Is it just me, or did summer end alarmingly fast? Here in East Tennessee, where I live, school starts tomorrow, and apparently, that marks the official end of summer. TV commercials have already shifted to “Now that summer is winding down” teasers. The Walmart parking lot is slammed, no doubt with moms hunting down backpacks and crayons. When I checked the baby pool today, there were leaves in it.
I’ve already seen 2 school buses.
My flip-flops don’t even have proper foot grooves yet.
I don’t have pants.
Or my Zoom shirt.
Or for that matter, any shirt with sleeves.
And although it’s only August 4th, and there’s still a cornucopia of warm-weather essentials to be lived, like watering flowers, shirtless, barefoot mowing, and evenings in the Adults Only Baby Pool Bar and Grill, the sobering truth is that I fly back to Boise on Tuesday to start prepping for another year of online public education.
I love my job. I really do.
And I knew the end of summer would come and school would start again, but I thought maybe, just maybe, there might be an uprising and a national declaration of educational sabbatical and I’d move to the beach and live in a hammock and find cool shells and not have meetings or wear pants.
All while keeping, of course, my comfortable paycheck and state pension.
But apparently, such will not be the case, and Party Summer ’25 will start winding down.
I have a sense it’s going to be a very interesting year. I attended a conference over the summer that led me to believe change is coming. Honestly, probably greater and faster change than we’re prepared for.
The public education landscape is going to realize massive change. It’s already started. A recent headline from AP read that teens say they are turning to AI for friendship. Because I work in online public education, where everything is virtual, I’m on the leading edge of the revolutionary transformation that will alter the fabric of learning.
Yes, it’s an incredibly fantastic tool.
And yes, it can also replace the need to think critically, develop personal perspectives, and master new concepts. Just as doing hard work in the yard benefits the worker by growing physical muscles, so too working hard to master new concepts benefits the learner by connecting new mental synapses and teaching the mind how to learn.
In many ways, I’m curious how this all plays out.
I’m actually glad to be a part of it.
Just like the end of summer, there’s no question AI is here.
And bringing huge change with it.
Still, though, I laugh like a 6-year-old at robot falling-down videos.
Middle Age Mark 