Jason Kelce’s retirement speech from the Eagles and NFL is already famous. It was as remarkable a speech as it was a piece of writing and rhetoric.

The delivery was not just quintessential Kelce, but it was very much of his generation: He sat in a sleeveless workout shirt and sandals and read the speech from his phone; perhaps he even composed it using the phone.

Watching, I had thoughts and feelings from many perspectives: as a (former!) athlete, spouse, Eagles fan. I also viewed it as a teacher, and from that vantage, I had a distinct thought: “No way AI wrote that speech.” Why? Because I was struck by how authentic Kelce’s speech was. It was all him in content, style, and voice.

I thought how proud and excited I am when I receive authentic writing work–sometimes with accompanying speeches– from my students. And it made me think again of the big challenge for teachers to create meaningful writing assignments, and how that challenge has been renewed because of generative artificial intelligence. We are being pushed to develop assignments that are not so much plagiarism proof as plagiarism discouraging because they bring out authentic, meaningful student writing.

I know it’s challenging for teachers to create such assignments. After all, we can’t just drop students into a context like Kelce’s, where they bid goodbye to an activity of passion after nearly a decade and a half, especially an activity meshing the violent and the cerebral like football (especially when you play center).

But I believe GAI will productively pressure teachers to create more meaningful writing environments for our students. Assignments with authentic roots will have a greater likelihood of inspiring such responses.

My nephew/housemate recently submitted his college application essay. Despite living with a college writing professor (!), he went it solo. I respect him for doing this task on his own–he’s an independent guy–and he had no compunction sharing the essay with me afterward. After reading it, I said, “No one will think AI wrote this.” The essay had its quirks and inconsistencies, but my comment was not a knock on it. I was saying it had a genuine voice that I felt reflected him well.

There’s a lot of rightful concern in education circles about GAI, especially for writing instruction. Will these GAI engines grow in sophistication to the point that we won’t need people for that very human task, writing? Maybe, but as I watched Kelce, I thought, “I don’t think so”–or at least, “We’ve got a ways to go before that happens.”

I won’t get prideful. If I start boasting that I can create assignments that will prevent students from using GAI, I’m inviting disaster: they’ll prove me wrong. But listening to Jason Kelce’s farewell from football, I realized that if I keep striving to create assignments that mean something to them, they will return something meaningful for me and, more importantly, for themselves.

Tags: education, technology, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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The new year, 2024–we’re way into it. It’s been too late for a while to say happy new year to someone. You no longer accidentally write “2023.” We’ve plunged in, and that dive for many includes r-r-r-resolutions. Dry January. I’m gonna start hitting the gym. Book clubs.

Let’s do something maybe a little easier. How about this year commit to making a friend younger or older than you?

This Charley Locke article in Vox “You should have more friends of all ages” suggested just that, saying, “Making friends with those outside of your age range — people 10 or 20 years older or younger than you — can be challenging. But those relationships can widen your world, providing perspective and community beyond your current experiences.”

(As a pleasant surprise, I had bookmarked this article when I decided to write about this topic, and when I opened it discovered a former Drexel student I know well was featured! Go Devin!)

A person I much admired, my former neighbor (sigh) Bob Heck, was to me a model of this. He had friends of all ages, and it seemed to make him a considerably more well-rounded person. As he aged, of course, those intergenerational friendships tended to be with younger people, those he mentored but also simply seemed to enjoy sharing his numerous hobbies and pastimes with.

People can of course diversify friendships and relationships in many ways, but leaping age barriers can provide a unique lens for taking in life, for all the expected reasons: Our younger friendships can help us look at things in new, fresh ways, and with an older friend we could share their vantage of experience.

This doesn’t mean older people have to walk around with a bunch of 20-year-olds saying “fire” and “cap,” or if you’re in the “fire” and “cap” crowd to go see 80-year-olds perform in classic rock bands, but making friends outside of your age bracket can help our perspectives be more flexible and nimbler.

I often think life does tend to push us toward rigidity of belief, starting even when we’re young, and making achronological friends seems a way to slow this. A great divide in human experience seems to be viewing others without valuing the viewpoint their age brings, and we don’t do enough to experience the first-hand experiences of those outside our age range.

As my daughter is finishing up grad school and preparing for a major geographic move, she started babysitting, and she is having the incredible opportunity to be around a baby, whose developmental milestones amaze her. While of course you don’t have a friendship with a baby, her marveling at these daily developmental milestones made me think about how we don’t maintain that sense of wonder. We instead see chronological others through lenses like “Those kids today!” or “Old people are so lame”?

Okay, baby milestones are easy–and fun!–to see, but there are such markers we could find in all of our relationships. As Locke wrote in the Vox article, “Different life stages offer and require different abilities: In your 20s, you may be looking for career advice and are able to help parents connect with a distant teenager; a new parent may be looking for a support system that can become part of their extended family; a recent retiree may have plenty of time but seek more day-to-day connection.”

Developing a friendship with someone much older or younger provides you with opportunities, and I think as does any relationship built around appreciation of others, these opportunities in the end enable us to slow down.

No matter our age, we could all use more of that.

Tags: ends & odd, virtual children by Scott Warnock by Scott Warnock
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