The chuck-it list for stubborn people

Not playing with my own age group hiking Ciudad Perdida in 2015

…your chuck-it list is just as important as your bucket list. As you age, you grow into a different person with new priorities; your goals should evolve, too. Give yourself permission to remove those items you’ll probably never get to. And most important: Don’t feel so bad about it. “Why you should swap your bucket list with a chuck-it list.” Valerie Tiberius, Washington Post, 8/28/23

I’d never given much thought to growing old. Until I actually became old. It is only now after I’ve been retired for a few years that I actually read articles about planning for retirement. Too late. I rather stubbornly have refused to acknowledge that my physical strength may be waning. I can, after all, still put the same amount of weight on the exercise machines at the Y that I could 20 years ago. I can still hike 4-5 miles without much trouble. I can still drive without needing glasses. So do I really need to create a chuck-it list to accommodate my impending decrepitude?

One of my bucket-list goals has been to hike to the Mayan Ruins of El Mirador in Guatemala. I did survive Ciudad Perdida in Columbia just a few years ago, after all. But I am considering moving El Mirador from my bucket list to my chuck-it list. From the description:

OK, for those with poor math skills, 23.5 kilometers equals 14.6 miles. Through a jungle. Where it is hot. Where one spends four nights camping. With rain and lots of bugs. Hmmmmmm. 

When I originally heard the term chuck-it list, I found it deeply depressing. Admitting that there are some things that I will never be able to do in this life. While I have long ago come to terms with never becoming a Chippendale dancer or a billionaire, I thought hiking, biking, and such would be life-long recreational activities.  

But perhaps tossing bucket list items in the trash is not the right approach - modifying them to accommodate reality may be… 

• Instead of hiking El Mirador, I choose a more realistic tour
• On my biking trips, I rent an ebike instead of a regular bike
• When I do multi-day hikes, I do them inn-to-inn instead of backpacking 

While I may never become a billionaire, I can choose to live quite nicely on my pension, SS, and savings. While becoming a Chippendate dancer is not in my future (like it ever really was), I can choose not to become grossly overweight. I may not solve all the world’s problems, but I can make sure I solve somebody’s problem nearly everyday through volunteering and kindness. 

Anything you are moving from bucket to chuck-it in your future?

Why Labor Day is my favorite holiday

 

Labor Day 2023, Ha Ha Tonka State Park

When asked their favorite holiday, most folks will probably tell you Thanksgiving or Christmas. And indeed these are wonderful times for many of us - good food, gifts, family, and old friends. A little harried, perhaps, but days to be enjoyed and remembered.

Not that anyone has asked, but my favorite holiday for years has been Labor Day. Labor Day weekend to be more accurate. To me it is the holiday that celebrates transition. Summer ending; fall starting. Long days of play ending; a new school year beginning. Summer shorts put away; jackets drug out. Soups instead of barbeque. Fewer swims, more hikes. Green turning to gold.

For over 30 years my family and friends have come together for Labor Day weekend to relax, play, and just be together. We’ve always gathered at small resorts. In the 1990s, Cry of the Loon (now defunct) near Walker, Minnesota, was our go-to spot. Discovered by my friend Cary as a writing retreat, for many years we enjoyed its small cabins, TV room, rental boats, and proximity to Itasca State Park where we would ceremoniously cross the headwaters of the Mississippi, climb the fire tower, drink Douglas Lodge malts, cruise on the Chester Charles, and take long bike rides. 

Over the years, as families moved about, so did the location of our retreat. We’ve rented places in the Wisconsin Dells, Lake Okoboji, Acorn Resort in Kansas, and Honey Creek in Iowa. This past weekend we spent in the Lake of the Ozarks area. Regardless of the location, hikes, swims, dinners out and dinners in, and watching old movies have all been tradition. And most importantly, reconnecting with our families. I am blessed that my children and their spouses are people I actually like as well as love and enjoy talking with.

Like the seasons, families are continually in a state of transition. Children and grandchildren grow; careers change; births, deaths, marriages, and separations make group photos all a bit different. Labor Day helps remind me that change does not have to be mourned, but can and should be a source of celebration.  

As my grandsons become ever more independent adults, I wonder if the next change might be that my daughter’s family creates its own traditional get-to-gethers. I become obsolete. In all sincerity I want my children to experience the same joys that family traditions have given me when they are the tradition creators, not just participants.

I believe that my generation was the first to move permanently from one’s place of birth. As a child, both my grandparents and great-grandparents lived within a fairly short driving distance. Sunday dinners and weekend stays were simply a given. When there were family gatherings, it was with an extended family of second cousins, great-aunts and uncles, and other relatives living perhaps a couple hours drive away. But when I graduated from high school, I left for college across the state, and then to a college in another state. And I never returned for any extended period of time. Seeing family became a special event, not a regular event. 

Here’s wishing for many more Labor Day weekends.

A few thoughts on ChatGPT and education

 A good friend shared a link to this rather startling video:  Introduction to AI Prompts for Educators: Using ChatGPT Preview of the AI for Educators Course, KP Education Systems.. It sparked a conversation about education and the impacts it may have on education. I will not bore you with the details…

The more I read about ChatGPT and other powerful AI programs, the more divided my opinion about them becomes. (I have NOT actually tried them.)  I ask myself, are these simply tools like spreadsheets or spell checkers or databases that automate tasks and should be used to reduce time spent on mundane, routine tasks so more time can be spent creating and problem-solving? Or are they truly plagiaristic bots that eliminate the need for human thought at all? I see arguments for both views.

For me, plagiarism has never been the result of malicious behavior by students, but by poor assignment creation by teachers. My old admonition is "if you don't ask for creativity and originality, you won't get it." One of my favorite workshops to give was Are You Punishing or Preventing Plagiarism? which was a hands-on extension of the article Plagiarism-Proofing Assignments published in Kappan. (Some workshop resource links are no longer working.) At the heart of my argument was that all assignments need an element of the personally relevant. Otherwise, the best you can hope for is a paraphrasing of others' ideas. AI amplifies the need for personal relevance. 

Mike Eisenberg and I addressed general tech's role in information literacy many moons ago. (See Computer Skills for Information Problem Solving.) But of course this was long before ChatGPT and its ilk. But in summary, info lit skills usually include the ability to:

1. Articulate the problem and identify the information needed to answer it.
2. Know information sources and locate relevant information.
3. Select and evaluate the information in those sources.
4. Organize, synthesize, and draw supported conclusions from the information.
5. Communicate findings and conclusions to others.
6. Evaluate the product and process.

I see AI as being very useful for skills 2, 3, 4, and 5, but human input is still essential in steps 1 and 6. I don't know enough about AI to be much more specific. One thing that concerns me is AI's ability to judge the quality/accuracy of the information it finds with all the mis- and dis-information now available online. Even before information became political, we stressed the importance of evaluating its accuracy (authority, timeliness, bias, etc.).

AI exacerbates the need for us as educators to re-think our purpose in asking students to write. Is it to demonstrate the ability to write a 5 paragraph expository essay with standard organization, transitional sentences, thesis, and conclusion regardless of topic? Or is it to help strengthen the learner’s ability to communicate original ideas? As Simek likes to remind us, "Start with the why." 

In using AI as a tool for teachers to create learning materials, I say go crazy. (Much of the video linked above covers this.)  I wonder just how many teachers actually create their own rubrics, assignments, etc. and how many simply rely on publishers' teacher guide materials. In my district(s), we encouraged sharing teacher-created support materials (lesson plans, etc) as a good use of our Learning Management System. You got four 5th grade teachers all teaching a single learner outcome, there seems to be no reason why each should do their own thing but instead divide the work. And use ChatGPT as a worker too.

I often think about my kids and grandkids and what they will need to know and be able to do in order to keep from being replaced by AI. I doubt my son-in-law as a minister can be replaced. But I worry my son who is a graphic artist (which to me seems the height of creativity) might be at risk. To those poor souls to whom I have offered career advice over the years, I encourage them to not just be good at what they do, but to aspire to lead/manage those who are good at what they do. Or be the programmer of the program that creates programs.

I am looking forward to the era of totally self-driving cars. I would love a kitchen that buys my groceries and cooks meals that are the healthiest for me. Perhaps an entertainment system that accurately suggests or even creates shows I enjoy (instead of spending way too much time scrolling through Netflix and then winding up watching some old movie anyway.) Or a writing tool that writes books or articles just for me. (Goodreads and GoogleNews are heading this direction.) But then I also ask myself if life would not be pretty boring without the attention needed while driving a winding mountain road or discovering a new author writing in a new style. Would AI ever have recommended I go see the Barbie movie - which I thoroughly enjoyed? 

What perhaps excites me the most is that this advanced AI stuff will force conversations about what exactly it means to be human. Perhaps our stupidity is what will separate us from AI in the end. Now wouldn’t that be ironic if the only way we can tell an original human work is by its grammatical errors?