TJ Wilson

Avoidance and Myth-Making in Education Sometimes it's the way we position our futures that makes all the difference.

Sometimes we forget that students may be working to go against a certain future than toward one: tjwilson.substack.com/p/avoidance-...

An English Teacher Reviews a New AI Browser Thoughts on the unreleased AI browser called Dia.

Are we cool with companies trying to gain users by advertising shortcuts to education? Or is this the new world, and they are several layers ahead of me, a regular high school English teacher dude? tjwilson.substack.com/p/an-english...

I often forget how simple classroom technology needs to be. I got this piece of tech from Sweden via IKEA instead of Silicon Valley. I use it to join groups or put it across desk my desk so students can sit while we conference. Light, mobile, the right height for discussion.

We have all the time in the world to experiment with tech as it becomes increasingly more widespread, easy to use, and cheaper.

And the classroom—this randomly diverse group of people—doesn’t exist for everybody, and we all need it at all points in our lives.

As an English teacher, basically now the core “human” teacher in every American’s education, I am concerned more than ever with humans thinking with other humans more than anything.

The hardest job at any tech company is probably the user design person. Not saying that engineering is easy. Far from it. But humans are difficult to design for.

Today's Wilson An English Teacher's Foray into DIY Art for Educational Purposes

I made a character in my classroom called EVIL Wilson. I am not a strict teacher, but I want my students to have great classroom discussions. I had no idea that such a classroom tactic would create a daily analysis of the messy act of creativity: tjwilson.substack.com/p/todays-wil...

Duh: AI and Reading and FREAKING WISDOM Another AI realization whilst in the thick of it.

Yes. Another post on AI. I'm sure people can make livings on hot takes on AI by now, but this one, I think, needs some more air. open.substack.com/pub/tjwilson...

Meeting 159 People Who I Will Now Teach The Beginning of the Year and the Teacher

A teacher with many years experience sets out to muse on the oddness that the beginning of a school year has become and learns something that will be available at the end of the essay: open.substack.com/pub/tjwilson...

My Toddler Son, Airplanes, and Costco: An Allegory Trust me: I will eventually get to something teacherly in this piece of writing.

We took our toddler on six flights this summer. We found some things out. One of them has to do with Costco. Here, check it out: open.substack.com/pub/tjwilson...

But this is Hsu’s definition of what came before college: “Until we’re eighteen, we go to school because we have to, studying the Second World War and reducing fractions while undergoing a process of socialization. We’re essentially learning how to follow rules.”

My reaction: Whoa.

In the middle of reading Hua Hsu’s “The End of the Essay” in The New Yorker.

So far, interesting.

True, it’s always good to think ahead, and, when you know something is going to be permanent or at least something you need to understand later, it’s good to be careful.

But that little bit of organization I do in my brain before I commit, that’s *the thing*.

The DIY Nature of Humans An English teacher’s renegotiating of our view of the learning and the classroom.

What is it to argue over analog and digital? Well, it is to argue which tool works best with the human behind the tool. Thus this essay about education and differing perspectives on how humans “work.” open.substack.com/pub/tjwilson...

There is plenty of time to learn tools and classes and majors specialized for them, but the only time you will be stuck in a room with upwards of 25 different perspectives is in a classroom. And that’s a wonderful part about our public K-12 system.

What we do need to worry about is that students consider the ethics and morals of using tools.

Plus, learning with other humans will always trump what we are going to get out of tools themselves.

I went through high school without the knowledge of how to use a smartphone or spreadsheets or even how to type properly. I learned all of these the autodidactic way. We do not need to worry over children being left behind in terms of learning a general tool.

As a teacher, I have to say that we need more people in whatever field to share their process, especially in a world of AI with its allure of “easy” fixes/solutions/products. Young people need to see what a gratifying, fun, and successful creative process is truly like.

I have to admit, as a regular human that loves tools, I have a soft spot for such things, though I recoil at the thought.

But it’s things like THIS that I LOVE. Grant Snider is someone who makes art and shares how they do it. (Also why I adore reading Austin Kleon.)

What To Put in Your Notebook A look inside my top secret sketchbook practice

Check this: open.substack.com/pub/incident...

It’s kind of weird that there is such a genre of influencer called something like the Process Junkie or Productivity Guru—someone who shares how they do things with various technologies, new and old, as masters of the arena.

The solution to worrying over whether students will go through the process of learning, a thing that REQUIRES friction and failure, has always been providing students and teachers with manageable class sizes. We are humans. When we don’t feel seen, it’s easier to devalue our own work.

Reality is always more grey than we think. But, yes, tools can be used incorrectly. Very easily, in fact. And it is our job as teachers to show this and not confidently dismiss a tool because of its flaws.

To examine the complexities of life in a safe space, that is what education should be for.

These two pieces of writing created a ton of unhelpful virtue signaling and have since been, if not debunked, but caveated in ways in which the focused-on-tool is not the main culprit of negative effects.

When I think about the current AI debate, I also think about that 2014 experiment by Mueller & Oppenheimer about how humans process more when we write by hand. Similar to Jean Twenge’s “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” in The Atlantic.

Cinder Blocks This summer, in lieu of so many complications in education in the 2024-2025 school year, I’m finding myself wanting to be grateful for what I know I have.

One thing I realized whilst writing about cinder blocks is that, like Legos and bricks, they are full of air. Good to have air when you build things, I guess. tjwilson.substack.com/p/cinder-blo...

Cinder Blocks This summer, in lieu of so many complications in education in the 2024-2025 school year, I’m finding myself wanting to be grateful for what I know I have.

It is summer. Now for the whimsy: open.substack.com/pub/tjwilson...

2/2 "...or any American writer you’d want to name—were written for very small audiences because the literate population was very small, amid an enormous empire of illiterate people."

1/2 Read Suzanne McConnell’s brilliant *Pity the Reader* and was struck by this historical perspective:

"Bill Styron pointed out one time, in a lecture I was privileged to hear, that the great Russian novels—which were more of an influence on American writers than Hawthorne or Twain..."

Just when you think adding a gigantor box of Goldfish to your house is the most mundane American purchase ever, you are delighted by the thought of someone actually following the serving size. Goldfish are about as easy to count as their biological counterparts, for different reasons.

Writing Is Noise: 2nd Edition A belated sequel. The last 1.5 months of school got me good!

The last 1.5 months of school were super involved. So, this sequel to my last post, inspired by a lens created by @dadadrummer.bsky.social 's *The New Analog*, is very late. Turned out, the universe made me aware I had more to say: open.substack.com/pub/tjwilson...