In a creative effort to promote a recent episode of the Reframeables podcast,
and I signed up for a new app that makes AI images out of phone selfies. I didn’t know what I was getting into really and didn’t have very many to work with (because I’m a mother = most of my phone pics are of my child), but for the sake of art-making I cobbled a few together and let the machine do its work.When I showed this image to my husband he picked up on the video game reference that I had missed. It turns out Lensa sees me as Shepard from Mass Effect and that means I have a saviour complex (she saves the whole universe!) and that means I need to get back to counselling. (Click the link if you want to read about how the app is being problematized).
When I left teaching I knew I would miss the emotional hits I got off of spending my days with teenagers. The 16 to 18-year-olds I taught were inherently generous. They had this uncanny way of making me, their teacher, feel downright Shepard-esque. Together we would save the universe with books and close readings of important essays dissecting the intersections of race, class and gender. But that was some flawed AI thinking on my part. What we figured out together in that classroom did not address the larger system failings. The truth for me is this: there is no saving what is broken in education. The code needs a rewrite.
And yet…
At least once a year I get an email or a LinkedIn message from a former student. The note always arrives out of the blue and in it they share some story of goodness or care that confirms for me the possibility of educational ongoingness. Some teaching from the past that points to learning as a universe-changing quest. After years spent in schools that struggle to get it right those teenagers are now adults out there working for a better world!
The artificial intelligence that sets educators up to fail is coded into any structure or framework that makes them feel like they can (or have to) do it alone. We can’t. We learn in relationship with others—in and beyond the classroom. A living breathing pedagogy of care is what I want to amplify. Shepard is retired.