The Generative Teacher - blending the power of human and artificial intelligence

When GPT went mainstream, I sat down with it for a "coffee chat" and asked a series of questions about the impact of generative AI on teaching and learning. It was an interesting "conversation," but I confess 100% to leading the witness. Through that conversation, I was intentionally establishing the correlation between this new term, "generative AI," and a term we have been talking about for years -- the "generative" school and teacher. Here's a short excerpt from the original post I published in Dec 2022:

As a founder of a company which subsequently built a gen AI teacher copilot over the year following that post, I am circling back to this to address the teacher replacement narrative dominating conversations about AI. Here's the breakdown as I see it.

Generative AI Can:

• Integrate all the "things" - resources, tech tools, pedagogy, learning needs, curriculum, school/district vision (see Yourwai for how)
• Generate lesson plans, quizzes, rubrics, vocab lists, and other learning materials
• Create and differentiate content levels, languages, and topics to meet the wide range of student needs
• Write an email for you
• Build capacity to understand and ethically use emerging technology for future readiness
• Pop out a slide slow or generate an (often strange and very often biased) image

Generative AI Cannot:

• Form a human connection with a student
• Make a student feel proud, inspired, or good about themselves
• Resolve conflict within or between students
• Adapt to the dynamic interactions of a class environment
• Fist bump or shake hands as you enter the room
• See and value your real self
• Think critically about AI ethics, safety, or bias (though admittedly if you asked it to, it probably could now that I really think about it; it is rather meta)

Here's another throwback for you. When I first started doing PD to support the implementation of blended learning, I created this slide depicting the oft perceived role of a teacher (by no one who actually teaches) and the real role of the teacher (recognized by those who do).

This still holds true today in the context of this debate over generative AI's role in the classroom. Only those who perceive a teacher's role as one of information transfer (left) could draw the conclusion that AI can replace teachers. For those of us who have actually taught, we know this isn't really the role.

When I stepped into my first classroom in 1997, I quickly realized my role was less about the teacher prep from which I had just proudly graduated and much more about using my emotional and human intelligence in a highly dynamic, unpredictable environment to find, through whatever convoluted way, the specific door which would unlock the connection with and potential of each and every one of my students. It meant being a sometimes therapist, sometimes negotiator, sometimes conductor, sometimes experience designer, sometimes performance artist, sometimes coach...and always always always on.

That's the generative teacher in action. So if that teacher can use generative AI to enhance their craft, be more efficient in discovering and opening all the student "doors", and make their jobs just a tiny bit easier and more enjoyable, I'm all about creating the tool to do that. Because when we go back to the basics of blended learning, what we are really doing is letting the tech do what the tech does best so that the teacher has more time and capacity to do what ONLY teachers can do. With this mindset, we can glimpse the potential of gen AI as it blends with human intelligence to transform learning.