Listeners to the Educational Duct Tape podcast have heard me talk about our familyâs RoombaâMr. Belvedereâbefore. Iâm a little obsessed. My kids know I jokingly call him my favorite child. Every few days, I stage a mini production: picking up stray socks and dog toys, flipping chairs onto tables, all to prep the optimal vacuuming performance. A couple of hours later, I peer into that little dustbin and marvel at how much dirt Mr. Belvedere has collected. âGood job, buddy,â I often say. Then I grin at my wife and declare, âI vacuumed the bedrooms today!â She rolls her eyesâbecause, of course, the robot did the work. But hereâs the thing: the goal was never for me to vacuum. The goal was clean floors, and weâve got clean floors. Mission accomplished.
Can a Forklift Get Stronger?
This reminds me of a story that I heard from educator Dave Stuart Jr. He shared a metaphor about strength training that went something like this:
Letâs say I want to get really buff. So I bring a forklift to the gym, load weights onto it, and use the forklift to raise and lower them.
The audience leaned forward, waiting for the punchline. The point isnât to lift weightsâthe point is to get stronger. If your goal was lifting weights, well, a forklift can do the job. But if the goal is strength, using a forklift is a mistake.
AI as Our Vacuum: Cleaning Up Comprehension
Stuart was really talking about AI, which brings me to an article by Rick Wormeli called With A.I., Letâs Keep Studentsâ Learning Paramount (AMLE). Itâs a fantastic piece, but one paragraph totally stumped me. I read it, I reread it, I squinted, and still felt lost. So I did what any 21st-century educator would do: I pasted it into ChatGPT and asked, âWhatâs Wormeli trying to say here?â The AI broke it down, answered my follow-ups, andâboomâI got it. My goal was understanding, and AI helped me clean up my comprehension just like Mr. Belvedere cleans up dirt.
If Iâd asked AI to just summarize the entire article, I would have missed Wormeliâs nuance, his humor, and the chance to wrestle with his ideas. My goal wasnât âfinish the articleâ; my goal was to get better at supporting educators in an AI-rich world. And using AI for that paragraph helped me with that.
The goal wasnât the completion of a task–reading an article–the goal was to get better at something: supporting educators.Â
The goal wasnât task completion. The goal was growth.
My goal was mastery, not just checking a box.
When Task Completion Becomes the Goal
In my 14 years in the classroom full-time, I graded the way most teachers grade. Much of my grading was based on whether students turned something in. Surprise, surpriseâwhen turning in the work becomes the goal, students find the easiest path to that goal:
- Copy a classmateâs work
- Remix an old project
- Ask AI to do it for them
This is cause-and-effect. If you reward the act of turning in work, thatâs often all youâll get. But when we center growthâwhen we say, âThe goal isnât lifting weights; itâs getting strongerââeverything changes. Students approach tasks differently if they know the point is learning, not just doing.
Academic Cosplay: Dressing Up Without the Deep Work
In the article, Wormeli borrows the term academic cosplay (think costume play) to describe going through the motions of learning without really learning. Heâs not talking about dressing like Miss Frizzle or Mr. Feenyâheâs talking about students who do the work without doing any actual thinking. But heâs also talking about students who:
- Submit AI-written essays as their own
- Copy answers on worksheets without understanding
- Use Google to get the answers for their assignments
Iâll admit itâguilty as charged. Back in high school (1996!), I rewrote online history articles for extra credit. In 2005, my math students were copying each othersâ homework. In 2013, in my STEM Class, Scratch projects got a quick âremixâ and a few tweaks. Those are all academic cosplay. The goal was checking the box, not thinking.
When we make the goal the completion of a taskâturning in the homework, submitting the project, checking the boxâwe shouldnât be surprised when students find the fastest path to that goal.
Performance vs. Mastery Goals
Thereâs solid research that backs up this notion. Much of the research shows that performance goals (completing tasks, earning grades) push some kids toward shortcutsâAI includedâwhile mastery goals (getting stronger, understanding deeply) lead to genuine effort and higher motivation. Itâs like choosing between:
Lifting weights and building muscle,
Reading an article and gaining insight.
Mastery goalsâgetting strongerâyield different results than performance goals. When the goal is real learning, students (and teachers) often engage differently, even in an age of TikTok-length attention spans.
Donât Rob Learners of Challenge
Now, listenâsome of the brain science in Wormeliâs article made my eyes glaze over. Thatâs actually where I needed to paste a paragraph into ChatGPT. But there was one line that jumped out at me. Wormeli said,Â
In fact, [middle school students] are unusually open to learning challenges and creativity, functionally âcravingâ robust, active engagement with the world, and yes, with topics we teach in middle school.
Thereâs our invitation. They crave challenge, both cognitively and creatively. Even when they donât show it, even middle schoolersâ brains crave challenging thinking
Some of you are raising your hand and saying âNot the middle schoolers I teach!â and I get it, the apathy struggle is real. Most of my classroom years were with 8th graders. In some cases, no matter how much we do, itâs nearly impossible to motivate a handful of our students. Â
But if we donât try, itâs inevitable that theyâll outsource their thinking to AI. So what do we try?
- Focus on growth and learning.
- Focus on mastery and mastery oriented goals.
- Give learners some autonomy and choice.
- Help learners see that weâre trying to help them get stronger, not just lift the weights up and down.
Real-Talk: Best Practice May Not Always be Feasible
As much as I loved Wormeliâs article, he does make some idealistic assertionsâlike suggesting that teachers not use AI at all for feedback or grading. In a perfect world, sure. But teachers are human, and time is limited. If the alternative is âdo less meaningful feedbackâ or âskip differentiation,â AI might be the better move.
The Bigger Picture
AI is a powerful tool, like Mr. Belvedere on our living-room floor. Sometimes it does the job better than we can. Sometimes it robs us of the growth we truly want. Every time you assign work or lean on AI, ask yourself: Is AI letting us dress up as learners (or educators), or is it helping us learn more deeply (or educate more effectively)?
Whether youâre a veteran educator or just starting out, keep that forklift metaphor in mind. If the goal is lifting, you might as well use a forklift. If the goal is gaining strength, then a forklift keeps you from meeting that goal.
đ Ready to rethink your goals? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Letâs keep learning paramount!
Want to see this in action? Watch the video.
