to one student technology initiatives. When you give every student in the state a computer, you can see the test scores drop. So I think that's one thing we may have even referenced.
00:18:43 Val: We may have even referenced we referenced guys video in our last one. Um, because it is such a surprising concept.
00:18:56 Christina: And I think it's like the neuroscience is starting to catch up. Um, that, you know, I'm sure it's not neuroscience that, you know, the the technology bros necessarily want us to have or understand, but just that our, our brains process what's on a screen differently. You know, evolution wise, our brains have never dealt with technology like this. Um, you know, our brains have no idea what to do with this. We don't process the same as when we're doing pencil and papers. When we're looking at something is when we're manipulating something. So I think that there's some of that, you know, the technology implementation has something to do with it. Covid has something to do with it. I think when parents are in economic decline, the middle class is hollowing out. And so parents don't have the resources to do those things with their kids just because they're trying to keep a roof over their heads. Um, I know that, high stakes testing, right? We've almost like swung some opposite directions that once it was so stressful that students were like vomiting, you know, during state testing. So much pressure on them. Now, we've gone so far the other way that the scores matter quite a bit for schools, and they matter not at all to students. It's disconnected from their learning. It's typically not a part of their grade because the schools themselves don't get the information back until sometimes a year later. Um, so the whole accountability system is not doing what it's reported to be designed to do.
00:20:28 Matt: Yeah.
00:20:28 Christina: Which is, you know, increased transparency for parents. And really all it does is shows the schools that take it are failing, which comes attached to a big backpack of cash, of parents pulling for private schools, pulling for school choice. Um, when really it's kind of designed to get you scores that look like that.
00:20:49 Matt: Mhm.
00:20:51 Val: That is the part that I think we don't hear very often. I may have vaguely referenced that before, the high stakes testing and like, you know, you're funding being attached to that that's been going on for a while. And then because in this congressional hearing, you know, a few weeks ago, he, he referenced lowering the bar and changing what success means, changing your definition of success because you need those students to succeed. You need those test scores. Mhm. But that has been happening for a while. I mean, even when we were in college, that was that was a conversation that was already taking place and, um, known, Mhm. Um, and so the disconnect between, I guess, still so much heavily reliance within the administrative education system Without.
00:21:45 Christina: The.
00:21:45 Val: Pressure being on students. I think that's probably new information. It certainly is to me.
00:21:54 Christina: Yeah.
00:21:54 Matt: I just really appreciate the framing of this and kind of how holistic you kind of put it all together. Um, and, you know, it's the, the whole, you know, high stakes testing. And because I remember very vividly telling, you know, our kids have they gone through it like, hey, it's okay, no biggie. Just go in there and take it now. Don't feel pressure to do it. Um, and, you know, the kids have been completely fine with that, but it's so interesting. Then the complete flip of then what's, you know, what is this thing trying to do? Funny enough, it takes, you know, it's taken a year to do it. It's like, where where's the technology there? Right. And that's just accelerating that part. But anyway.
00:22:37 Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:22:38 Christina: You would imagine. You would imagine so, but um, I think that there's different states and different systems trying to like address that in some creative ways, maybe doing quarterly checks, Using it more periodically. just because that once a year, sort of. Win or lose scenario just isn't. I mean, gosh, if all of us were evaluated on our jobs based on what we did on one random day in May, like, I don't know, I'd have great years and I'd have terrible years. Yeah. We had a tornado, um, the first week of testing, you know, we had an elementary school without power for multiple days. Like I, I'm already worried about what that's going to come back as, but there's a lot of factors that just aren't, aren't really in anyone's control. And what I would love to hear more about, just as a sidebar, is the amount of test prep that we've started doing in schools so that we've been doing in schools for so many years. Um, we've cut out a lot of those extra things. A lot of the playtime. We've pushed academics into lower grades and we've put all the time into it and goodness knows all the money into it to test prep companies that we can. And if we haven't seen a return on that investment, then you have to look at the tool and say, what is this measuring and why are we valuing it?
00:24:02 Matt: Mhm. Absolutely. It's, you know, when I if I draw the equivalent from like a business perspective, for us it's I mean, we wouldn't do a year. I mean, it's quarterly, right? I mean, for us, I mean, monthly, right. To really know are we actually is this does this work? Does this make sense? No, it doesn't work. Okay. We're going to create another, different KPI, something else to help us figure out what's going on.
00:24:26 Christina: Exactly. And I think that a thing that we don't talk about very often is our country tries to do things with education that no other country in the world dares to do. public schools take everyone. We don't not test students. So the scores of those students include the ones who have profound special needs. You know, you have a little sliver of students who can take the map a. but you have students who can't write their own name and they have to take a test. this includes students who've been in the country for a year. Um, there's a cutoff, right. But students can't take it in their own home language. all of those students are rolled into those scores. Uh, and other countries.
00:25:07 Matt: Interesting. That is not talked about at all. Nobody else tries.
00:25:12 Christina: To do what we do. No, they wouldn't dare if they split them off into different levels. Right. Vocational or college based or university bound. In middle school, and we're still taking them all and saying, okay, we're going to give all of you a shot. No place else dares to do what we try to do.
00:25:28 Matt: Mhm. You know, it's, uh, that's so painful because at the same time, that feels so, American like just we're doing it. Just go, we're taking everybody, And it's just a totally different ball game in other parts of the world.
00:25:46 Christina: Cowboys aren't great with follow through. You go in guns blazing and we're like, I only brought six, six bullets. That's uh.
00:25:55 Matt: He had to play, but beautifully.
00:25:57 Val: Oh man. I feel like I want to say so much more, but you have given me so much to think about. Um, one of our kids entered a year of heavy, heavy, heavy testing. Um.
00:26:17 Christina: I'm so sorry.
00:26:18 Val: Um. Yes. Okay. And this was like, not this year, but pretty recently. And I remember at meet the teacher, they were going through it. They were like, they're going to do this, they're going to do this, they're going to do that and that and that. I was like, we ain't even at the dogs yet. Like, what are they talking about? and I was so surprised. And I think it's funny because kind of the conclusion of our last episode was that AI should be helping the teachers and the administrators. if it has a place in education at all, it really should be in administrative work. And if it could do that, I think Matt was the one who made the point. Like it could help these teachers be the best teachers for these students. Because, you know, Matt, you made the case that it's adaptive. It's an adaptive thing. So like you said, you can you can put out twelfth grade level, tenth grade level, sixth grade level, you can make all of these plans. You can do all of this work that would have taken you hours before. I'm curious what some of your colleagues think about that. Or, you know, people that you've talked to at MNEA or, you know, like I, I guess I'm just kind of trying to figure out the vibe that that educators would have about taking that on as a tool for positive use.
00:27:54 Christina: I think if you had five teachers in the room, you would have seven different opinions on it. Like we're all kind of still navigating it also. Um, there are of course, some teachers who are like, no, I don't want any part of it. you know, I have a personal or a moral or an environmental concern with it and I'm not taking any piece of that. So you do have some folks who are in that, uh, camp, but then you also have others who are, have moved into using AI for everything,
00:28:26 Matt: Almost to a fault.
00:28:29 Christina: To absolutely to a fault. it's, it's really uncomfortable when you can read an email from a leader and say, this is AI. You didn't even have the five minutes to sit down and and write me a personal email. Oh, from.
00:28:48 Val: A work colleague who.
00:28:49 Christina: Oh, it's disheartening. it's not a good feeling. you know, and it's, it's poisonous to, to the environment, the work environment.
00:28:57 Matt: To the work environment. Exactly.
00:28:59 Christina: but you have a lot of us kind of drifting around in the middle of, of there are tools that we like or use. you know, typically I feel like people will find a couple of tasks that they like to use AI for. I've got a colleague who'll use AI to generate, examples, you know, student exemplars of different types of writing or of different errors that she wants them to analyze and look for. So she'll do that rather than looking through student work or writing her own. others who will use AI to create differentiated assignments, for small groups. Based on what, concept they're missing or not understanding, you know? So she's basically planning four separate lessons, at a time for a group of students.
00:29:41 Matt: Which, which from like a productivity standpoint, I mean, like, that's, that's crazy. I mean, like, that's through the roof. You would go, wow, that is such phenomenal work. Um, Yeah. It's so interesting though that even with all of that wonderful work that's happening, we're still getting beat up by this score And what I'm getting, just from our conversation here is, are we even measuring ourselves fairly in a way that we as a country would say, yes, that makes sense. Like we can all agree to that.
00:30:18 Christina: And the answer is almost certainly no. If you look at the Missouri School Improvement Program, which is now in its seventh edition, I think MSIP seven is what we're on right now. It's I mean, it's something like sixty some odd pages to understand the actual calculation that the state uses to determine a school district's scores, is kept under lock and key. You can't actually see it. parents don't understand that the majority, it's about sixty percent of the schools. score on accreditation comes from test scores. That's sixty percent is that and probably another twenty percent, twenty, thirty percent is attendance. And then literally everything else that you'd want a school to do, um, college and career readiness, you know, culture scores, safety scores, community surveys, like maybe all of that put together is ten percent. Um, parents don't know that there's no clarity in that. Is that just Missouri or is that pretty common in other states as well? I'm familiar mostly with Missouri. That makes sense. I know that's.
00:31:32 Speaker 6: Right.
00:31:33 Christina: But I'll say that I've not heard of any places held up of like, oh, this state has a really clear model that parents really understand. Um, the A through F like report card kind of idea that in some states is, is getting some traction. I think that that's attractive to people because it is really clear, like, is my school an, a school is my school a, C, D and F school. but again, it's really just, it's just slapping a letter on the system that we're already seeing is very problematic. Um, and what we see, what the research has borne out for decades is that high test scores, tracks with, high incomes, zip codes and districts with high incomes have, high test scores. And districts with low incomes have low test scores. Mhm.
00:32:19 Speaker 7: So tangentially, um, we were saying that very anecdotally, I think a lot of times on the internet you will see people saying, oh my gosh, these kids can't read. basically is that true? or I guess how true is that as a high school English teacher and does there seem to be, does technology play into that or is or does this look like a Covid baby thing or. Um, I don't know. We're trying to chip away at the mountain here, folks.
00:32:57 Christina: There's it's a big mountain.
00:32:59 Matt: Yeah.
00:33:00 Speaker 8: Yeah.
00:33:01 Christina: So the reading issue has gotten a lot of press lately. Um, there's really been a seismic shift in reading instruction in the last couple of years. from what used to be, what was called sort of a whole language approach that basically you're going to stick high quality text in front of students. And if you keep sticking them in front of text, eventually they're going to pick it up. That was how we taught reading for, gosh, probably the last decade, maybe fifteen years, maybe a little bit more than that.
00:33:32 Matt: It does have like a weird monkey and Shakespeare feeling to it, though.
00:33:36 Christina: And it didn't work. And that's where a lot of the concern, and a lot of the data bears it out that there are a high number of students, certainly higher than we want, who are not reading anywhere close to grade level. And in high school we have seen that also.
00:33:52 Speaker 7: Because when they were young, that was their reading instruction and now they're all in high school. Yes.
00:34:00 Christina: So we're going to see those effects of that experiment basically borne out over the next twelve years, ten to twelve. Right. It takes about that long for an entire, population to move through. So for us to see what that whole language approach versus now we're going to the science of reading, which is looking really at phonics. Right. It's looking at those sort of more discrete comprehension and meaning making skills.
00:34:27 Speaker 7: Letter land baby. Oh my gosh, I love letter land.
00:34:32 Christina: So that is going to take us another decade to see really on a wide scale. what that has done.
00:34:43 Speaker 7: It is interesting. Um, one of our, oldest did kindergarten and half of first grade in one school. Then when we moved, started in another school, the first one did sight reading. Yep. And sight words. Yep. And the next one did a phonics based program called Letterland.
00:35:02 Christina: Mhm.
00:35:03 Speaker 7: And we saw a difference one hundred percent. Yeah. I love it. it's such an imaginative program. If you don't know what I'm talking about. Letterland is like that. Okay.
00:35:14 Matt: Check it out, folks. Oh, listen.
00:35:16 Speaker 7: It's beautiful.
00:35:17 Christina: This episode also brought to you by.
00:35:19 Matt: Yeah, exactly.
00:35:21 Speaker 7: Well, it's really it's really wonderful because not only does it teach kids the phonics of reading and phonics, meaning like sounding things out, and it also teaches them all of the weird rules about reading, like silent E and how an E on the end of the word changes the vowel in the middle, which you probably remember learning at some point in your life, but you kind of don't really remember actually learning it. Letterland is amazing because it creates characters and stories for all the kids. And my kids come home and they're like dying to tell me these stories. They're like, mom, did you know that magic E can use his wand? And then Mr. O comes. I was like, what are you talking about? And it is so wonderful. I have I just love it. It's so much fun.
00:36:16 Christina: That makes me so happy to hear just from like a, again, sort of a brain science and a nerd standpoint, um, that there's a story being used to make that into a memory.
00:36:28 Speaker 7: Oh my gosh. you would not believe the level of detail that these people have put into creating these characters that help explain the rules of English. but man, when these kids get to high school, they are going to be saying the most ridiculous things.
00:36:52 Christina: I can't wait. I'm so excited for this. I know so.
00:36:57 Speaker 7: so realistically, it is more of. Kids who suffered from a administrative decision of, hey, we're going to teach this system now. We think this program is better. And turned out that it was not as opposed to, oh my gosh, it's the technology, it's the screens, it's the I mean, I'm sure that that's part of it, but.
00:37:20 Christina: I think it's all of it. I think, um, that the whole language shift was really widespread. It had a really like charismatic sales person. Lucy Calkins was, was very good at speaking on what she did. And a lot of people said, yeah, sounds great. Let's do it. So I think that that's part of it. I think that the technology is part of it, too, because the screens do shorten attention spans.
00:37:49 Matt: I was going to say that patience is going to be hugely hitting this
00:37:54 Christina: But like practicing and training into that. my teenagers actually will, will talk about it with some frequency. just that their brains are trained. we've had the cell phone ban in our school, um, for the year and it was not going well at the end of first semester. So we really sat and talked about it. Like what, what can we do to change this? And one of my kids suggested, she said, well, every time somebody has a cell phone out, make them go do jumping jacks. And I was like, okay, this is not a nineteen eighties high school. And he said, no, really to fix their dopamine because that's why they're on their phone. And I had, oh.
00:38:29 Speaker 7: Girl, listen, when I say that, when I say that we keep coming back to the same topics. We're literally reading a book called Dopamine kids right now
00:38:41 Christina: And that's that's where the money is in, in those devices and the social media in the games, right? That you, you keep coming back for your hits and nothing is going to give you those hits faster than the device in your hand, right? Like even on TikTok, the clips are shorter now, right? Like I feel like they continue shrinking. when we were watching dumb stuff on the internet, we were watching, you know, Homestar Runner shorts that were three and five minutes.
00:39:09 Matt: Yes we were.
00:39:10 Christina: With a delight flash videos. Terrible flash animations. Right? But now if it's not fifteen seconds in and you've got me, I'm gone. And thinking about like the teenagers and the children, right? Because we also have a generation of young kids who have always had iPads, who have always had access to that. that is their default is an attention span of about fifteen to 90s as opposed to intentionally lengthening that. And that's something that we're going to be wrestling with for the next twenty years.
00:39:49 Speaker 7: So that does kind of lead into one of our other questions Is as a parent, how, how do you feel about technology and, and AI and LLMs and all of this for your own kids? Because that is a big reason of why we started this is because we have kids and we struggle with this and we don't always make the perfect decision. And so how do you feel about it for your own kids looking forward?
00:40:22 Christina: I mean, can we just put in the podcast just wordless screaming?
00:40:26 Matt: Yeah.
00:40:27 Christina: I think you, you really put it the, the way that we feel about it, which is that we're making imperfect decisions, you know, in a perfect world, basically that We've tried really hard from the start, from when our kids were little, to have a couple of clear lines around times in our day and times with our family that we know that we don't want screens to be a part of like meal times. We don't do any screens. Um, same, you know, before school, we've in the last year or so gone to like, nope, no screens before school just because you're terrible to get out the door. We're always late. Everybody's distracted. That's just got to stop. I mean, for my own self, just as a parent, I need to reinforce my rule of no screens after nine o'clock at night, right? That I can read a book, I could journal, I can color, I can talk, but I need to not be on my cell phone at that time. Um, so I think that really what we're trying to do as parents is give our kids lots of options that aren't screens and trying our best to limit it. You know, we're not we're not saying no screens. They do still watch TV. we've tried video games a couple of times and had to hide video games a couple of times. Um, just because the tantrums that we got when we tried to take them away aren't worth it. Um. But really, we're, we're just trying to make the best choice in the day that we can. I think we have some values that we try to hold on to, which is that there's a lot more life than a screen. And there are times you shouldn't have a screen. And there's times that it's okay, we're going to take a road trip in the next couple of weeks. And yeah, you get to have twenty minutes of tablet time, and then your brother will get the tablet for twenty minutes, and then nobody gets the tablet for an hour. So, you know, we try to like kind of cycle it around. Mhm. Mhm. But it doesn't mean we've got to have a lot of alternatives. Like, I don't want to think about how much money we spent on Play-Doh and Magna-tiles and the dirty looks that we've gotten. And, you know, church because our kids are playing Hot Wheels on the back pew, but they're not on screens.
00:42:44 Matt: Oh, wow. Oh, man.
00:42:45 Speaker 7: There you go.
00:42:46 Matt: I would feel like that is wonderful. I'd be like, that is that's the whole point. Like, look at them. Look at that car. You know, I mean, like perfect, perfect. That's so interesting because it feels it's. Yeah.
00:43:04 Speaker 7: You can't ever please some people. That's what it is. You can't ever.
00:43:08 Matt: Play. Well there there's there's yeah. There's that.
00:43:11 Speaker 7: I'm never going to be happy with anything.
00:43:12 Matt: But let's, let's appreciate ourselves as human beings and just and just accept it. And that's wonderful to see. And to say like, no, no, they should be on the screen. So they're quiet. I'm like, no, no, no, no, that's no, that is life.
00:43:29 Christina: Exactly. And I think some of it, you know, coming back to values again, it's what do we value for kids? Do we value kids being quiet and compliant and malleable? It's going to be hard later then. Right? If I take the hard now of, okay, we're going to be in the backyard and you're going to be screaming and we are having a water fight, or you're getting into some kind of trouble in the basement and I have to go and investigate that. That's hard now, but it's not going to be as hard later.
00:44:00 Matt: Mhm.
00:44:01 Christina: Mhm. You get to pick your hard
00:44:03 Matt: Pick your hard Oh, it's so true.
00:44:06 Christina: It sounds like you are doing such a great job. I gotta say, we're trying. Really?
00:44:12 Matt: We're all doing.
00:44:14 Christina: I got my gray hair coming in right here, like at the top of my forehead. Like I'm hoping it's going to go like, full on witches streak and the rate that we're going like probably, you know, if we have a follow up in six months, you're going to see it.
00:44:26 Speaker 9: You're like, you're like, oh, there it is.
00:44:28 Christina: I just say that I.
00:44:30 Val: Grow my own fairy hair. That's what I've started saying. I don't need it because I grow my own.
00:44:35 Christina: That's right.
00:44:37 Matt: There you go. And that's the t shirt.
00:44:40 Val: But with our kids, It used to be easier when there was an infant in the house because while the infant was sleeping, that was the showtime. That was the tablet time.
00:44:51 Christina: Mhm.
00:44:52 Val: And there are no more infants in the house.
00:44:56 Christina: Right, right.
00:44:57 Val: But, um, that has been hard. And so something we've always come back to is shows are part of our day. Tablets are part of our day. They're not our whole day.
00:45:09 Christina: Yeah.
00:45:10 Val: because we sit down and watch TV, we sit down and watch movies. We want to be on our screens too. Yeah. and whenever they're like, oh, come on, why? You know why? because your game is part of your day. It's not your whole day. That's why. And they're like, okay, so it is a helpful, thing to say, to remind them, but you know, I feel like parents now don't have that boundary for them. So we are all just making up our own boundaries with whatever works for our own families.
00:45:43 Christina: Yeah. Well, and a lot of the tools that we used to have, I feel like this generation of parents really doesn't, you know, most of us are both parents are frequently working. you know, if you're a single parent, you're working more hours. Um, it's less socially acceptable for your kids to be off roaming the way that we used to be able to, a lot of cases, people have less green space. You don't have as much of a village. I mean, people really are trying to do more with less when it comes to parenting. It's incredibly hard to be a parent right now. Mhm.
00:46:24 Val: so this was one of my bigger questions last time. And I feel like you're a good person to ask this. Do you think there is such a thing then as beneficial educational screen time or is it just the, escape in entertainment type thing?
00:46:47 Christina: I think that there is you know, we, we know, we know that pretty much all of us in our adult lives, at our jobs in our schools, um, in the world, we're going to have to interact with technology. Like they have to be screen literate. They have to be computer literate. And so there's definitely educational value to it. I think where you run into trouble with parenting, with education, with anything, is when you jump in without really understanding why you're jumping and where you're jumping to. Right. I think that zero screens in schools would also come with a lot of drawbacks. Same as only screens in schools. Comes with a lot of drawbacks. Um, and as there's more opportunity, I think in appetite for research to understand these are the ways in which it's useful. This is the point at which it becomes harmful. I think the more that we can do that in a controlled way, right? Like actually doing research on it as opposed to saying, yeah, let's try this for twelve years and see what happens. I think that we're going to get some better answers.
00:48:01 Speaker 9: Yeah, that's a great answer.
00:48:03 Matt: Yeah. Wonderful. Yeah. you made a comment earlier about we've kind of evolved to just really, not look at a screen and, and I mean, just just look at cave art. I mean, like that was it. Like that. That's what we've been doing. And I'm becoming more convinced there's kind of like a purity of that and, and not not a to exactly your point. Like, like we don't ban one one or the other, but it's, it again, allows us that moment to look at these things and words art, you know what I mean? What have you. Right in the situation that we're working with math. The same thing. Just just allow time to be right. Allow it to be there.
00:48:48 Speaker 9: So yeah, wonderfully perfect.
00:48:52 Christina: It just pushes back against a lot of values in our culture right now that don't really value standing still. we don't value not being productive. and so it's hard because we're pushing back against those cultural values, you know, as Americans, I think as people who live in a world, you know, that focuses on money and, and values productivity. And so it's hard because it is really bucking these adult trends that we just see being super harmful to our kids. Um, we don't measure happiness as. A mark of success.
00:49:28 Speaker 9: Yeah.
00:49:29 Christina: Mhm.
00:49:30 Speaker 9: Right.
00:49:31 Christina: Really? We should. Maybe.
00:49:33 Speaker 9: Mhm.
00:49:34 Matt: And was it joyful? Yeah. I mean, it kind of makes me want to start reading, you know, um, Cal Newport's stuff again, right? Because I think one of the books is literally called slow productivity.
00:49:46 Christina: Yes.
00:49:47 Matt: With the whole point. Yeah. And that was the whole idea. It's like, no, actually, we're, we're going to go slow here because it will help us. Mhm. And it seems like that needs to be accepted because it I see a lot of work to. Right the idea of frantically doing something to show value. because we think it creates value and more often than not. that's like the, the worst thing we can do. It's like, no no pause. Let's talk for a minute. what are we trying to change? What are we trying to do? And you kind of break it apart and you just want to talk through it with people, and you're really going to get to the heart of what's going on.
00:50:27 Christina: And I think that, like pulling it back around like two AI. AI can't do that. AI cannot slow down. It can look at it from as many angles as you, the human, tell it to, but it cannot have that human moment where it looks at all of these pieces that like, would not make sense, by themselves that like, oh, Meredith is getting another job. And Louise had a hard day and the bathroom was unlocked and the test scores are coming in. Like taking all of these, apparently completely non-connected pieces of information and like a human being, being able to look at it and saying, okay, I need to walk down the hallway and talk with that person. And a thirty second conversation is going to completely solve this problem, right? that human ability to like, read each other. That's what AI is never going to be able to do.
00:51:21 Matt: Mhm. It's it's yeah, for us, it's people and process technology is It's funny enough, our technology is usually the last thing we talk about.
00:51:33 Speaker 9: So
00:51:34 Val: Thank you.
00:51:36 Matt: I wanted to make sure. Are we. Are we? How are we doing on our questions? We're on our end. We're rocking it.
00:51:42 Val: We I know.
00:51:43 Matt: It's.
00:51:43 Val: Like it has only been twenty minutes. Um, I am it's a good conversation.
00:51:48 Christina: Great questions.
00:51:49 Val: I, you know, we're trying we do want to ask because we do kind of want to round it out. Back to parenting. I guess if there is one thing that you could help parents understand about how their students are interacting in the classroom or how to maybe again, we've said this just feels like a mountain that it seems like as an individual, you can't do much about.
00:52:18 Speaker 9: Mhm.
00:52:20 Val: So as a parent, if you are kind of seeing your students struggle with learning or they're turning in AI assignments and they get in trouble for it, and you just say, well, I don't, I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to suddenly have my student learn everything that they're supposed to have learned in the past six years. How do you suggest somebody either start getting help or what kind of thoughts do you have to help share with parents?
00:52:50 Christina: Mhm. Well, I think AI related or not, if there's some kind of issue or challenge that your students facing in the classroom, the first thing to do is just to get curious about it. teenagers are not always the ones who really want to talk a lot about themselves or their problems. So that curiosity, that might look like talking to your, your kiddo and finding out what's going on. It might look like, working alongside them for a little while and saying like, okay, I've got something I'm doing. You've got something you're doing. Let's, let's see what this process looks like. it certainly looks like a conversation with the teacher of what they're seeing and what might help, or what might be kind of the roadblock that's getting there. when I've encountered students cheating throughout my career, right? Because students have cheated well before.
00:53:42 Matt: A lot of times.
00:53:43 Christina: Forever. Since the beginning of time, somebody cheated on their cave painting. I'm very sure.
00:53:47 Speaker 6: Exactly. Um.
00:53:50 Christina: You know, when that's happened, it's almost always been for one, one of two reasons. either time, right? The student procrastinated and didn't have enough time to do something that they really did have the capability to do. or because they felt so overwhelmed by not knowing where to start. And I think AI, I think that there's sort of a third factor that I've seen coming in with that. And it's just convenience that it's very fast. It, it's easy to do, why wouldn't I do it? And so figuring out like, which of those issues or which of those sort of areas, maybe the motivation to use AI or to overuse AI is coming from that can start the conversation about how to fix it.
00:54:35 Val: That is so helpful. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And like I said, we're not quite there yet, but I will come back to this episode and surely remind myself, I'm sure not that I think any of my kids would ever cheat on anything, but you know.
00:54:54 Christina: They all we all get tempted, you know, and it'll be something, you know, it'll be AI or vid screens or Wikipedia or. Or that nerdy kid, Christina, who sits next to me like that. It'll always be something.
00:55:10 Val: Yeah.
00:55:11 Christina: But I think having that conversation and just saying, talk to me about this. Like what? What is leading you to do this? And, and here's why I'm concerned about it.
00:55:19 Speaker 6: Mhm.
00:55:20 Val: That's great. Okay. We have one last one. That was really fun. Oh, funny. Okay. What are your favorite red flags for AI in schoolwork?
00:55:29 Christina: Leaving in the prompt that you gave the AI.
00:55:33 Speaker 11: That's so wonderful. First off, points off for.
00:55:38 Matt: That one change prompt. I don't like the prompt. There's a better way to do it.
00:55:42 Val: That's so funny.
00:55:43 Matt: Oh my gosh, that's wonderful.
00:55:45 Christina: That's that's my absolute favorite one. Yeah. Just makes you you just shake your head at it. I can't even be upset about it anymore. I'm just like, yeah, you're redoing that.
00:56:00 Matt: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Automatic. See you there.
00:56:02 Christina: Yeah, well, they're all.
00:56:04 Val: Learning, I guess.
00:56:06 Matt: you know, I have seen, and there's definitely jokes about this here and there. Well, people will leave the prompt and like advertising, they'll leave it. Yeah. It's like it's still there, folks. You kids do it in school. You can also do it in your job. Both are not good.
00:56:27 Speaker 11: So right.
00:56:28 Christina: if you're using it to support, there's a lot of ways you can use it to support. But oh man, just, you know, Make sure you make sure you take that out.
00:56:37 Speaker 11: Yeah.
00:56:38 Matt: Take out the prompt, please.
00:56:39 Val: Oh, well, Christina, thank you so much. This was so lovely talking to you and learning so much about just what the culture is like in classrooms and the different ways that teachers are navigating this. And again, just chipping away at that mountain a little bit more and helping us not feel quite so anxious about what our kids have to look forward to.
00:57:09 Christina: The kids will be all right. It's it's all.
00:57:12 Matt: Will be all right.
00:57:14 Christina: But, you know, the teachers are are working through it. We're taking care of of each other. And we're caring for and looking out for all of our kids. And I'm very optimistic in this way, but I always I really do come back to the fact that if we are all looking out for everybody's kids, if they are all our kids, we're gonna get it right more times than we get it wrong.
00:57:38 Matt: Mhm. Beautifully put. Yeah.
00:57:41 Val: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much, and good luck with everything. Good luck to you and your family and all your students.
00:57:50 Christina: The graduation is right around the corner. We're excited.
00:57:52 Matt: That's right.
00:57:53 Christina: Woo!
00:57:54 Val: Homestretch.
00:57:55 Christina: Yep. Well, thanks for having me. I had a great time.
00:57:58 Matt: Yeah.
00:57:58 Val: Thank you. Thank you so much.