The Third Path: Discernment, Resistance, and Getting Your Whole School to Move with Ellen Devine

When generative AI hit schools, most reached for policies. Choate Rosemary Hall tried that too, and it wasn't working. Ellen Devine, Director of Studies and Chair of Choate's AI Steering Committee, describes the moment a single piece of advice changed everything: stop writing rules, write a stance.

That stance, endorsing the discerning, informed, and ethical use of AI, became the foundation for one of the more thoughtful school-wide AI approaches in independent education. In this episode, Ellen traces how her background in rhetoric and composition, her years leading curriculum change in the English department, and her work on equity and inclusion all shaped how she thinks about leading through uncertainty.

She also gets candid about the habits that can derail even well-intentioned change leaders, including the belief that force of will plus enough evidence always wins. It doesn't. But listening, she says, usually does.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to Evolution Stories by Middle States. This interview series is devoted to teaching you how to lead change in education. We're here because facilitating change in schools has never been harder or more important. So this is your place to learn from those who are leading the way.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Welcome back. My name is Christian Talbot. I am the president of the Middle States Association, and I am thrilled to be joined today by Ellen Devine from Chote Rosemary Hall. Ellen is the Dean of Studies. She is also an English teacher, former department chair, but maybe most important of all for today's conversation. She is the person at Chote who oversees most of the AI policy and practice work, and it is significant and substantial. So welcome to Evolution Studies. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05 0:51

It's a delight to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

So I always want to know at the beginning where someone's origin story begins when it comes to leading change in schools. And for some people, that doesn't happen until they start working in schools. For other people, they can trace it back to things from their childhood. But when you think about the impulse and the desire to lead change within schools, like where do you trace that back to?

SPEAKER_05 1:16

So it's funny, I think a lot of times when I think about change, I um and leadership, I'm not sure that I think explicitly of myself as a leader, even though I have certainly been in positions of leadership and led initiatives. And I think without getting like too psychoanalytical about it, both of my parents were teachers. My dad was a university professor for a time before he um transitioned early into um computer work, and my mom has been was a teacher for her entire career. Um and I think that they modeled the ways in which education initiates change for individuals, for societies, and that that was just um a value that I saw in in education and felt pretty drawn to it. Um so I think you know we can make it like a very nascent beginning.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Say more about the idea that they were modeling this for you. What is that, what what's what does that look like in your memory?

SPEAKER_05 2:17

Well, so so my father was a Jesuit priest before he was my dad. Oh and my mother was a nun before she was my mom. Okay. And so we're gonna go to that. And so my and my dad was a pr um a teacher of theology. And I think in the in, you know, he worked at um Catholic universities, and and the way that he saw his role as teacher within theology courses and as a Jesuit was to like really initiate active critical thinking and change within individuals.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 2:51

Um, and ultimately when my parents chose to leave the church and get married and have me, quick side note, their names are Joseph and Mary. My last name is Devine. Um, and when I was little, I used to tell everyone I was Jesus' sister. So there's a lot here. There's a lot here that's like a different podcast, but um I think I think that you know my dad saw the role of educator as a person who you can say plants seeds of change, creates opportunity and structure for change, and that the real work happens with the individual, but I uh the the individual student who's who's being taught. Um and then my mom, in a more structure structural systems way, um my mom was like uh the grievances um uh rep on the union. And she um was she was often like the lead teacher or had all of these leadership roles that often took on um positions of advocacy. Yeah, she was a special ed teacher for a long time. So um sometimes it was advocacy and change on behalf of students and and quite frequently also on behalf of um teachers and faculty. And she saw those things as inseparable from the work of being a teacher. Um and so I think all of that was just in the air and water of where I was growing up and how I was growing up.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 4:21

Um and you know, obviously they, as people who they they were a priest and a nun for a really long time, like my dad was a priest for like 30 years before he left the priesthood. So they had a capacity for radical change. Right. They did. And that you know, I mean, they also, if you were like my childhood was like perhaps unusual in certain ways, but also like if you met them, they didn't seem like radical change makers um or um right really unusual people in that way, but they but the choices that they made and the way they adjusted to those choices, I think, are evidence of otherwise, and so I think that that plays a big role.

SPEAKER_01 4:59

Well, maybe over drinks we'll go deeper and deeper into this conversation. But I do I do want to point out something because the majority of my own time as a student and teacher and administrator was in Jesuit schools, yeah. And um this might be a little esoteric for the typical person watching or listening to this podcast, but um one thing that is it's really sort of central to um to the Jesuit tradition is that Saint Ignatius, the founder himself had a conversion experience, which was a radical change experience for him, which I think is not uncommon for um for saints in the Catholic Church, but but more importantly, I think for this conversation is that he then went on to develop something called the spiritual exercises, which is actually very much like a step-by-step uh set of practices to change the way that you think and act in the world. Yeah, so it makes a lot of sense that um that would have come through, even if indirectly, you know, through your your father's influence and of course your mom's and right, the Jesuits were a response um to the Reformation, yes, right, and this attempt to bring a more active, engaged, intellectual, maybe even embodied, approach to Catholicism in the face of Martin Luther's criticisms, right?

SPEAKER_05 6:23

So there's radicalness in the in their beginnings in really interesting ways.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Yeah. And then so just go connect that then to go one step further, connect it to your your work in the profession. You know, yes, it's it was sort of you absorbed it by osmosis.

SPEAKER_05 6:42

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Um, but was there a moment when, as a department chair or you know, the dean of studies, or maybe on this AI testing where you're like, hmm, like I need to take things from here to there. And that that's that's actually a a responsibility I have as opposed to more or less keeping things going well.

SPEAKER_05 7:02

Right. I'm I'm probably not the person to ever be picked if the job is to maintain the status quo. Like that's not my vibe. And there are some people I like I could do it, but I it's not what I would be inclined to do. Um, and I think that's another reason I found like teaching English, just as a young person in her 20s deciding what she was gonna do for a job. It may have been slightly a profound lack of imagination. It may have been. But I think the act of working with young people is the like we're here and we're gonna go to here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're gonna try to figure out with each of you how to help you make take that path. So I think there that is sort of how I conceive of my basic pedagogy. Yeah. And I had that experience in my 20s of like replicating my favorite teachers and then having to figure out that that's a fine place to start.

SPEAKER_03 7:52

Right.

SPEAKER_05 7:52

But it actually can't be the basis for your pedagogy. You have to see who's in front of you, what their needs are, you have to pay attention to all the things that maybe weren't present for you in your own in your own path and what else is in the room and things like that. Um, I think when I went to graduate school, I was really um informed by Paolo Freire's work and pedagogy of the oppressed, right? And I think the framing of um liberation pedagogy and critical consciousness is all about this kind of change for a greater good, a more um, a more awakened individual and by nature society, right? So I think I embrace teaching in those terms um that are a little bit secular compared to maybe the way my dad was doing it, but I think have really similar um DNA.

SPEAKER_03 8:39

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:40

Um, and yeah, they use a lot of similar um, I mean, Priori uses a lot of similar uh vocabulary to um Catholicism after um Vatican II and things like that too. So there's probably some reasons that those things resonate more with me, even though I'm not a practicing Catholic, but again, it was like in the water.

SPEAKER_03 8:59

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_05 9:00

There's some ways where that was very present. Um so I think just from being even in my early 20s and being a teacher, that felt like what teaching was. Um, as much as I love books and literature, and I really do, I didn't necessarily see like you must understand um Canterbury Tales from beginning to end. Like I didn't see that as my task, right? I saw it as the vehicle through which these other really important and meaningful things will happen, and that the this particular vehicle because is super enriching and amazing and has lots of potential. The whole reason I wanted to be chair of the English department was to help solve problems, right? I did see that as like I think that's how I usually think of leadership. Um, or what feels appealing to me about leadership is is that like there are problems and then you are empowered to attempt to solve them, to generate things, bring bring new ideas to the table, hire new people, consult with others, and like really try to solve a known problem. I don't like delayed maintenance. I don't like to just say, oh well, that's that's how things are. That can also sometimes be a problem for me. Right? Acceptance and surrender are also important elements of leadership and of life, and so those are areas where sometimes I have to remind myself like you can't fix everything.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 10:25

Um, but you know, I I worked in an incredibly um like enriching positive English department um at show when I as a young person, and there were things that I thought needed to change, and I was excited about the possibility to do that. And the other thing that I saw as really exciting about being a department head was the sort of the um personal caretaking of colleagues and being able to help nurture and support people while they do that very like on the ground kind of change and guidance of young people. Yeah, so that felt just like a natural call to me, and it might really might have been my favorite job ever being chair of the English department. It was really great, it was a really great time. In that time, we did change the electives that we offered. Rachel had had a pretty um we can call traditional canonical approach to um the literature that we taught at different levels, and we went through a pretty extensive uh process of diversifying um the content by time period, genre, cultures, ethnicities, voices that were that were featured and centered, and we we did a pretty substantial overhaul of that. Um we reworked our feelings about um tracking and like honors versus regular, um, and we we removed some of those distinctions. Um so we did we did a lot and then really brought in uh writing process as the the one of the main purposes of our instruction, not just writing as way to see how much you read and whether you're naturally good at reading and talking about what you think, yeah, um, but actually as a mode of cognitive inquiry and then that something that's like appropriately scaffolded and integral to the learning. So I those there were a lot of changes. Yeah, there were a lot of changes that happened in my tenure in as department head, and it was about eight years worth of time.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Well, that may be a good segue into the next question, which is whether it happened during your time as English department chair or not. Um, what is a change project you were involved in that either you could say failed or at least didn't succeed the way that you wanted it to?

SPEAKER_05 12:41

It was it is a perfect segue.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 12:44

So um I became department head like one or two years after I had uh finished my graduate degree and got a master's in rhetoric and composition and really dug into a lot of the theories of composition um and the pedagogy of writing, and I was eager to bring that back to my department and help us like really grapple with what it means to teach writing beyond what had been the process earlier, which was sort of like sentence-level error, paragraph level error, essay level error, and this emphasis on that that kind of approach. Um and so in these electives that we revised, that the department had a real eagerness to engage in that work as well, uh, I wanted the senior electives, all of them, to do a paper of length. So to go through a multi-revision, very structured process of writing a paper that would be like six to eight pages in length, so that they were also prepared for the kind of writing they'd be asked to do in universities across lots of disciplines. And I made a really strong pitch to the whole department. I was like, listen, this is what's going on, this is what's happening at universities, and we need to prepare our students and we need to support them in how they go about writing so that they have tools that they can move forward with, and they're not just really good writers of literacy, literary, literary, oh geez, literary critical essays, right? Like that's not the task. And so we're gonna take these 11-week single-term electives that you all love that are literature-based, and I need you to put an essay, a long essay process in there, and it's gonna be great, you guys. I promise. And maybe you'll all have to teach one fewer books, but it'll be fine. Um, and I'm being I'm being a little comical about how I presented it, but it was a little bit like that. Um, and we did it. We did it for two or three years. Now, um Toad also has year-long electives for the seniors and then single terms. So if you're in the year-long, those are those are um theme-based and they're usually interdisciplinary, and so there's one on the cla on classical tradition, there's a post-colonial literature course. So they're big, there's theoretical elements, and nobody who taught those classes had any trouble incorporating this um paper into their curriculum. Everyone who taught the single term electives were like, you've lost your mind. This is impossible, no one can do this. There's not enough time to even introduce them to the literature that they would theoretically be writing this long paper about, and write the long paper. Um, and I I have a pretty strong force of will. And sometimes, sometimes I would I want to just lean on that and be like, it's fine. You can do it. And that was really heavily influenced by my graduate work, where I had seen and read a lot about how many universities, um, English departments had split in these really fractured and unproductive ways of the composition and literature, right? And so I didn't want that to happen in my department, and I didn't want this binary that we're either reading or we're writing to exist because they really felt so integral to one another. They are, right? And I was and so I didn't want to embrace that. Um and then two colleagues uh who were younger members of the department um at the time, or they were less senior members of the department, and I had hired both of them. They came to me and they were like, So you it's really not working, and it's very hard, and and no, we're not able to meet the goal that you have, right? The goal that everyone's doing this this meaningful writing project. Like we we can't do it, no one's doing it, or very few people are are sticking the landing on this. And we would like to propose a course that's a single-term elective that focuses on this writing process and doesn't have the emphasis on literature and uses the readings that are in it as vehicles towards the writing, which is so essentially they were proposing a freshman comp class. Yeah, right, and both of them had worked at universities before, so they had that context, and they really um they were really aligned with me and how important it was and why they believed in it. And I was like, I don't want to. I was like, I have all these reasons that I don't want to, primarily that I don't want to. Right, and that's it. And I was like, no, okay, but let's do it. Fine, you're you're probably you're right. Like, I'm not I'm not inclined to deny evidence. And there was evidence, and even I was hard having a hard time in the single electives that I was teaching, getting the essay done.

SPEAKER_03 17:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:30

So I said, okay, let's move forward with this proposal. We had a summer retreat where we put the course together, and um, the course is called Art of the Essay, and any student who does the single term electives of their senior year at Chope has to make sure Art of the Essay is one of the courses they take. I teach that course now. It is my favorite course to teach. Oh my god, it is a delight. And so it's like this, it's it's a it's a yearly reminder of um the joy that can come from my failure and submitting and like just surrendering and putting my will aside.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 18:08

Because it's such a great class, and and it does achieve the writing goals, and it does let students step out of the really literature content-centered way that we do teach English, and that I think a lot of um high school English departments teach English and should. It's not a criticism of that approach, but lets them really think about themselves as writers in a different way. And we've we've still in um instilled a lot of those values in our literature courses and at different levels, but it lets them like dig into something. Um, there's a huge amount of um agency and autonomy in terms of what they decide to write about, which is also a lot harder in a in a specific genre class or an author-based class, and it so it's a wild success, in my in my opinion, and and it's totally in spite of me. Totally in spite of me.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

I'm really curious when you go like go back to the part of the story when you initially said that you know you you have a you you can sometimes have a forceful will. Yeah. What was the narrative in your head about that moment before those two colleagues came to you? And you know, was it um you were observing people resisting? Were you observing people struggling and they weren't trying hard enough, or they weren't trying to like? What was the what was the story you were telling yourself, I think?

SPEAKER_05 19:29

Um I think I told myself, well, it's new, and we have to be patient. And that I think also probably because of being a teacher. I know that change for for people of any age takes time, right? Um, and I think I assumed there was an absence of understanding. So I did a lot of um PD. I brought in um some c some some friends and colleagues from the univers some from universities who were heads of their writing centers to model what inquiry-based revision writing looks like. Um so I think I sometimes thought it was an absence of knowledge and that surely if everyone had enough information, they would definitely agree with me.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 20:14

Um, I knew that I had some resistors, and I and that's always true. And so those folks, I was like, well, right, and that's always gonna be their stance, and I will continue to help and support and guide them, and also accept that sometimes you can't change people, and we'll figure out what to do about that as needed, maybe with class assignments, they'll just teach seniors less often. Um so I think I think I I attributed it to pace of change takes time and and a belief that between my force of will and abundance of evidence, yeah, surely everyone else would get on board. And and then when I reflected on my own struggle to to to meet the goal, I did think to myself, well, you just didn't plan well enough. You didn't try hard enough. That's a pretty classic internal monologue, right? Also a topic for a different podcast.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

But well, not really. I mean, I actually I think that's that's part of what I want to explore a little bit, is you know, if you're struggl if if a when a leader struggles with change, it's very rarely for reasons that are external to that person, or at least entirely external.

SPEAKER_05 21:28

No, I think that's fair. That's fair. So I think with that's how I re uh reconciled my own struggle to do the thing that I was telling all of us we should do. And then when when those colleagues came, she'd be like, yeah, but it that's not it.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

What do you what do you think would have happened had they not come to you?

SPEAKER_05 21:46

I would have persisted. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah, I would have. And then what do you what I mean, obviously this is all counterfactual, but what what what do you think might have eventually caused you to have the epiphany? Do you think it like you just would have had to beat your head against the wall a certain number of times?

SPEAKER_05 22:03

Or I I I think I'm really lucky to work at a school and in a department that's really open. And even though it has a hierarchical structure and nature that people share criticism pretty freely, someone else would have brought it up. Yeah. I think I can I can trust that like as the problem persisted, I think people would have raised it. Now, how they would have raised it, the um the explanation they would have given for it might have changed. But because I don't like delayed or deferred maintenance, I would have, I would have heard it and been like, okay, I have to do something.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:39

Um, I think, I think my colleagues, um, one of whom is now the chair of the English department, um, I think my colleagues just did me a mitzvah by presenting it the way they did and offering a solution that they also knew would be familiar to me, having, because I um when I was doing my master's work, I did also teach a freshman composition course. So it was everything they were saying was very familiar, and I was like, oh, it makes so much sense. So yeah, I'm not inclined to be like irrational in the face of um, like I'm not I'm not so attached to my force of will that I'll deny reality at all. So I really I think someone else would have called me out and pulled me up. I I I'm really confident about that. It's a real positive thing about Chote's community.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

I I mean everything you've said so far really resonates with me, and um I I you know I don't know that I would have actually articulated it as clearly as you did, but I think I'm also someone who um would have had an internal monologue like you just need to work harder at this. Yeah, or you just haven't figured out the answer yet, but it's there, and you just keep going.

SPEAKER_04 23:47

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Um, and that's that's really hard to like you you have to be really super metacognitive and let go of your ego in order to be able to recognize that stuff without the mitzvah of colleagues. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:04

Yeah, and I think a really helpful counter to that internal monologue is being a good listener and listening to other people, because I would never say, I would never say to one of my colleagues, your problem is that you're not working hard enough. And that you just didn't organize yourself, right? And that this will work out like the things I was saying to myself, I would never offer as the explanation when other people were telling me it wasn't working. Right. So that was a really helpful counter to that internal monologue, too. That just I was I that I wanted to listen and understand the problem that everyone else was having.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:43

Um, and my problem solving skills were were more open when it was like, oh, there's there's a group problem. This is not a me problem.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

Yeah. Before we move on to um a different change story, I'm just wondering, you know, this was a number of years ago that this happened, and since then, do you do you have you developed a different inner monologue or at least an additional inner monologue? Maybe that inner monologue is still there on some level, but has it has it expanded?

SPEAKER_05 25:17

Is it inclusive of different kinds of internal voices or I think the gift of of that moment and also the elective changes that I was describing? Um the department when was totally on board with making those changes, and I wanted to make them in a year. And there was a meeting where I was like, I was like, I've got this. I was on, I was at the whiteboard, I was mapping everything out with everyone, and I was like, and then these people will do these curriculum development grants, and da-da-da. And and multiple, and it these were more much more senior faculty members who um you know had sort of like watched me grow up as a teacher, and then had had a lot of confidence in me to be the department head, which was really meaningful. And they were like, it's too fast, it's too fast. And um, I was pregnant at the time, and I was like, the time the timeline you all want, this baby is gonna be like three years old before it's done, and that felt absurd to me. I was like, outrageous. This is outrageous, yeah. Um, but they were right, and I listened. Part of it was like I knew enough that like force of will and all. I did not have the support of the department to like, go ahead, Ellen, you can do all of that work yourself this summer and present it to us next year, and it's still not going to take root, right? You need this neat this whole group needs to move holistically and collectively. Yeah, and they were just like this is just too fast. We are so on board, but it's just too fast, right? And so I know a lot of people talk about um the the change happening at the pace of trust, and that's a bit what this was.

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 26:59

Um, not that they didn't trust the change, but to do that change well, they were like, this is too fast. And they were 100% right, not just in terms of like how to allow each person to be ready for that change, but because I wanted it to happen quickly, I was making decisions that actually would have that really that blossomed because there was more time, there was a chance to revise and return and reconsider.

SPEAKER_03 27:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:25

And so I learned those lessons like pretty uh deeply and viscerally. Um, and really my colleagues in the English department offered those lessons so gently um and with like a lot of care and compassion. Um and that that just stayed. So the listening to what do people need, what's the resistance to change, what's under that resistance, how much of it can I answer with support, information, learning? How much is not about those things? That those were lessons that I really got to take in that are like powerful counters to my like one woman show who can make a lot of things happen.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

So does that sound today? I'm I'm I'm speculating, obviously. Like, does that sound today like something like in your head when you're having a conversation with one or more people about some change? Is it like there's a voice in your head saying, like, uh what's really being said here? Yes, yeah, yes. So you're asking yourself a question, absolutely, and often what's the need?

SPEAKER_05 28:31

What's the need? Is it something I can provide? Is there someone else who can provide it? Or is it some like uh unanswerable existential need that you know sort of lives over here that we have to think about how we approach and speak to those things? Because again, it can't necessarily be concrete.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Yeah. That simple seemingly simple shift from you as a younger, less experienced leader to uh the more mature leader you just described is a shift from diagnosing what you think is true and making statements internally about what you think is true to just wondering and just asking a question. It's like statement, question. Yeah. That's a I mean it's simple, but it's a pro that's a profound shift.

SPEAKER_05 29:20

And it's funny, um, Jenny Elliott, who's um Chowdh's head of student in academic life, I um she frequently, in response to anything that she's doing in a meeting, will say, I wonder. And I like and it's just it's just like a it's how she starts her sentences. Yeah. And I noticed it very early because I don't necessarily ask questions. It it's a real that's a really nice way to ask questions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I often ask more like direct questions, and so that's been a helpful model because even about the wondering, um, I tend but but it's like the next iteration of my question asking is the wondering.

SPEAKER_01 30:03

Yeah, it's so funny you say that. I have a colleague, relatively new colleague, um, who it's it's super clear that when he starts a sentence with, I have a wonder about this, that he has critical constructive feedback to share. Yeah. So it's not like I don't know that he's gonna share critical constructive, but the way he's the way he frames it completely changes the tonality of it and the way I can receive it.

SPEAKER_05 30:32

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So that's been sort of my my my next iteration of thinking about how I can ask questions. Because they do ask a lot of questions. But I I I frequently have not framed them as wonderings. And so that's but but the question part uh internally about like what's the need, who can answer it. Yeah, um, that's still kind of diagnostic. And the wondering takes it to this next level that I've I've found like a really I that I've appreciated the modeling that Jenny's offered around that.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Yeah, no, I I agree, they are both attempts at diagnosis. It's just that the questioning one probably is much more penetrating as a diagnosis, right? That's right, that's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:14

And so I think they have different roles and different moments, and you get to discern like what what which thing are you doing when.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:19

Um, and so those are that's been a shift for sure.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Well, let's then talk about um more shifting from change project that didn't succeed the way you wanted it to, to a change project that has succeeded, even if it succeeded in ways you didn't anticipate.

SPEAKER_05 31:34

Yeah. So I think the the the one that's just really active and big and ongoing um for me and for Chote as a community is our approach to integrating AI as a full community. And the stance that we've taken and that we published in April of 24 was that Chote endorses a discerning, informed, and ethical use of AI for students, faculty, and staff. Um and with that stance that we developed, we rolled out a lot of policy that was student, faculty, and staff facing. Uh we developed an acceptable roles chart, right? And that was when we had the opportunity to do some great work with MSA Rail, um, because we were really doing that work sort of insularly, and we didn't have a lot of connections to other schools that were interested in engaging in the same way. Um, and so getting to have feedback and a sounding board for the things that we were coming up with that from people who were outside of our uh immediate community was all very helpful. Um so we we we came up with the stance that I really believe in, that I think also is so representative of our community. And um, Eric Hudson was actually the person who recommended that we come up with a stance. Uh and you know, it was funny, he just said it should be it should be based on your school values. It may not be longer than 300 words. It was a I felt like that was personal. I like he somehow knew, he somehow knew that I would write a thesis that that was the current stance, um, but that it would also, that it would be a challenge that I would not put down, and um, that it could function as a way to respond to this constantly evolving technology. And it was such a helpful suggestion because we were immediately getting bogged down in policy and the weeds of things and the what-ifs, and it was getting really frustrating, uh, just as a committee trying to sort through all these things. And as soon as we were thinking stance, we suddenly understood how to gather information from the community, where what kind of language would be in that stance. Um, and so, and then like it also directed us to the core values of our institution, and how do you build out an approach to this really revolutionary sort of human moment that's attached to the core values of your institution? So, all of that work suddenly went from something that was feeling like big, difficult, complicated, sure to fail, to something that actually felt um values-based, meaningful, and expansive, just from changing the like the one task we were doing. And we still did all the policy things, but that it all made sense and could flow from there. Um and really, our com my community gave us that language about being discerning, informed, and ethical, both in the um the feedback that they gave us in various surveys, and and it's also just kind of what's consistent about the Choke community and the way it approaches education and learning. Um, so that was all great, and we were feeling great, and we were like leaders. And you could also walk into plenty of Chote classrooms and have no idea that Chote is using AI in a meaningful, interesting way, um, or that anyone in that room had heard of AI. And to some degree, that's actually an embodiment of our goals as well, because we this this emphasis on discerning is not that this is a uh a full-fledged embracing of the technology and using it for the technology's sake or replacing everything that you do that might be analog with with a technology just because we can. So, in some ways, it's incredibly consistent because what we're really trying to ask people to do is decide when you engage and how you engage, and actually make sure that part of that calculus is that you're also making ethical decisions, not just um educational decisions. But also, if I'm honest, a lot of the classrooms where you can't tell that AI is being used is because nobody wants to. And it's not actually a discerning ethical or informed decision, it's a resistant decision. Um and and so that's also as we were talking about before, resistance to change is always gonna be a part of this scenario. But I don't think that we've thought enough or done enough yet to respond to that resistance to that resistance in meaningful and multivaried ways. And because we've endorsed this this really value-based uh way of approaching AI, and because we also are a school that is deeply committed to sustainability, it is very hard to live those values at the same time. Yeah, they're almost counter-educated, almost, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Right. Meaning like if you're using AI, you're having a deleterious effect on the yes.

SPEAKER_05 36:52

And and some of that is a product of how the industry is choosing to expand and develop its own technology. Sure. And that an individual school can't be responsible for what industry leaders and an absence of any kind of governmental regulation might produce. And we're trying to raise these young people to think about these things um in meaningful and complex terms. And so holding that tension and being able to figure out how to guide the next iteration of what we're doing with AI um, it doesn't feel like a failure exactly, but it's it's um is there, can you call a Sisophyan task a positive thing? Can we call that? Is that a thing? Does that have to be a good thing?

SPEAKER_01 37:47

It depends on whether you're talking to Albert Camus or not, I guess.

SPEAKER_05 37:50

Right? I just so this is a project where I think the goalpost will move every moment.

SPEAKER_01 37:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 37:58

Um and as it moves, the thing that you thought you had achieved, you might look back and be like, also I didn't, I didn't completely nail that. And that this is very messy, and believing that this this project will ever not be messy, I think it w was something I had to really come to terms with.

SPEAKER_03 38:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:22

That this isn't gonna be a we've landed the moment.

SPEAKER_03 38:26

Declare victory, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:28

Done.

SPEAKER_03 38:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 38:29

Um and and honestly, I I was I think I was really well prepared for this project from some work that um Chote did uh that I had the opportunity to be a part of around equity and inclusion um that started in uh 2020. And certainly, you know, addressing institutional long-standing structural inequities is also not something that you're gonna declare after a year of committee work solved. Right, right. Ta-da. Everything's all set. And so I um and even the belief that those things can just be fixed is indicative of some really like you know problematic um structural derogatory thinking, or not derogatory, but um discriminatory thinking. And so I think the work that I had the opportunity to do um with Chote around equity and inclusion that was led by our um Dean of Equity and Inclusion, Dr. Rachel Myers, actually set me up really powerfully for the work that uh I'm doing around AI. And of course, AI has implications around um everything that is human, including bias, discrimination, um, how it's being deployed uh for all of our worst impulses as humans, as well as possibly for realizing um our greatest possibilities, which is why I like it. It feels like literature to me. The whole the whole project of AI feels like literature to me because it's just an intersection of all of humanity. Um, and an invitation to maybe help model to our students a different way of thinking and moving through a world that is not a binary of good or bad, and how do we really prepare them for that? Because I think a lot of education does have this read of like education is good, and being educated is good, and if you become an educated person, you too will do good. But human history has borne out otherwise. A hundred percent. And um, and I think that's a real tension that independent schools really need to grapple with, particularly because um we have the privilege to be able to make a lot of our own decisions. We often have the privilege to educate people of privilege who go off to be the leaders of the net the next generation in really significant, powerful ways. And I think AI is a moment that once again is calling educators to grapple with how have you prepared that next generation to make the decisions as future leaders that will guide us to powerful um spaces of of equity, of abundance, you know, these things that you sort of want to associate with a good life, with um a happy society, and the and the outcome of of education, and yet hasn't really been the outcome yet. Obviously, teachers can't individually do that, schools can't individually do that. There are a lot of forces that are much larger than all educators and educational systems combined, but it's still the thing that feels really interesting to me. And so what I feel like this this is this work has done is also really kind of beaten out of me that you can't work hard enough, you can't be organized enough. Like that's that's not the approach here. It's never going to be. Um, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

So, since you referred to literature a moment ago, at the level of plot, yeah, uh, with this this change project, AI arrives, Chote is struggling to come up with policies to kind of govern the safe use of it, if nothing else. And that's simply not working. That that initial approach isn't working. And Eric Hudson, who um is uh on our AI advisory team and and I think a really tremendous consultant for so many schools, such a thoughtful person. He says, at this moment in the plot, he says, whether he uses these words or not, whether he addresses things directly this way or not, he's essentially saying to you, like, you can't keep doing what you're doing and expect to get different results. And he recommends adopting a stance, which that sounds like in the abstract, that sounds like such a watered-down, kind of like hand-wavy kind of thing. Yeah. And yet, I know and you know, that was actually really like a watershed moment. 100%, right? So, what is it from the standpoint of leading a change project that makes the adoption of a stance so such a high-leverage intervention?

SPEAKER_05 43:20

So, this might be a very like characterological personality-based me answer, but I love You are the subject. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. So, um I really love moments that force you to be stripped to your core. I think they are powerful. Um, I thought COVID was gonna do that to the education moment. Some of the most meaningful teaching I ever did happened in the spring of 2020 in the worst conditions, right? Our students were remote. They were in every possible time zone dealing with so many difficulties. And yet, like the ways that we connected, because we just got to what was core about our course and about teaching and learning and being together was so meaningful. And I thought, oh my God, this is the moment that's gonna change a lot of things in education. And it and it didn't for reasons that I also recognize and understand because it was traumatic and it was awful, and then it felt like it was over, and who wouldn't want to get back to normal after something so bad. Um, but what I love about a stance is that it tells you what's core and that the act of writing it forces you to strip away all of the weeds, which teachers are so good at living in the weeds. We love it there. I don't know what animal like I don't know what animals love the weeds, but we're in there. We're we are those animals. Um and they can be so consuming, but when you get when you have to bring things to the core and then not just not just be stripped down to it, but the really cool thing about composing a stance is that you are then articulating and amplifying and celebrating what those things are. So it turns positive, right? Like not to just sound that I'm like uh really masochistic in my ways of thinking, just being stripped down, there's no joy left. Um, you get to then really affirm what those what those values and approaches are, and then they return, you get to return to them every time a new, complicated, confusing, awful thing raises a question.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

So, out of all of the things that were in the stance, and you and I have talked about this before outside of this interview, like talk about that word discerning, discernment, discern. Yes. Why is it so important?

SPEAKER_05 45:49

To be discerning in life outside of AI, I is is seems to me to be one of the primary skills that you need to have to navigate, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Um maybe let's pause because I agree with you, and yet I'm wondering if everybody who's listening or watching is going to think about the word the same way that maybe you and I are thinking about it. So when you think about the word discerning or discernment or discern, like how are you defining it?

SPEAKER_05 46:17

The way that I think about being discerning is that you are taking in all of the information that is available to you. You're weighing it, contextualizing it, and measuring it against things you've known before, things that you anticipate in the future, and then you are calibrating to make the best decision that you can in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

And is it fair to say that there's often or maybe always some kind of moral ethical valence to that?

SPEAKER_05 46:52

Absolutely, and and there's not a clear one answer.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Right.

SPEAKER_05 46:56

There just isn't.

SPEAKER_02 46:57

Right.

SPEAKER_05 46:57

And I and that is that is just true. And so separating yourself from attachment to the idea that there is just one answer is a really powerful way of changing how you think critically. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:12

Um so it's more than just making decisions. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:14

I think it's I think it's a frame of mind that acknowledges there is not a single path, there is not a righteous path. So that's tough. When you bring in the moral question, I think a lot of us want there to be the one good right way to go. And and really grappling with the idea that that is not, in fact, the basis of the question, the problem of existence is a really important first step. Um and that also a person next to you could be doing the exact same exercise and make a different choice, not because they're bad.

SPEAKER_02 47:49

Right.

SPEAKER_05 47:49

Right. And I don't want to get into some like moral relative relativism kind of concept, but but really that this I I do think that it's cr it it is deeply connected to meaningful critical thinking, to creativity, right? I think that those those elements are are integral to one another and they feed one another. Um and presenting to children that there are right answers, exclusive right answers that are absolute is false. And I think Choce really, as a school, has done a wonderful job about of not teaching in that way. Um and that this is an extension of that, but maybe a more explicit and mindful expression of that intention. Um so does that help? Did I did I define discernment?

SPEAKER_01 48:38

Yeah, no, no, that's that's great. That's great. And so what what kind of additional leverage did the inclusion of that word provide to the school at this moment with AI that previously had been, you know, it's my the what I what the image I had in my head as you were describing like the the the moment before Eric helped you to intervene was like playing whack-a-mole.

SPEAKER_05 49:04

Yes, that's exactly what it was like. So, because there was so much like, well, what about this? And what if this, right? And then, and have you heard these deep fake people are being kidnapped but not kidnapped, we can't have it, yeah, right? And this, like, this must be banned. And it was becoming, and either this exists everywhere and is all consuming, or it is forbidden, right? It was becoming that really quickly. And if you're saying that we're doing this, that means you're saying you embrace all of it and say all of it is good and you endorse all of it. And and that, and no one was saying that.

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Right.

SPEAKER_05 49:42

No one was saying that. And the creation of this binary of all in or complete rejection felt like the thing that actually needed to be spoken to and answered. Um, and and I think people were really fearful that they would lose their agency as teachers and um that students would lose their agency as learners if we were saying yes AI. Because so many of the narratives around AI are about cognitive offloading, circumventing learning, all these things, right? And the the media has its impulses and reasons to write these really extreme stories, um, and also they are based in in real concerns, right? They're not false, um, but there's certainly the the noise machine around all of this is is really catalyzing this sense of binary. And so it was really c clear that that couldn't be the case. We know this isn't the case. Um, as an independent school and just as a teaching and learning community, we want teachers to make good choices for themselves. We want our students to make good choices for themselves. We want to model what it looks like to make discerning decisions and give them practice in doing it around a really powerful and difficult topic. Um, so the discerning, I think, spoke to all of that. You you get it is not all in or all out. It is not robbing you of your agency. You always get to make decisions, and sad in fact, you're being asked to make decisions. Really tough ones. We know it can get tiring. It it is it is tiring to be discerning.

SPEAKER_01 51:23

I think this is such a great lesson for any change project that maybe AI sort of amplifies it to the nth degree, but often, I think, in schools, the it's either we're we're gonna do this change or we're not gonna do this change. And what you it sounds like what you created was essentially a third path, which is there's something, it's and it's not like in the middle of that spectrum, it's like actually on a different axis, really. Um, that requ it's harder. It is hard, it's it can be a little messier, or maybe a lot messier, but it it actually not only preserves but actually kind of centers agency and autonomy.

SPEAKER_05 52:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 52:01

And no real lasting change is gonna happen without people choosing the change, right?

SPEAKER_05 52:05

That's right, that's right. And I I can't help but wonder in different moments when not necessarily a leader in in a historical moment who maybe is like a visionary and is forcing things to happen, but all the people that surround that leader who ultimately become the agents of that change, have they practiced discernment? Have they practiced opportunities to say no? I don't make that choice, I want to speak back to that, I don't think this is right, or I do think this is right, and you're not meeting the moment and you need to step into it, right? I think the more that people are taught to actively and thoughtfully engage with this discernment, it's a muscle that takes practice to build and is really valuable and powerful. And the more that we can move away away from believing in these binaries and feeling like you just have to comply, I think I think that's a positive.

SPEAKER_03 53:03

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 53:04

So I have those sort of like secret long-term goals that I'm just helping to lay the groundwork for a generation that can actually um disrupt some of the disruptive elements of AI and model different ways of engaging and developing and using it, and that they will care to do so because they have a lot invested in the impacts and outcomes of that technology because they'll like they'll just be alive and coping with it far longer than I will. So that's that's kind of where we are right now, and you know we even there was a point in the first iteration of our policy during a faculty meeting where someone asked, Are you saying that we have to do this? Even when we were saying discerning, informed and ethical, right? And I was like, Well, the the stance says it all, doesn't it? And and and it does, but sometimes people are still like, Yeah, but what do you really mean?

SPEAKER_02 53:59

Right. Right?

SPEAKER_05 54:00

Like, what are you talking about here? Do we do we have to do this? And I and my answer, and of course, I'm not the head of school, right? And it was our head of school and our head of academic and student life that initiated all of this work. So really it ultimately, right, their leadership was what initiated all this in the best ways that made my job much, much easier. Um what but so I was sort of speaking for myself and the committee, but I think I was also speaking um uh for them as well. When I was thinking, I'm not telling you that you have to do something. I'm telling you, you may not be willfully ignorant about this, though. That is not an option. It shouldn't be an option for anything. Willful ignorance should have no place in in our school or in education in general. So please just, you know, make discerning decisions, embrace being informed, think about what it means to be ethical in these moments, right? And I think that really resonated with people.

SPEAKER_03 54:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 54:57

Um, except perhaps for the willfully ignorant. But it's okay. It's kind of hard to get away. You're not gonna reach them most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been great. Um, I think you've left the audience with a lot of really important, very practical lessons. So thank you for sharing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 55:16

We have some fun, cool, exciting new iterations of our work um at Chote, really trying to dig into the discerning and the ethical decision making and using AI to help us build some of those tools. So um we'll be trying to launch those in the spring. We're redoing our um our our AI website uh with more resources to sort of share um publicly. So we're hoping to be able to help model and share for folks who are interested. And so it's a and it's it's an exciting and cool time, even as the existential dread and and looming threats are also there.

SPEAKER_01 55:52

Well, I look forward to uh Middle States being able to share those resources with the rest of the world.

SPEAKER_05 55:57

Absolutely. Thank you so much. This was a great conversation. I'm so glad we got to do it.