Why Distance Learning?

In this special episode of Why Distance Learning, hosts Seth Fleischauer, Allyson Mitchell, and Tami Moehring skip the guest interview and trade hot takes drawn from their recent run of research conversations — with Michael Barbour, Bobbi Sandberg, Jered Borup, and Kristen DeBruler. Each host came in with their own list, then picked which ones to dig into together. What surfaces is a set of specific, evidence-backed reframes: where parents' instincts to help go wrong, why remote isolation is a design failure rather than an inherent cost of distance learning, and what's actually breaking down when students sense their teachers are using AI on their feedback.

Together, the hosts work through the Academic Communities of Engagement framework's head/heart/hands distinction, and why the "heart" and "hands" work — trust, executive-functioning support — protects kids more than parents jumping in on academic content. They connect a CBS News piece on remote-worker isolation to Michael Barbour's finding that logging into school was, for some students, the most normal part of their pandemic day, arguing that isolation is what happens when culture isn't designed on purpose, not something baked into the medium. And they spend the back half of the episode on AI: not the cheating problem schools have mostly focused on, but the mirror-image trust break when students catch teachers using it on feedback without saying so — and why an honest, disclosed, assignment-by-assignment AI policy beats a blanket ban nobody actually follows.

Key topics:
  • Head, heart, hands: the Academic Communities of Engagement (ACE) framework
  • Why parental "head" support (re-teaching content) can do more harm than good
  • Remote work isolation as a design failure, not a modality problem
  • Michael Barbour's finding on pandemic remote learning and student mental health
  • Teacher-student trust and AI-generated feedback
  • Assignment-by-assignment AI disclosure as an alternative to blanket bans
  • "Improved" vs. "more" parental involvement

Links & Resources
Note: this is a hosts-only episode, so there's no guest bio or guest-provided links to confirm — just the items above referenced on air.

About the Hosts:
Seth Fleischauer is the founder of Banyan Global Learning and host of Why Distance Learning. Through Banyan, he designs live virtual programs that connect K-12 classrooms to global peers and expert facilitators — building the kind of structured, human-centered distance learning the podcast explores. See https://banyangloballearning.com/

Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell work with CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, to help educators implement high-quality live virtual learning experiences across grade levels. Discover more at CILC.org.

Creators and Guests

Host
Allyson Mitchell
SF
Host
Seth Fleischauer
TM
Host
Tami Moehring

What is Why Distance Learning??

Why Distance Learning? is a podcast about the decisions, design choices, and assumptions that determine whether live virtual learning becomes shallow and transactional—or meaningful, relational, and effective at scale.

The show is designed for education leaders, instructional designers, and system-level practitioners responsible for adopting, scaling, and sustaining virtual, hybrid, and online learning models. Each episode examines the structural conditions under which distance learning actually works—and the predictable reasons it fails when it doesn’t.

Through conversations with researchers, experienced practitioners, and field-shaping leaders, Why Distance Learning? translates research, field evidence, and lived experience into decision-relevant insight. Episodes surface real tradeoffs, near-failures, and hard-won lessons, equipping listeners with clear framing and language they can use to explain, defend, or redesign distance learning models in real organizational contexts.

Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning, and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, the podcast challenges outdated narratives about distance learning and explores what becomes possible when live virtual education is designed intentionally, human-centered, and grounded in evidence.

# Hot Takes Roundtable — Clean Transcript
*Why Distance Learning — special hosts-only episode*

All timestamps after that point are estimates and flagged *(approx)*.

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**[INTRO — recorded separately] [00:00:00]**

Hello, and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for education leaders and practitioners who are making real decisions about how virtual learning gets designed, adopted, and sustained. I'm Seth Fleischauer, founder and president of Banyan Global Learning, and my cohosts are Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moerhing of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration. Every episode we try to surface at least one assumption worth questioning.

Today's episode is different from our usual format. Instead of bringing on a guest, Allyson, Tami, and I turn the mic on each other and go through the hot takes that have built up across our recent run of research-focused conversations. We each came in with our own list, then picked the ones we wanted to dig into together: what parents actually get wrong when they try to help with schoolwork, why isolation in remote work is a failure of design rather than something inherent to distance learning, and what AI is doing to the trust between teachers and students.

*This episode is brought to you by CILC, the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration, connecting students to real experts through live virtual field trips and experiences — visit cilc.org to learn more. And by Banyan Global Learning, which brings K-12 classrooms face to face with global peers and expert facilitators through live, thematic international exchange programs — find them at banyangloballearning.com.*

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**Seth (00:00.754)**
Timmy and Allison, welcome to the podcast. So funny for me to say that.

**Allyson (00:04.744)**
Yes, it's fun to be here.

**Tami Moehring (00:06.072)**
Yay.

**Seth (00:07.826)**
We're gonna do a special episode today and we're gonna interview each other or at least dive into some of our hot takes from this last little spate of episodes. We've been focusing a lot on research, and it has fueled a lot of our creative juices around what is really happening in distance learning. And I think the way this is gonna go today is that we're gonna surface each of our hot takes. And then the other two people will pick one of those to dive into. And Allison, let's start with you. What are your hot takes of this recent spate of episodes?

**Allyson (00:45.864)**
Okay. Okay, so I went back and I was looking at just different themes that popped out. I have reasonings behind it, but just so that we stay on time, I have five takes that I came with. So something that seems to have come up in a number of our conversations is that distance learning success depends on relationships, not technology. And I think while we focus on distance learning here on this podcast, I think that's something that extends to education, we find in those larger conversations. Okay.

My second is student engagement is a shared responsibility — the idea of what that looks like and how those relationships help encourage more engagement. I have families play a critical but understudied role. That's come up just recent in like kind of a more recent episodes. That's something that seems to be a theme that's recurring.

And then something else that I see come up is the idea of synchronous. There's a lot of focus on asynchronous, XR, AI, but that synchronous piece — that learning seems to require a little bit more of a purposeful design and how that's gonna come into those online learning environments and models. And then finally, that equity and access are multidimensional.

**Seth (02:10.798)**
Whew.

**Allyson (02:11.312)**
Those are my five, but I think, you know, we can dive into others or they might match some of yours too.

**Seth (02:17.06)**
I mean, definitely — some great mind stuff going on here. I just want some clarification first. You said synchronous learning requires a more purposeful design than asynchronous learning. Is that a hill you are dying on, Alison?

**Allyson (02:31.268)**
No, I mean to say that that seems to be an area that — the focus of research is an area I'd like to explore more. I think a lot about the discussion we had with Sofla, the synchronous online flipped learning approach. And that really thought about the different ideas about virtual instruction and how that design works both with that live interaction but also that asynchronous material. So kind of just that idea of where does synchronous fit in to create a more comprehensive digital learning experience.

**Seth (03:05.66)**
So you're just thinking about what the purposeful design is of synchronous online learning. You're thinking about that. Okay. So Tammy, do you have — of these five: distance learning success depends on relationships, not technology; student engagement is a shared responsibility; families play a critical but understudied role; synchronous learning requires purposeful design; and equity and access are multidimensional — which one of those did you want to dive into, or should we say it at the same time and see if we both want to dive into the same thing? Do you want to do that?

**Allyson (03:14.18)**
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

**Seth (03:34.558)**
Which one of those did you want to dive into, or should we say it at the same time?

**Allyson (03:41.872)**
Mm.

**Tami Moehring (03:45.761)**
We can try that. I'm wondering if I should say one that's already on my list or not, but then I'll be taken away from my—

**Seth (03:51.855)**
No, no, no, no, no. Don't betray. Nope, nope, nope. Yours is a secret until we get to you. Okay, okay, okay, okay. I've got mine. Are you ready? You ready? One, two, three. Student engagement is a shared responsibility. My god. That was so fun. It's on my list too. It's on my list too. Okay, so let's go back to the hot takes.

**Allyson (03:54.6)**
Don't betray your list.

**Tami Moehring (03:58.18)**
Great.

**Tami Moehring (04:05.75)**
Student engagement.

**Allyson (04:08.205)**
Yeah.

**Tami Moehring (04:10.551)**
That was freaky. And that is on my list with student engagement.

**Allyson (04:15.194)**
Yay, so fun.

**Seth (04:20.258)**
Allison, what was your hot take about this?

**Allyson (04:23.976)**
So the two episodes it came up in — a number of conversations, but the two that I think it really showed up in my mind when I was going back — is Jared and Bobby. It's just reinforcing the Academic Communities of Engagement and their framework that they were talking about. How does that become a model that's tried, trusted, and used? 'Cause they talk about the—

**Seth (04:33.201)**
Uh-huh.

**Allyson (04:47.868)**
—kind of the academic or the course community, which is the teachers and then the instructional designers. But then there's that third party that represents the coach or the mentor. And then the idea of the personal experience — who are your guardians, or who are the other adults in your life or parent groups that are helping you get excited about learning and stay engaged by learning. So it looks — what they seem to find is that it's this balance of all three of those parties coming together: the learner, the family, and that support community. And I guess — that support community can sometimes be a synchronous component. And that's an area of exploration I could see: what does that student coach, slash learning coach, for lack of a better term, really look like, and how can that be easily implemented in more environments?

**Seth (05:46.291)**
Yeah, when I think about their framework, I love the way that they made it super accessible in talking about the head, the heart, and the hands that students need support there. The thing that stuck out to me the most was the parent role, because I love it when there are these mismatches between what people's gut tells them they should be doing versus what the research supports they should be doing. I love those disconnects because it feels like an opportunity for growth and learning. But the idea that parents oftentimes think that the head piece is the one they should support — this academic support, let me jump in and teach them the math that I learned to confuse them while they're learning common core math, for example — and I use that example because it highlights the fact that oftentimes this head support isn't actually all that helpful. And that's the job of the teacher.

**Allyson (06:25.83)**
Mm-hmm.

**Seth (06:42.352)**
The heart and the hands are really interesting for me because the heart, I think about trust and how important that is. And I think about authenticity. When I think about trust, I have another podcast called Make It Mindful. I had an episode I did recently with Catherine Heavers. She's a biologist, but she's all about relationships and teaching, as I think any good teacher should be. And she's talking about the mammalian brain scanning for authenticity as a prerequisite of trust, right? Like you have to believe that what you're being told is what is actually on the inside in order for you to trust that this is a person you should depend on. And I think about that in terms of parent relationships, but also in terms of the teacher relationship. And that's where transparency is so important. But transparency is only really possible when you actually know how you feel, or when you know what you have and what the plan is. And so that's where a lot of the course design — really understanding, this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it, being able to communicate that to both parents and students so that you can gain that trust and take care of that heart piece — and have the parent understand, okay, this is my role, and I can jump in and address this because I have the information I need in order to do that. And then I also think about hands and how that goes into a bunch of executive functioning stuff. I have other episodes on my podcast around executive functioning, and I thought that related really closely to the Kristen DeBruler episode we did, where we talked about pacing and how flexibility is actually kind of a detriment to students—

**Allyson (08:28.925)**
Mm.

**Seth (08:37.702)**
—depending on their age. And when I hear that, I'm basically hearing "depending on their ability" — their executive functioning abilities, right? The better executive functioning abilities you have, the more you'll be able to take advantage of the flexibility online learning gives you. But the less you have, the more that flexibility could actually be a detriment to your learning. So I thought that framing of the ACE framework popped up in a lot of different places, and I love that you surfaced all that.

**Allyson (09:15.782)**
Yeah, I thought a lot about the idea — especially since my daughter's going into her teen years, and just how school is, and all the different ways you have to think about that responsibility. But that idea of helping students be proactive — not because you're teaching them the content, but you're supporting them and saying, okay, you have the educator that's there, let's ask them questions, you have these resources around you — help them figure out how they can utilize those resources or identify if they're lacking so they can communicate that they need them. And especially in that online environment, I feel like that's such a critical piece, because that responsibility is so necessary for you to feel successful, for the whole team to feel successful. Tammy, what do you think?

**Tami Moehring (10:07.565)**
I just, while you were all talking — and this is happening during the podcast too — I kept thinking of all the people we had on before that talked about how they were doing this so well in different ways. One of the things that popped to mind was — and I'm gonna say her name completely wrong, probably — Yulia Kostko. She was the founder of Ziplo Education, the 2000 Ukrainian students that they taught, and they've probably taught many more. I also thought of Nancy Grimm. All those people that took that relationship and getting to know — and Seth, you were talking about that administrative piece too. Everyone that just did that so well. And I loved hearing that — yeah, we heard all those wonderful cases firsthand, and then the research just said, yep, those people are doing it really well, and here's why. You back it up. That was kinda—

**Allyson (11:07.02)**
Ha ha ha.

**Tami Moehring (11:10.443)**
I don't know, I just liked all those, because it was like — they did that, and that one, and that one, and that one. So yeah.

**Seth (11:18.076)**
And we will link to all of these episodes in the show notes. Tammy, what were your hot takes?

**Allyson (11:20.646)**
Yes.

**Tami Moehring (11:27.917)**
So, well, I had three written down. One we already talked about was relationship for student engagement. One of them was relationship for distance learning. And then another one that popped up was mental health, and that was based off the conversation — the last one we had with Michael. And that was only because I just read an article about—

**Allyson (11:58.962)**
Mm.

**Tami Moehring (11:58.912)**
—mental health and people that work from home, and what the take was for adults versus what we talked about for students. And that was just — it was pretty much right after that episode we recorded it, so it was a lot to process for me, that one.

**Seth (12:13.554)**
Well, before I bite on that third one, 'cause I liked that — that was intriguing — what do you mean, relationships for distance learning? 'Cause you talked about relationships for student engagement, relationships for distance learning — we talked about the first one. What do you mean by the second one?

**Allyson (12:15.95)** *(approx)*
Yeah, kinda like the medium — people's relationship with the medium of distance learning.

**Tami Moehring (12:19.156)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Seth (12:21.07)** *(approx)*
Got it. Okay. Well, I want to jump in on that third one — how do you feel about that, Allison? Okay, yeah. So — mental health. We talked with Michael Barber about the mental health impacts of distance learning with kids, but you looked into remote work and adults. What did you find?

**Allyson (12:24.76)** *(approx)*
Me too. Me too.

**Tami Moehring (12:42.079)** *(approx)*
So they did a piece in CBS News I was reading about how people that work from home — distance learners or distance workers, which all three of us are — have more isolation, and it's worse for your mental health. Which was interesting, because when Michael talked about it, especially when they talk about students in COVID — going to school, even if it was distance learning, was something that they looked forward to. It was something out of the norm. They got to connect with their friends, they could leave everything else behind, they were focused on that. And I don't know, I just related with the students, because my work is my normal thing — I sit down, I connect, I have relationships. But then when I was reading this article, they talked about how people didn't feel connected to their coworkers or their job, or felt left out. And I was like — I like how I have it set up, and I don't feel isolated. Maybe that's just me, and it sounds horrible, but I don't feel isolated. So I don't know, I was very surprised. They—

**Seth (13:44.73)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Allyson (13:44.824)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Tami Moehring (13:57.215)** *(approx)*
They like the flexibility of working from home, but it's not good for their mental health, they said. And I don't know if I agree with that.

**Allyson (14:06.476)** *(approx)*
It is interesting, because that actually really stuck with me. I thought about that a bunch — the idea, even though it was different, that the most normal thing students did was sign on for school. That's stuck with me a lot. And I think even for non-essential workers during that time, that could have felt very normal too — that the one thing you can control is the tasks you have to get done in the day.

**Seth (14:17.242)** *(approx)*
Quote. Yeah. Yeah.

**Allyson (14:34.0)** *(approx)*
And I've just recently — I think a lot about that, and also that in some cases, when we talked about other studies in previous conversations, there was a certain rate of students doing better because the social experience was taken out of the equation during the pandemic. The idea that if they were struggling with mental health, or there was a bullying situation, or they were feeling uncomfortable in their skin — for whatever reason, that lack of comfort — when they were able to learn remotely, that was off the table, and they could focus on what matters. And in some cases, those students continued to learn in that environment. So it's interesting to think about how that social aspect relates to the person, right — the idea of who the person is. Maybe there's some need for social interaction, sometimes there's not — introverts, extroverts. But it is interesting, 'cause I have a very good friend of mine that recently got a remote job, was able to move cities, had a flexible schedule — did that for about three years, and found that they liked the support and encouragement of people within a workplace. So they're now working in person again — remote just wasn't for them, because they didn't feel they had that community connected to it. So it is interesting. I've been trying to think a lot about that, because in a lot of cases — maybe I enjoy the flexibility the remote experience gives, I also know that being around people is something that can charge me up. So it makes me excited to think a little bit about the hybrid — what is that hybrid experience as we look to the future, from remote to hybrid work that we see now for adults? But where is that also in the classroom?

**Allyson (16:36.376)** *(approx)*
Is there an opportunity to create more hybrid environments for students who, for whatever reason, want or need to work remotely, or are more successful in that remote environment, but still want to be in that classroom experience? It's interesting — I think that's a really exciting space we can hopefully grow in, because you get people at their best. What environment makes you feel like you're at your top?

**Seth (16:57.977)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Seth (17:04.155)** *(approx)*
I think there's a lot here. One of the things — because you're talking about personality factors, right — the students who found that distance learning worked better for them: that's one of the great success stories of the pandemic, of this otherwise terrible experience a lot of people had. Some people found out that this works a whole lot better for me, and they're continuing to do online learning. It's one of the reasons virtual learning is growing. I think there was also this front-row seat that parents had to education that made them more thoughtful about what they might want out of an educational experience. And I heard this term the other day — the balkanization of the US education system — referring to the idea that there are just a lot more options now than there were pre-pandemic; a lot of different models and styles of education that work for a lot of different people to varying degrees. And I think that's a direct output of this huge experiment we were thrown into. That Michael Barber quote you had — that remote learning was the most normal thing that happened for some of these students during the pandemic — I thought that was so insightful, because in hindsight we look back and think that was such a terrible thing for so many people.

**Allyson (18:16.036)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Seth (18:24.132)** *(approx)*
But I think in the moment, there was probably, for a lot of students, a sense of "at least I have this." And I know a lot of parents could imagine a world where we didn't have Zoom, and how hard that would have been to navigate that time. What I hear, though, Timmy, in the article you shared about people feeling more isolated in remote work — I'm hearing the exact same thing I heard—

**Allyson (18:30.789)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Seth (18:52.874)** *(approx)*
—in emergency learning, which is a bunch of people doing this fairly mindlessly. At Banyan, and I assume it's this way at CILC, we take our remote culture extremely seriously, because we recognize that if we don't build a culture, there will either be a void of one, or one will build itself. And so we have a lot of different opportunities for people to socialize. One of the things we have is every one-sixth of every meeting—

**Allyson (18:57.924)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Seth (19:22.259)** *(approx)*
—is explicitly dedicated to socialization. So if it's a 30-minute meeting, the first five minutes we're just sitting around shooting the breeze, and if it's an hour-long meeting, you can take up to 10 minutes doing that. Because we recognize that people need to feel connected to each other in order to have productive collaboration. And people in a remote setting are oftentimes going to feel isolated if they don't bring—

**Allyson (20:04.76)** *(approx)*
Mm.

**Seth (20:13.984)** *(approx)*
—a mindful approach to the design of the experience, which is exactly what you saw during the pandemic — people just being like, I guess we'll throw this course online now. It's like, okay, cool, I guess we'll throw this culture online now. But if you don't do something mindful and intentional with it, it's going to be less-than, and then you're incorrectly going to think that.

**Allyson (20:15.708)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Seth (20:15.708)** *(approx)*
Yeah, I mean — I have friends and I go and I meet them for lunch. I also just love lunch — it's just my favorite meal of the day by far. It is dinner foods at lunch prices. I love it.

**Allyson (20:36.122)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Tami Moehring (20:37.181)** *(approx)*
Ha ha.

**Allyson (20:42.99)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Seth (20:43.25)** *(approx)*
And it's a nice break in the middle of the day, and Portland has some incredible restaurants — anyway. That's one of the ways I get around it. I see you guys, I see my colleagues, I see plenty of people online, and I believe I'm in a shared space with you. That's another thing — this mindset of, if you expect it to be less-than, if you expect that you're not going to connect with people, then you won't. But if you expect that you will connect with people, then you'll find a way to do that.

**Allyson (20:50.8)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Allyson (21:07.044)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Seth (21:11.808)** *(approx)*
So, but more than anything, that's what I heard — just bad design.

**Allyson (21:16.024)** *(approx)*
Yeah, and it's so interesting — your framework of thinking about the norms you have to set. I was talking to Michelle Carlisle, who was also on our pod before. She told me a little about how she tries to make that uniform — that culture — really important to her education team. Since they're all working remotely, teaching different languages, she'll send the same whiteboard to all of them, the same expectation that you should be there a bit early, the idea that your digital decorum is the same decorum you'd bring into an in-person experience. I think those are so important to be productive — not that you need all the tools and everything, but that idea that there are these sets of norms. Especially as we look to the future, since this medium doesn't seem to be going anywhere in the professional world. So the more students can have that access, the more that culture becomes something they can carry — both with friends, but also that professionalism when it comes to the career experience.

**Seth (22:23.438)** *(approx)*
All right, we ready for my hot takes? My hot takes. Okay, so: head, heart, hands — parents are helping in the wrong place. We talked about that already. Best practices don't exist, everything is an experiment — I liked that. Flexibility is a risk, not a feature, for kids still building executive functioning skills. Kids can tell when a teacher has used AI, and it breaks something specific.

**Allyson (22:23.656)** *(approx)*
All right, Seth, what are your hot takes?

**Allyson (22:36.656)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Seth (22:52.815)** *(approx)*
And more parental involvement is the wrong target. Improved is.

**Allyson (23:03.802)** *(approx)*
Tammy, what are you thinking?

**Tami Moehring (23:07.699)** *(approx)*
I like the AI one, and the last one — improved parent involvement instead of more parent involvement.

**Allyson (23:19.15)** *(approx)*
Yes, I like those two as well. The AI one is always interesting to jump into. I also like the idea about best practices — it makes me think of that philosophical idea of an "ideal critic." Who was the first critic to tell you something was ideal? It's a chicken-or-egg situation. That's why I'm always like, is it best practices, or promising practices? Because promising practices leaves room for growth. But that's just me in the words. I think AI is really interesting to jump into.

**Seth (23:56.716)** *(approx)*
Yeah, just a note on the best practices part — Michael Barber surfaced that. Some of our previous episode titles have terminology like "best practices," or "here's what the research shows," right? And he directly called that out — this idea that science is this ever-evolving best guess, which I appreciate, and it's humbling.

**Allyson (24:10.882)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Allyson (24:16.815)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Allyson (24:24.1)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Seth (24:27.146)** *(approx)*
So — make a call. I can't make this call, so you guys make a call. Where are we going?

**Allyson (24:30.168)** *(approx)*
Let's — do you wanna do AI? Let's do AI, since we talked a little bit about the parents and the head, heart, hands.

**Tami Moehring (24:33.161)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Seth (24:37.378)** *(approx)*
Right. So what I'm thinking around AI is this trust issue — and I've done a lot of thinking and talking about it on my other podcast — that it really comes down to trust and what it's doing to our relationships. A lot of AI policy initially, or a lot of the air in the room when people first started thinking about AI in schools, was all about student cheating: the students are gonna use this to cheat, and A, that's really hard for me as a teacher; B, they're not going to learn what they need to learn; C, do they even need to learn this anymore if they're going to use AI when they get out into the real world? But I think there's another part — the opposite end of this relationship — where students are seeing that their teachers are using it, and that relationship is breaking, because students feel like teachers don't see them, don't know them, aren't doing their jobs to give them the feedback they deserve because they did the assignment without AI. I think that's a super powerful and important idea that isn't getting enough attention. And when we balance that with the need for teachers to have easier jobs, given how much stuff continues to get layered on top of them — there aren't many examples of "we took something away from you, teachers." It's always "and now we're also doing this thing." The idea that AI could take something away and relieve some of the pressure — of what's becoming a fast road to burnout for a lot of people — is really intriguing and promising. But if it's at the expense of the teacher-student relationship, it's probably a cost that's too expensive to pay. So we talk a lot about cognitive bypass for students, and using AI for the types of things their brains should be doing, so their brains can develop properly and get to the point where they can take advantage of the best benefits of AI.

**Seth (27:02.489)** *(approx)*
But we don't talk a lot about teacher cognitive bypass — what are some of the things teachers need to be doing that AI could do for them, that would stop early-career teachers from developing the skills they need to develop? And student feedback would definitely fall into that category, with that additional element of trust.

**Tami Moehring (27:30.577)** *(approx)*
I was thinking about — you're seeing it, Seth. One of the conferences I went to — the first one where they were talking about AI — they had a teacher, an English teacher, talking about how they use AI in their classroom. And I thought that was really interesting — out of all the teachers, it was an English teacher. But what he did was say: well, students are gonna know, and I'm gonna be honest, I use it, so they're gonna use it too. But he broke down, in every project, the different steps of what they'd have to achieve — the final writing of a paper — and how much AI both he and the students could use along each step, and how it got smaller and smaller, until at the very end they couldn't use it at all for the final version. But I liked that process — the biggest thing he told other teachers was: be honest. Because if you're not gonna allow them to do it, but you use it, and you have all these rules in your student handbook — it doesn't work. They're gonna start using it even more.

**Allyson (28:40.154)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Seth (28:58.404)** *(approx)*
Authenticity breeds trust.

**Allyson (28:58.552)** *(approx)*
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say — I think it goes back to that idea of being authentic. So, tell the students what you're going to be using AI for. If it's something like grading multiple choice — versus reading open-ended questions or reviewing papers where you're putting more of yourself into the work — that's what you'd want your educator to experience too. But I think it's also gone outside the classroom — I've heard, in podcasts I listen to, and in conversations my daughter will have, this idea of "well, that's AI, I can see that's AI." And it's almost like, if something looks AI to them — a car, a living space, whatever it might be — it's an automatic lack of trust. And that breeds a bigger issue: you're not being taught how to use it, you can identify it but you can't use it. It also goes back to the idea that educators have lots of things — they keep getting more tools, but having access to the tool doesn't mean you have access to quality or regular training. So if you don't know how to use it and your school doesn't have policy—

**Seth (29:57.966)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Allyson (30:24.932)** *(approx)*
How do you then prepare your students? I love the idea of breaking it down by assignment, because there's a mirror there — more opportunities for them to do that training will help so much in seeing how it can be a tool.

**Seth (30:41.114)** *(approx)*
I mean, a lot of things are moving in that direction — assignment by assignment, some sort of color-coded spectrum of AI use that's allowed. The problem is that it adds an additional layer for the student and the teacher — because in addition to completing the assignment, potentially with AI assistance, you also have to disclose how you used AI, to make sure you stuck to the guidelines, and then teachers have to assess that second part in addition to the assignment itself. Maybe this all works because some AI is making things easier at the same time, but at most it's a wash — it just made things more complicated and more difficult.

**Allyson (31:25.029)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Allyson (31:31.8)** *(approx)*
Yeah. It's interesting — on certain grant applications and even recent conference proposals, they'll ask how much you used AI. And it's interesting, because it does make you check yourself — okay, what were my steps, what was my process, what were those opportunities? And I think it goes back to: if you don't check your work—

**Seth (31:40.408)** *(approx)*
Yeah, how much did you use it? Yeah.

**Allyson (31:58.626)** *(approx)*
—you know, there are times people could have grabbed a paragraph off the internet and not done anything to it. Plagiarism has always been something that could occur, especially in the digital world when it's so accessible. But I feel like people who want to put the work in want to see that same work given back by those doing the assessment.

**Seth (32:25.453)** *(approx)*
Yeah, I mean—

**Allyson (32:25.668)** *(approx)*
Which is hard, 'cause not everyone's putting that type of work in — no, everyone wants to, especially if it's not their subject. But yeah.

**Seth (32:31.578)** *(approx)*
Sure. With that conference question — I've had that question too, and they're always asking for a percentage. I understand why it's a simple answer, but a better answer is: how are you using it? Because when I'm asked that—

**Allyson (32:38.394)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Allyson (32:42.169)** *(approx)*
Yes.

**Tami Moehring (32:43.914)** *(approx)*
I wanna know that too, because I think they submit it through an AI and it pops out the best of the best. I'm gonna be honest.

**Allyson (32:46.37)** *(approx)*
It's too limiting.

**Seth (32:48.538)** *(approx)*
Well, and also — how are you assessing your percentage? Is it number of words generated, number of ideas? My AI usage is usually like 100% my ideas — maybe pushed with some help on the core ideas, and maybe some supporting ideas helped by AI. A lot of the words can be generated by AI even though those are my ideas. So it's an imperfect question, right?

**Allyson (33:06.467)** *(approx)*
Yeah.

**Allyson (33:17.52)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Seth (33:18.462)** *(approx)*
Quick last question to survey the group. Lightning round: what is something you are rethinking nowadays, Alison?

**Allyson (33:21.72)** *(approx)*
Yes, lightning round.

**Allyson (33:31.055)** *(approx)*
Hmm. Rethinking. I was recently at a conference, and this quote kept coming up — that technology is moving faster than it ever has, but slower than it ever will in the future. So that's something I'm thinking a lot about, and how that impacts the various parts of distance learning, specifically the AI experience. And I'm also thinking about how some things haven't changed—

**Seth (33:55.214)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm.

**Allyson (34:08.388)** *(approx)*
—there are still areas of opportunity for us to help define underneath this field, like the role of the synchronous — where does that live, and how do live virtual visits or lessons become something recognizable in its own form, not just something associated with pre-recorded experiences. So those are things on my mind right now — I'm sure more will come up after we leave this conversation. How about you?

**Seth (34:39.63)** *(approx)*
Tammy, what are you rethinking, Tammy?

**Tami Moehring (34:43.278)** *(approx)*
The synchronous-and-asynchronous piece is a big one. We kinda started at the very beginning talking a lot about synchronous and moved into asynchronous — yes, asynchronous. I'm also thinking about what I know my children will probably have to deal with if they go to college — a lot of asynchronous. So it's interesting to think about what that means, and how that could be isolating, or not, and all those different things. That was a big one. I really like the relationship one though — we talked about that today, but it always pops up at the end. I love how everyone finds something that somehow connects to it — even access to something they never had. On Why Distance Learning, I always feel like relationship is somehow connected within one or two degrees of it.

**Seth (35:46.072)** *(approx)*
Yeah. So something I've been thinking about — I started, maybe because I'm a remote worker, seeking out IRL experiences here in Portland, and I started a discussion group recently with a lot of friends. We meet once a month with a rotating host who picks a theme. This last round, the Waymo is coming to Portland, and—

**Allyson (35:48.592)** *(approx)*
Nice.

**Seth (36:14.2)** *(approx)*
—that was an opportunity for my buddy Jamie to think about automation and the future of work. His main question was: how does a society respond when huge swaths of employment are replaced by automation? But that led to a deeper question about the purpose of work. There's an article he shared, "A World Without Work" by Derek Thompson, from The Atlantic in 2015 — we'll link it in the show notes. One of the things it talked about was the difference between a job, a career, and a calling — a job is for money, a career is for status, and a calling is something deeply meaningful to you. And I find that many of our colleagues in education feel as if they have a calling, and that's one of the great blessings of our pursuit — we see the importance of our work, we see that it matters. I do wonder how many people, if you were to win the lottery or have UBI and not need income anymore, would continue to pursue something similar, trying to have impact on young learners — because it matters so much. That's an easy answer for us, but not everyone's going to become a teacher, and I wonder, in a future where a lot of jobs will likely be automated away and there will be new pursuits — young people are keying into this idea that your job should matter if it can, and maybe they can do with a little less if it means they can take their time to discover something that matters. I've been rethinking that in the context of what we teach at Banyan Global Learning, what I'm teaching my kids, and the systems we—

**Seth (38:31.884)** *(approx)*
—subscribe to when we were young, when we carved out our path to how we ended up here, are changing and evolving. And how do you prepare students for a future where the only certainty is uncertainty? I don't really know, but I'm rethinking it.

**Allyson (38:50.864)** *(approx)*
There's this really beautiful Japanese principle — Ikigai, I believe — that talks about how you create the work by finding the intersection of what you love, what you're good at, and what the world needs, and being able to pursue that, whatever that passion may be for you, and that being the way it becomes work — what you can get paid for. Yeah, I guess maybe that's why I'm thinking about how you choose your job.

**Seth (38:56.524)** *(approx)*
Ikigai? Yeah.

**Seth (39:12.996)** *(approx)*
And what you can get paid for — important. Yeah, no, I love Ikigai. It's — I feel like I've found mine, right? And it's like — how lucky are we that we get to be here. Well, thank you guys so much for being here today on our podcast together, and I'll link everything in the show notes, but let's do this again sometime.

**Allyson (39:21.028)** *(approx)*
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

**Allyson (39:26.212)** *(approx)*
Yeah, definitely. This is fun.

**Seth (39:44.858)** *(approx)*
All right, bye bye.

**Allyson (39:45.86)** *(approx)*
Bye.

**Tami Moehring (39:46.529)** *(approx)*
Thank you, guys. Bye.

---

**[OUTRO — recorded separately]**

That's a wrap on this hot takes episode with Allyson and Tami. The AI conversation is the one worth sitting with: the cheating debate gets most of the attention, but the trust break can run the other direction too, when students sense a teacher used AI on their feedback without saying so. Both directions come down to the same thing — disclosure. If you're building an AI policy for your classroom or school, that's worth designing for explicitly, not just the plagiarism side of it. We referenced a handful of past episodes and outside pieces in this conversation — Michael Barbour, Bobbi Sandberg, and Jered Borup's work on the ACE framework, Kristen DeBruler on pacing and AI-generated feedback, and Derek Thompson's 2015 Atlantic piece "A World Without Work" — we'll have links in the show notes. Thanks for listening to Why Distance Learning, and we'll see you next time.