Same as the old boss
This is not a test
I’m reading poems.
The poets: my Sacramento City College English 1B students.
Some expressed that they’d never written a poem before. Others said it’s been since middle or high school.
In their video journals, they talked about feeling free, excited, fearful, as they planned their revision process.
They said that they’d never had an English class like this, and that because they were embracing what I was offering (insisting on: unlearning, decolonizing) was at the root of why they felt like they could do it, could rely on their own imagination and the labor of their writing processes.
I’ve also tasked them to record a podcast, their own version of The Slowdown. I’ve challenged them through so many many complex avenues. And what I’m seeing are thriving, creative, determined college students.
I will be asking them permission to share their Slowdown-Inspired podcasts next week. Keep a look out!
As I do my first listens, away from my computer, listening to their podcast episodes just as I would any podcast, I am open to the energy coming through their voices into my ears, as my synapses swallow the imagery, the emotion booming from their tone: sparks an energy-flow.
A whole body smile. Even with the sad ones, I go down with them, then up again, soothed, knowing they are here, okay.
I know that voice! I know this writer! Look at them go—playing with memory, playing with sound effects, playing with words that seemed so scary on day one of this semester.
Trump and Netanyahu have taken us into war with Iran. Trump has the power to shape all the world over, returning to the aims of the Axis of Evil, of Hitler, of all dictators’ greatest fantasies. They can shape our reactions, unless we guard ourselves, protecting our neural abilities, our imaginations, our curiosity and desire for the truth.
I keep teaching while millions of students and educators around the world suffer, silenced, killed, maimed, torn from their families, their homes.
What is a worry about a student using AI in comparison to the grand molestation, the literal rape and destruction of people just like me and you? Even the metaphorical—the deep faking, ruining our ability to trust anything we connect with online, which is so much of how we experience our realities now.
I first fell in love with The Who in my sophomore year of high school. In the late 80’s/early 90’s, the term “classic rock” had been coined. At that time, classic rock was my parents’ music, rock and folk rock from the late 60’s through the 70’s.
I was raised with it, and when I started becoming more conscious, yes, more radical, which happened quickly, that music stole my heart. I even was ignorant enough once to Karaoke Baba O’Reilly. Don’t do that.
Do my students know that we’ve been here before? Before but different now, now that we are in the age of AI, where we have already become so lost and distrustful. “Same as the old boss”… but the new boss has the most potent weapon of mass destruction.
All of it matters. Information, yes. Creative work, YES!
I can’t let it go. Trust. I can’t give myself over to AI generated or assisted creative work. I need to know, to know who and what I’m allowing into my psyche, allowing to possess my emotions, to take me into the heart of another.
Now it seems like the work is embedded with policing. I’m not just referring to teaching. No. It’s on us—to police what can so easily be invisible. We have to become AI detectives.
But then everything online begins to quack.
I’ll let you finish the rest of the song. The “fooled” part, just too much to write it here. I’m singing it; it’s got me ear-wormed.
Hooked.
Record spinning right round…another great song…there it is, there’s a cliff.
Not so fast—get back!
Keep your eyes on the prize!
Let’s go!
I will be participating in the event below! Save the date. I don’t get out often, and I would LOVE to see you!
Want more of Eve’s writing and Paul Imagine’s drawings? You can get my book: Body in Script, available at many online retailers.
You can find it at my publisher’s bookstore, or other places, like Amazon. Or, chat with me here. If you’re local, come get one from me personally. I would love that!
