What’s Happening at Bement
For the last seven years, Patriot’s Day at Bement has been dedicated to an in-house day of professional development for faculty and staff. The brainchild of Bement’s stellar librarian, Marcia Bernard, Phoenix Academy is a full-fledged one-day conference designed, implemented, and enjoyed entirely by Bement’s employees. This year, the day began with six short “Spark Talks” from teachers and administrators, followed by Dean of Students Dave Belcher’s inspiring keynote address, “The Power of Place.” Dave’s reflections on meaningful places in his life, including Gettysburg, PA, and Bement, where he has spent 35 years on the faculty, were an ideal frame for the rest of the day. More than a dozen Bement teachers shared workshops after the morning’s inspiration, including an introduction to avatars in Canva, a lesson in photography from Bement’s resident photobug, Matt Plager ‘12, an overview of Responsive Classroom techniques, and a chemistry/cooking lesson that involved making bananas foster!
One of my favorite days of the year, Phoenix Academy is an amazing display of the talent and commitment to lifelong learning that makes Bement’s faculty such an incredible group of educators!
What I’m Reading, and/or Watching, and/or Listening To
I am coming a little late to the party on AI. I have the basics down and have puttered around with Chat GPT, but mostly out of curiosity rather than any conviction that harnessing its power is the key to the next stage of human development. But, I have been reading a lot about it recently, with a specific interest in how to make sense of the varied perspectives on AI’s future in education.
Take, for example, Microsoft’s recent publication of its latest Work Trend Index Report, entitled “2025: The Year the Frontier Firm is Born.” A study of thousands of workplace surveys, Microsoft’s report makes a compelling case for upending organizational structures and strategies to leverage the power of AI across every industry in an effort to maximize productivity and efficiency. Then again, researchers at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Michigan have completed a study about common AI-powered educational tools and the quality of the lesson plans they produce for teachers. (Importantly, the linked paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it still presents data and questions worth examining.) In short, the study’s authors argue that AI-produced lesson plans tend to produce lesson plans that default to outdated and teacher-centered pedagogies, while progressive education has long ago moved toward more student-centered, nonlinear, and problem-based approaches.
It comes as no surprise that the landscape of AI in schools is messy. Most Bement parents will remember the internet’s introduction to schools (or the worldwide web as we more commonly called it when I was in middle and high school in the early 1990’s); at first, its effectiveness as a pedagogical or learning tool was inconsistent. As teachers grew more conversant in the technology and understood its strengths and limitations, they became much more adept at figuring out how best to leverage web-based sources and media into the now-ubiquitous resource we see used in schools. Similar cycles of innovation, experimentation, adoption, and integration have characterized how most new technologies have entered the schoolhouse.
That AI-created lesson plans advance a particular, and largely discarded, approach to teaching is no problem as long as the teachers using it are discerning and well-versed in modern pedagogy. The truth is that AI-powered educational tools are really not much different from other technological breakthroughs of the past century. Like the chalkboard, the overhead projector, the mimeograph, the VCR, the personal computer (with or without internet), and the smartphone, in the hands of skilled and dedicated teachers they will offer new possibilities and enrich instruction.
But, that instruction–the core daily practice of educators in every discipline, across every school–will still be grounded in uniquely human skills: knowing and understanding what motivates and engages young people, communicating knowledge and instructions with care and sensitivity, and responding authentically to the changeable needs of each individual child. Those are the hallmarks of any great student-centered school, and they have been at the center of Bement’s philosophy and program for a century.
Poetry Corner
As we do most Friday mornings, the Bement community gathered for an All-School meeting on April 25th. To help celebrate the arrival of spring weather – it took its time this year – I shared this poem by Robert Frost, “The Pasture.” I love Frost’s invitation to join in the fun of simple exploration and the ritual of pastoral spring work, and I encouraged Bement’s students to invite their friends and classmates to enjoy the outdoors together in Frost’s spirit.
“The Pasture” by Robert Frost
I'm going out to clean the pasture spring;
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.
I'm going out to fetch the little calf
That's standing by the mother. It's so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha'n't be gone long.—You come too.