Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to EPS Insightful Questions, a monthly podcast produced by Eastside Prep. I'm Sam Uswak, head of school. On our fourth season, we're exploring the theme Think Critically. Purposeful reflection. In each episode, we'll sit down with members of the EPS community as they reflect with purpose on their practice, their experiences in and beyond the classroom, and the questions that shape how we learn, teach, and grow together. We hope these conversations invite a little reflection of your own.
Welcome back to the conclusion of Reflections on the Impact of AI, where we move from what students are experiencing to what the adults and institutions around them should do next.
Allison, Students worry that admitting they used AI will somehow count against them. Does that fear make them less honest with you and what would make honesty safer?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: I hope it doesn't make them less honest with me, but they're also teens and human. And so I get that worry about saying, like, I did something that you all have cautioned me against. Julie talked about bots validating, but I think that's also our role as people who work with teens to say, yeah, I get it. This is big, this is scary, this is hard. Understand that there's a temptation. Let's understand what's behind it. What was it that was causing you to think like you needed to rely on something other than your own words? And then let's unpack that. That's often part of my job as a writing coach. Unpack that and then build that confidence back up. You're enough as you are to remind students that it's gonna feel better when you know that you've done that hard work of thinking that hard work through the writing that whatever the result is, it's yours. You didn't outsource it to any other device. You get to own it.
[00:01:41] Speaker C: Jason, does this change what student safety means as a governance question? From your perspective of being a board member?
[00:01:48] Speaker D: I'm gonna say yes and no. If we think about what a school is, it acts in place of the parent, in loco parenthesis. In the process of educating children, we provide safety services, we provide tools, we provide technologies, whatever those are. We have the responsibility and accountability to make sure that they are delivered in a way that is safe. And so I think Julie did a great job of articulating at least two classes of risk and concern that we should be focused on. One is something that's probably a little bit more exigent, like a harm situation. That is one class. The other that you articulated, well, that is absolutely terrifying to me is the disconnection with other humans the short answer is what safety means is evolving as the capabilities of the experiences that we provide to students adapts, morphs, changes. But the fundamental set of accountabilities that we have are durable and persistent. Again, I would say the patterns that sit underneath these things are probably more consistent than we might suspect. It gets different, and it's harder. And I'm not going to say that things don't change. Our fundamental set of obligations and, and commitments that we make probably similar to what they were in the past. And so now the challenge for us is to just be curious, vigilant, and aware of what is capable and what is happening and just pay attention.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: So, for instance, we have a gym, and we have kids running around a gym. It's our job to make sure that's a safe environment. We put some pads up on the wall, we kind of look at the equipment, we teach kids how to be in that space. You got to wear certain shoes. We, we've had time to develop those safety measures. What I'm hearing you say is apply the same framework to AI. Here comes this new thing. And I think one of the challenges we could all agree on is the speed with which it's showing up, how quickly it itself is changing. But in terms of the responsibility to provide those safety measures, again, this is another example of things schools are really good at.
[00:03:43] Speaker D: That is very well said. And I think you put your finger on the thing that is different. It is the speed, our ability to perceive and adapt is the capability that we're really having to invest in.
[00:03:55] Speaker E: A lot of these things are not on premise problems. So, like, social media and AI are also at home. So it's almost like you need a concept of like in loco educationum. When not at school, the parents have to educate, and when not at home, the school has to parent that concept of balance, which I love. We have a similar thing in our house. When our children start saying I'm bored, we know that they've had too much screen time. The response to I'm bored is we need to tone down the video games or the movies. Your muscle of figuring out what to do is atrophying. I love your thinking about it in terms of all the markers of not a healthy childhood. It's more of when these things start to come out of balance, that's when we need to intervene. But that's also on us to teach students to say, I'm noticing this happening. Talk more to the bot than to my friends and have friends notice each other. I mean, all the things that we do for other domains. We have to apply the same metrics.
[00:04:44] Speaker F: That's true. I think there's one difference though, because running around gym is really fun. These models are so reinforcing and in the developing brain, a the developing brain and also the developing relationship to have these relationship models that are always there for you, always available, have the right answer about your friendship problem, how to deal with your parents, how to help you with math. It's so reinforcing and so unlike the adult brain where maybe we can sit and reflect and say, maybe I should just write that thing myself instead of just plugging it into AI. I think need to be extra careful with kids with these because of that.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: Well, that is a perfect transition to our last finding that's gonna take us from what students are experiencing to what the adults and institutions around them should do next.
So one more from that census. 44% of kids say no parent has ever talked to them about using AI safely. So that's nearly half.
Set that against a separate study out of Harvard's largest physics course, where students learned about twice as much from an AI tutor as from reg class, but only because that tutor was carefully designed around established teaching practices, scaffolding, feedback, self pacing and structured questioning.
So design mattered enormously.
Nobody's designing the version most kids actually use.
So, Jason, kind of back to the last question I asked you. How does a board think about safety when the ground keeps shifting? And what does responsible stewardship look like when none of us can see around the corner
[00:06:26] Speaker D: first? Let's embrace that nobody has the answers, that there is no one answer, and we just have to go find the one consultant that has figured that out. What we're dealing with is a classic adaptive challenge. This is not a static thing, and so this gets a little bit meta. But as a board, we have to start engaging in the learning process. And literally so the thing that we are charged as an institution to do, that's something that we have to start internalizing and saying, like, look, if the world is accelerating and it's getting weirder faster, then that means that we have to be absorbing information, not just waiting for it to come to us, but probably creating the conditions to attract it. So that's one of the things that I think we're going to do that's going to be a little bit different at EPS is I think we're starting to create some gravity around what does machine intelligence in the educational experience look like. And in that process, we're actually going to attract some of the world's experts on this and bring them into conversation. And in that process we are going to learn faster, which will allow us to serve our community more effectively. In that process, I think we can also be really mindful about packaging up what we're learning and shipping that out so that we actually create benefit for a larger community. Because one of the things that Jonathan noted is the experience of children is not just in the walls, it is when they're going out with their friends. To the extent that we can make the entire community that surrounds us more fit, able, ready to really support the success of these growing humans, then I think that is part of the defense in depth motion that we probably need to start figuring out. I would be pretending if I said we have this on lock. This is a thing that we are actively looking into and we're going to embrace our ignorance. I know that thing that we don't like to ever pretend like, but we're actually going to attract people to make us smarter. And in that process, and hopefully having the humility around we have, we don't have it figured out will actually create the conditions for success.
[00:08:15] Speaker C: What should a school be willing to change about itself and what should it refuse to change?
[00:08:21] Speaker D: So let's start with what you should refuse. Our mission and values are the thing that will guide us through this. A core set of beliefs that give you purpose, give you direction, give you the conviction to move forward.
That is the thing that's going to see us through this and everything else that is around that we should be open to adapting, open to change.
And I think that's how we get there.
[00:08:48] Speaker C: So Jonathan, when a parent asks you, should I let my kid use ChatGPT?
Claude copilot Gemini
[00:08:57] Speaker E: I think this kind of gets back to my previous statement that use is too generic a word for what we're talking about. The short answer is I think yes. I don't think blanket restriction is the best choice. But then it really depends on the kid. It really depends on the age of the kid. For example, with our 11 year old, we use it together like we'll make images and she doesn't go off and use it on her own. Whereas my senior next year he will have no oversight from parents. And in college the oversight is far less than at schools. I'm mostly focused on like keeping the conversation open with him about how is he using it, is it, you know, what are his use cases and so on. Actually it was this morning I was setting up ChatGPT for education and I saw a little banner that says GPTs are going away on December 11th this year. If you don't know, GPTs were a thing that everyone was pushing. Like, this is the thing that all students need to learn. We're going to put it in the curriculum. GPTs are great. They're amazing. And they're discontinued
[00:09:51] Speaker C: already
[00:09:52] Speaker E: about like 18 months later, maybe
[00:09:53] Speaker C: gone.
[00:09:54] Speaker E: Which strikes me that our job is actually kind of the same as it ever was. We are not supposed to teach the technical aspects of AI as it exists today to our students.
Teach our students how to learn about whatever is coming down the future. And when you start moving in that direction, like, how do we prepare students to absorb an ambiguous world, be curious, ask questions, and figure out how they can accomplish what they set out to accomplish? That's all the old school stuff. It's grit, it's curiosity, it's being kind, it's working with teams. It's all the stuff we've been doing for hundreds of years. In some ways, it requires a refocus on these core attributes of what school can and should be and departing away from thinking about this as a technical problem. There were previous eras in technology where you could just have a training and say, all the teachers, we're going to learn about the Internet. We're going to figure it out. It'll take, you know, a few months. The school will be invested in it. Now you know about the Internet. Now we can use it in the classrooms. This one is different. Many things about it are similar, but this one is different in that there is the time scale between when it's going to change and when you can actually train people and have them deliver. Curriculum doesn't work right.
That takes a full year process to get a whole school on board with how to use something technically. And the thing will be totally different a year from now. And so you really have to pull back to some of these more abstract notions of how do you figure out what to do when you get there, as opposed to what is the answer?
[00:11:16] Speaker C: Thank you, Jonathan. Julia, where does the school's responsibility end in a families begin
[00:11:21] Speaker F: in this era where real information that families can count on is so difficult to come by. I think schools and the pediatrician are a great place to start. So I do think schools have a responsibility because, you know, when I think about the parents in my practice who are doing their jobs, walk their dog, try to figure out what's for dinner, help their kid with math homework, they're not thinking about AI in the way we have in this conversation. Likely they don't have the bandwidth or the time, and it's changing so much. So I do think the school having some best practices or guidelines can be really helpful.
And I also think it's sort of like sexual wellness, where that's taught at schools and then parents need to reinforce that at home.
But I think having some guidance from schools can be really helpful because you all are the experts and parents need to lean on that, but they also need to reinforce it at home.
[00:12:10] Speaker C: We have a shared responsibility
[00:12:12] Speaker F: 100%. Where
[00:12:13] Speaker E: do they overlap?
[00:12:14] Speaker C: Yeah, it's. Where's the overlap? Where's the coordination?
[00:12:17] Speaker F: I think it's best like everything when it's a partnership.
[00:12:19] Speaker C: Alison, you hear directly from admissions offices. How are colleges themselves handling this? And what does that tell us about what we should be teaching or how we should be approaching this?
[00:12:29] Speaker B: I think most colleges would be really envious of epa, our engagement from our community on this topic. Even the smallest colleges are double, triple our size.
Many built on foundations for a long time. Now, that doesn't mean that they aren't wrestling with the same question. I think every school is wrestling with this question. Colleges are very aware that they are tasked with educating students who are going to go out into the workforce and are going to be expected to know how to use AI effectively in their jobs. That's just a given at this point. Point. But most of them are also big bureaucracies where things move much more slowly. And so I think we're pretty lucky to be a little bit more nimble and to be able to guide our students in a way that they will get guidance in college. But I think from the folks I've talked to, it sounds like different departments are working on things in different ways and different colleges are much more wrapping their heads around this as a big problem, whereas it feels like we are, to Jason's point, trying to attract great minds and great thinkers and be able then to use that information and give it to families, give it to students and practice.
[00:13:34] Speaker C: What's one habit of mind
[00:13:35] Speaker A: worth protecting? Whoever you are in this community,
[00:13:39] Speaker D: I'll reflect on the day that I'm having. This day is going to be wonderful. So it started off breakfast with somebody I met recently who's the chief legal officer of another company. And we met over coffee and we had a rich, affirming conversation. And now I'm enjoying time with people who are wonderful humans, who are spectacular in their knowledge and their depth of what they're going to experience. So now I'm having this kind of communal experience. And then I'm going to jump in my truck and I've got my gravel bike on the back and I'm going to go be in the wilderness. I know we're talking about AI My reflection is that the habit of mind that I think is going to be really beneficial for me after this week is I'm having very human experiences, one on one in a group, and then finding time to be comfortable with myself. And I think that that is probably going to be very beneficial for me.
[00:14:28] Speaker F: My main job is I do a lot of exposure therapy for anxiety. So when people are afraid of something, they often want to avoid it because it feels more comfortable to do that. I often think of myself as a used car salesman where I'm trying to have people buy the product of facing down things that they're afraid of, being uncomfortable. And I've seen it in my practice, I've seen it in my own life that when people are uncomfortable and they're afraid, they're more powerful than they realize. And you only learn that through experience. The habit of mine that I would love everyone to do is to not move away from discomfort, but to sit with it, because that is when you realize that you're powerful, that you're competent. So that's what I'd love.
[00:15:05] Speaker B: I'm in the midst when we are recording this podcast of writing application. The piece of the application that is the school recommendation letter that I get to write for every one of my students. And it is both one of the greatest joys of my job and one of the most difficult parts. Every year, I think, is there a way that I could make this more effective, that I could make it better? Should I try using some of the different AI possibilities to make my writing more efficient? And I keep coming back to the joy that I get when I sit with information that students have provided to me, that parents and guardians have provided to me, that I get from all of our faculty members who have given input. And I get to sort of download to myself all these different things about a kid and go like, ah, that now I get it. That's the thing that makes this kid special and that I can write about. And there is an intellectual click that happens that if I were to shortcut, would not. Would not happen. I would not have the same joy in my job if I didn't do the work. It's very much what you're talking about, Julie. Like, sometimes it's uncomfortable, sometimes it takes me a while, and that's time that could be spent on other things. But it's also really worth it while time and I wouldn't give it up. So I think for any of us, let ourselves chew on the big questions and take the time and experience the joy of getting it.
[00:16:25] Speaker F: When you're saying this, as a parent in this community, I'm sure AI could do a beautiful job of coming up with something, but as a parent it makes me feel really reassured that my child who's here will feel known and loved. When they're going through the application process, it's not about the written output per se. That's the experience I want for my in the admissions process, for them to be going through the stressful process and to feel known and cared about, which Jason said very human. So thank you for putting in that work on behalf of all of the UPS parents.
[00:16:54] Speaker E: The habit of mind for me that I want people to carry with them is question their own beliefs long enough that they are confident in what they believe to be true and to realize that whatever they believe to be true is anchored in a moment in time and that the world is always changing. And so your confidence in how true that is should be declining that whole time after you believe it to be true and then go through that process again.
[00:17:15] Speaker D: The intentional modeling of that is one of the most valuable teaching tools there is.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: I am so grateful to be able to listen to this conversation. Thank you for sharing those. They're really pushing me to think about what I hold dear and how I show up on a day to day basis both at home and at school. So thank you for a wonderful conversation.
For more insights, be sure to check out the EPS weekly News every Friday.
Sam.
