Through the Undertow

Nobody Blames the Plumber

Nobody blamed the mechanic when the engine seized. Nobody blamed the plumber when the sewer backed up. Nobody blamed Amanda when the hair turned gummy. So why do we blame teachers when students make their own choices? This episode is about accountability — who has it, who gets assigned it, and why teachers may be the only professionals penalized for the outcome of other people's decisions. It's also about a parent meeting that probably shouldn't have happened, a student sitting at ninety percent all year, and a dozen AP Seminar students who knocked on my door after their exam with the dam about to break. Hi Emm. I know you're listening. Through the Undertow. Episode 5: Nobody Blames the Plumber.

Erase and Try Again

About fifteen years ago a ninth grader presented a book talk on Animal Farm. He knew the plot. He knew the characters. He got to the conclusion — and described the wrong ending. Not Orwell's bleak, devastating final image of pigs indistinguishable from humans. The movie's ending. Napoleon overthrown. Hope restored.  Wrong book. Wrong ending. Wrong medium entirely.  This episode is about something I used to do for fun — and what happened when I remembered it was also exactly right.   ABOUT THIS EPISODE  A learning walk took me into a middle school colleague's classroom where I watched something work. Mr. McCaffrey's hot seat. A student in a chair, peers asking questions. I filed it away. Didn't think about using it myself.  A month later I was planning the Gatsby unit —this episode is about what happened next. PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE  Mr. Barch — Dean of Students, Ninth Grade Academy. Brought the learning walk practice to our district's administration.    Mr. McCaffrey — Middle School ELA Teacher. His hot seat with The Diary of Anne Frank is why this episode exists.  STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: PEYTON'S PRINTS  One of my students — Peyton, a junior — just got her driver's license. Which feels like a footnote given that she's been flying planes for quite a while. She also takes college classes on top of her high school schedule and runs her own 3D printing business.  Peyton's Prints: Where Your Ideas Take Flight.  If you're looking for custom 3D printing, check her out:  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@boots63 [https://www.youtube.com/@boots63] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Peyton-Hall/pfbid02vwCfZKLefSozyRxeftYUGiBk9oTBB7m9x2y9t4v8xbrNEfw8G9ABZtSJo8SgN92yl/ [https://www.facebook.com/people/Peyton-Hall/pfbid02vwCfZKLefSozyRxeftYUGiBk9oTBB7m9x2y9t4v8xbrNEfw8G9ABZtSJo8SgN92yl/]  Peyton — keep flying.   MY HOT SEAT FORMAT  STRUCTURE — Six major characters, one per hot seat session — Each character has a primary student and an understudy — Two hot seats per week over four weeks — One comfortable armchair at the front of the room  THE QUESTIONS — Students ask questions organized by critical lens — Historical lens: questions about the era, context, social conditions — Feminist lens: questions about gender roles and power — Existentialist lens: questions about meaning, choice, identity — Postcolonial lens: questions about power, race, colonization — Psychoanalytical lens: questions about motivation, unconscious drives — Marxist lens: questions about class, wealth, economic power  THE RULES — Questions are conversational, not technical — Peers ask first by lens group, teacher asks last — Open Q&A at the teacher's discretion — No advance knowledge of which questions are coming  WHY IT WORKS AGAINST AI DRIFT The preparation AI can do is generic. The questions your students ask are specific, contextual, and human. ChatGPT can summarize the plot and explain the symbolism. It cannot prepare a student for sixteen peers who sat through the same lectures, read the same chapters, and are now asking questions from six different critical frameworks in real time with no warning about which lens comes next.  Peer judgment is the thing AI cannot generate.   THE FRIXION MARKERS   Frixion fine-point erasable markers. Most useful device in my life. Because I change my mind. Because I make mistakes. Because what worked last year doesn't always work this year. Erase what doesn't work. Try again.   ABOUT THROUGH THE UNDERTOW  Through the Undertow is about what happens to thinking when it becomes optional. For teachers, parents, tutors, homeschoolers, and anyone who cares about what's happening to the next generation of thinkers.

Iraq and Everywhere Like Such As

My professor asked me to explain my data analysis out loud. In my own words. Notes right in front of me. I froze. That moment sent me back to my classroom with a question I couldn't shake — how many of my students are submitting work they couldn't explain out loud if someone asked? So I added one element to a summative assessment I'd never tried before. An oral defense. What happened next reminded me of a Miss Teen USA moment from 2007 that the internet has never forgotten. Multiple times. Except my students had weeks to prepare. This episode is about the one moment AI cannot swim for you. The live defense of your own ideas. What the drift looks like when it has nowhere left to hide. And twelve students who put their peer audience's phones down. Through the Undertow. Episode 3: The Iraq and Everywhere Like Such As.

The Drift Was Already Happening

THROUGH THE UNDERTOW — EPISODE 2 SHOW NOTES "The Drift Was Already Happening" She charged me in the hallway and didn't even look up. January 2015. An iPhone 6 Plus, a yellow worksheet, and four students who "collaborated." That's not a cheating story. That's a design story. And it was ten years ago — long before AI was a phrase anyone used in a faculty meeting. Episode 2 of Through the Undertow: the drift was already happening. We just weren't asking the right question. ABOUT THIS EPISODE Ten years ago, a sophomore charged me in the hallway and didn't even look up. She had engineered a complete mobile homework station — binder, yellow worksheet, iPhone 6 Plus in a Victoria's Secret Pink case — in the thirty seconds it took to walk from her last class to mine. Four students. One photograph. Zero original thinking. Transaction complete. This isn't a story about cheating. It's a story about design. And it happened long before anyone was using the phrase "generative AI" in a faculty meeting. In this episode we look at what the drift actually looked like before AI arrived, why building better mousetraps was always the wrong response, and what it means to design work that requires thinking — not just completion. Plus: Cleetus Smith, supreme leader of Midtopia, and what an idiocracy built by tenth graders reveals about propaganda, synthesis, and what learning actually looks like when it's working. THE QUESTION LIST: CLOSING THE GAP In this episode we talk about adding one question to existing assignments that AI can't answer — because the answer requires something specific and human that only that student has. Steal whatever fits. Adapt it. Make it yours. LOCATE YOURSELF IN IT These questions ask students to connect the content to their own specific experience. — Where in your daily life did you unknowingly depend on this concept today? (Any subject) — When did you first notice this was true — in your own experience, not in the text? (ELA, History, Science) — What does this remind you of from your own life and why does that connection change how you understand it? (ELA, History) — If this happened in your school, your neighborhood, your family — what would it look like? (History, Social Studies, ELA) FIND YOUR CONFUSION These questions ask students to locate their own uncertainty. This is a genuine cognitive act — AI can simulate confusion but cannot identify where a specific student actually got lost. — What's the one thing about this topic you still don't understand? (Any subject) — Where did you get stuck and what did you try before you figured it out? (Math, Science, any problem-solving) — What would you need to see to actually believe this? (Science, History, ELA) — What question do you have that the assignment didn't ask? (Any subject) DISAGREE WITH IT These questions require students to understand material well enough to challenge it. You cannot argue against something you don't understand. — What would you need to know to disagree with what we learned today? (Any subject) — Which part of this feels most wrong to you and why? (History, ELA, Social Studies) — Who does this explanation leave out? (History, Social Studies, ELA) — What's the counterargument nobody in this unit is making? (ELA, History, Social Studies) MAKE A DECISION These questions require students to apply learning to a specific choice or action. — If you had to act on this information today what would you do differently? (Health, Science, Social Studies) — Which cause, factor, or character do you think gets the least attention and why does that omission matter? (History, ELA) — If you had to defend the other side what's the strongest argument you could make? (ELA, History, Social Studies) — What would change your mind? (Any subject)

Learning to Read the Water

What happens when a student submits an essay containing a word he can't pronounce, can't define, and can't defend — and still looks you in the eye and tells you that you must be a really good teacher? That's not a cheating story. That's a cognition story. And that's why Through the Undertow exists. In this pilot episode, we introduce the central metaphor of the show: generative AI as an undertow — not a wave, not a villain, but a current running beneath the surface of learning that moves students away from independent thought without them feeling it. We talk about cognitive erosion, what it looks like in a real classroom, and why the ban-it-or-embrace-it debate is mostly the wrong conversation. This show lives in the harder and lonelier place in between. Welcome to the water.