Point of Reflection S2E1 - Voice, silence, and owning our thinking

The Point of Reflection is the companion to each episode of Education by Design — a short, spoken reflection recorded after the conversation ends. This is where I sit with the ideas discussed with my previous guest. It's good to sort through what our learning is stirring in our own lives and work, and think openly. This is a window into how learning happens for me: slowly, personally, and iteratively. If the episode is the conversation, this is what the conversation is shaping, for me.

This is the point of my reflection

After my conversation with Michele on AI, student writing, and authenticating rather than policing, I continued to think about experiences that shape my own voice. 

In this reflection, I trace that question through my own life: a self I once lost and spent years recovering, a friend who has been to six silent retreats, the hardest pose at the end of every yoga class, and a recent silence I didn't choose — one I'm learning to sit inside anyway.

Some of what I'm pondering:

• We worry about students outsourcing their writing. Are we paying enough attention to what they're outsourcing with it?
• Whose version of you is circulating right now — and did you author it?
• Is stillness something we're born able to do, or a practice we owe ourselves before life demands it?
• What would it mean to treat reflection not as a luxury at the end of the day, but as the work itself?

Here is Michele's V.O.I.C.E authentication resource and Substack 

I hope this reflection gives you a reason to sit alone with your thoughts, too.

🎧 Full episode with Michele Lackovic

Follow the EduByDesign Blog to explore the podcast topics, further.

And please let Phil know what resonates with you, in the comments.

Transcript

Phil Evans 0:01

The change we want for the future of education is possible when we work together to remove barriers of learning for all young people. I've been thinking a lot about the conversation I had with Michelle and the way in which the feedback she provided to her students just seamlessly appeared on the page when the students went away and used an AI tool to improve their writing. And just how powerful it was that her response was not to come down on them in a policing way, but to come up with a solution, a process where she could conference with them, talk to them, relate to them, think about what happened in that moment, where their individuality, their identity, their opinions, their ideas, their understanding went. It just got me thinking about the importance of our authentic voice. Each of us learning, discovering how we communicate with others, how we relate to others, and that AI playing a big role in our lives as professionals, as educators, how we show up in the classroom needs to remain authentic. Michelle and I were talking to educators about the way in which students have raised concerns that their teachers are using AI inappropriately to cut corners just as well, to manage their time, to grade their work, and they're unhappy with it. They feel as though they're not getting the feedback that they're looking for. We're thinking about the change that we're experiencing in our world and how that shows up in our own daily lives. Recently I was uh engaging in a conversation with some friends uh after work, met for a drink, and um one of my friends Kurt, who works in communications, he'd been to a silent retreat many times, in fact, more than five times. Um, and these silent retreats run from anywhere a week to ten days, uh, practicing silence, learning how to be silent. Um but more importantly, I think what happens is that without that ability to produce an output or content, um, we go inside ourselves and we spend more time in our thoughts. And it's such an incredible thing to think about how our voices show up in our constant thinking, and our thinking is is sometimes described as that inner voice. The the kind of the hero's quest narratives in the world talk about that voice being um a powerful drive for who we are, the voice of reason, perhaps. We hear musicians finding their their voice, their message, what they want to say, but also for those that vocalize, um, actually discovering what their voice can do and how they like to sound. It makes me think of times when I have been discovering myself and sometimes disappearing into relationships that were unhealthy for me and um rediscovering that voice again, um, rediscovering my identity. And of late I see my identity grounded in who I was in my earliest memories of being a young person, dreaming, uh looking to the future, who will I become, what will I do, what will make me happy, and I guess we all find ourselves thinking a little bit more that way today. And I think it also gives us pause to remind ourselves that we need to actually be more present and more present of mind is possible and made possible because we take time to be to be quiet and to quiet our minds. Um I practice yoga and I've often found it very difficult at the very end of class. There's a savasana where uh after the the workout, the the effort you breathe, you slow your breathing, and you also slow your thinking. And I always just found, you know, going to a a class after work, um, it was always very, very different to to try and step out of the real world and into and onto the yoga mat and especially to finish the class in a state of complete silence and stillness. Um I found that replacing that silence sometimes with a mantra sort of gave me a window into what some cultures experience in terms of their religious practice. An om, for example, that sound um you know is is a way in which it cuts through the noise of the mind and and and brings the mind to a stillness. Um, in my practice, I I might just be focusing on breathing. So I'll say just breathe. And it's got me thinking about it, you know, the how we can survive without food and water for a certain amount of time, but without air we suffocate very quickly, and how how vital it is that we do breathe and we do take time to be conscious of something that we take for granted. People hold their breath um when they are anxious, um or their breathing um becomes more rapid when uh they're excited or uh frightened. But taking their time to be still, um, taking their time to rest and to think um is something that needs to be practiced. On the other hand, when we think about young people and their voices, we we often use the term student voice because quite often the adults are the ones that are making the predictions about where students belong and um sometimes even putting barriers in front of students on the basis of uh what adults think uh their potential might be. And that's very sad, but it happens a lot in education, if we're honest. And stifling human potential is quite the opposite of what we need to be doing in education spaces and encouraging students to see themselves as learners, capable of learning and continuing, even if they're not good at school. Whether or not it's in our professional work and education, in our direct relationships and responsibility to support student learning. In this era of AI, it's never been more important for us to think about voice, and equally to think about taking time to process, to think, to slow down, and at sometimes to be silent. And for me today, that's the point of reflection. It's not always our right to be able to speak up. What is important is that we do our best to create spaces where people can. So when I think about young people handing over their voice to a tool, I don't think about the technology. I think about the human that is going silent. And in all of my practice, the hardest pose has always been the still one. We have to take time to organize our thoughts, or our thoughts will organize us. What's interesting is that sometimes we have to understand that silence isn't the absence of the work, it is the work. And so there are two silences: one that's imposed on you and one that you choose. So, what I'm learning is to turn and impose silence into a chosen one. So, a question for this time in a world where AI can write our emails. My question for you and for me is what version of ourselves are we drafting and are we writing today? Let's hold on to the human identity and let's nourish it and let's invest in it. And let's think in partnership with intelligent tools, but let's not resign to making life easier and in doing so lose that sense of voice. Thanks for listening.