The educator and my PhD supervisor's role

The Studios Society (Part 3) set out to bring educators together to share information about what we need to know/understand as educators. The topic for this meet-up was AI and what skills our students need in 2024 and beyond.

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What is clear is that 1) AI is here to stay, and 2) Educators/Coaches/Mentors/Supervisors are essential to the development of youth. A few points taken from the meet-up:

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1. Basics never change; keep teaching your students this at every opportunity.
2. Morals, ethics, and values are critical to society; keep teaching your students this at every opportunity.
3. Learning is situation-dependent; people will only learn when they need to learn. Create an environment of learning.
4. Students do their best for their teacher/coach because of the passion that the teacher/coach brings to that subject/sport. Professional relationships are important, and they are the core of any success in maximising potential.
5. Problem-solving: the world is focused on solving problems, keep challenging your students to solve problems, find solutions, and be positive and influential leaders in society.

As we were wrapping up the evening, I felt the need to share a quick story about what happened the Saturday before. Here it goes…

On Saturday, I was sitting in my office at school, working on my PhD article. I had been at it for about 3 hours already, looking for articles, the words to assist me in writing this piece within my theoretical framework. I had all the AI tools at my disposal, and it helped to find articles or summarise the articles, but I was still struggling to get a clear picture of what I needed to write for this section. I was getting frustrated! And then in walked my supervisor. I am fortunate and in a very unique situation that my supervisor is also a parent at the school where I work. He was dropping off his son to play cricket on the field that is outside my office. He walked into my office, and an hour later he walked out (to go watch his son bat).

What a productive hour that was for me! Through our discussion, I managed to get a clearer picture and an action plan for the rest of the day on how to structure this section.

My supervisor definitely didn’t need to come in and stay for an hour and help me with my article, but he did. As I reflected on that moment, I thought to myself how important the role of an educator/coach/mentor/supervisor is in one's development. It made me aware that sometimes just those extra 5 minutes after class or after sports practice helping a student can go a very long way!

This, to me, is the power of education, and regardless of all the AI available, human education is still critical to our development. It’s a moment I won't forget.

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