A few of the questions, projects, and conversations currently occupying my attention. Though these projects span theology, education, literacy, and artificial intelligence, they are united by a common interest in how human beings learn to attend, participate, and exercise judgment within shared forms of life.
- Attentive Belonging in the Age of AI: the kind folks at the Science & Religion Initiative at the McGrath Institute for Church Life (Notre Dame) have invited me to talk about my work on AI literacy and trends in student attention. Attention is formed through practices and participation in shared worlds, worlds that public education often obscures from its students, despite its best intentions.
Some of the sources informing this work include: Gert Biesta, The Beautiful Risk of Education; Matthew Crawford, Why We Drive & Shop Class as Soulcraft; Iris Murdoch; Simone Weil, Reflection on the Right Use of School Studies; Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality; and Augustine, who is never far from my pen hand. - Teaching Students to Notice: closely related to project #1, I’m working on professional developments and a presentation that I hope to deliver in October about returning metacognitive teaching practices to their proper place in school improvement plans. Adapted from Nicole Wallack’s work on the formation of thinking through writing across the disciplines, I’m developing ways to deploy structured metacognitive writing practices in order to help readers notice patterns, questions, and moments of confusion and inquiry while reading and studying.
- AI and Adolescent Literacy: I taught a unit in the Spring and gathered a lot of data about student perception, and what that data means for educators. I’m currently revised the instrument I used to collect that data, as well as revising that unit, which I will post here. If you’re interested in collecting this data with your own students, let me know!
- Educational Leadership: Over the last two months, I reviewed a tremendous amount of building and district data, and wrote a school improvement plan and curriculum audit. All this has been generative for my reflections on school leadership.
- Selected Essays: you can read a lot of my current writing in real time on Substack.