I am not sure I agree that Teachers have absolutely exhausting jobs - much more so than most jobs - as said by man on r4 this morning

[RevolutionHere]

i am not sure what my dh, former welder would make of this statement

this is an argument regarding long summer holidays,

AI is currently not good enough to use to plan lessons. You can c&p directly from the medium term plan and it'll give you a lesson. You might be able to use some of the ideas for structure but it doesn't given you a lesson, just a plan. And it doesn't account for your children.

At the moment, the most I use it for is to generate sentences containing specific vocabulary in context.

It can generate multuple choice questions but the incorrect answer are ridiculous.

It's an aid but far from being able to be used to generate lessons and, besides, much as AI generated content is obvious elsewhere...

And the HT constantly reminds us to be teachers and not lesson presenters. We do far, far more in the course of teaching a lesson than just deliver content.

And this is why it doesn't work when non educators have input into education.

Absolutely. Does that poster advocate AI classrooms for teaching the Holocaust? Just a load of info and pictures with no opportunity to phrase things carefully, gauge the room, answer questions with context and sensitivity. That's one example out of hundreds of topics. If it's just transferring factual information, sure, but teaching is a million things on top of that.

Unfortunately, not the best teachers become SLT and SLT have little 'management' skills and SLT cause a lot of toxicity within schools.

And, lets face it, that old chestnut called 'inter-agency partnership' still hardly works, so whilst schools are involved in the 'myriad' of CYP services, it mostly amounts to nothing as no public service operates the same as another.

Yet, schools become the fulcrum for every CYP need, taking teacher's time away from teaching, their actual job, yet perversely providing SLT with another career-enhancing string to their bow.

As more and more CYP 'community premises' are shut then more and more are schools seen as one of the only CYP 'premises' left. As they are often closed for several weeks per year, they are often viewed as a community resource by LAs.

Just need to get schools back to being centres of teaching and create more SEN, PRU and EBD premises for those dc unable to be taught in mainstream. And sack off most SLT and send them back to a Teaching College.

Ah @RevolutionHere you were never going to be convinced though, were you? I don’t think it was about that and I think whatever was said you wouldn’t be able to hear it.

In all seriousness though, I don’t know about what it is like to work as a welder or another manual worker. I imagine it takes intense concentration over long periods, would be skilled work, could be demanding in terms of the heat and that it could be physically exhausting - and exhausting from intense concentration. But that is just my (uneducated) guess. I don’t know about pay; workplaces, etc….

Maybe rather than pitting welders against teachers (which will get people’s backs up and put them on the defensive), just tell us about the demands of being a welder? Maybe tell us what it is like being the wife of a welder? This might increase understanding of other roles and empathy for what it is like, which can only be a good thing.

Here we go - teacher bashing, bit boring really.

@FrippEnos the remark was regarding exhaustion, that was the key word.
not emotional, not mental,
simply exhaustion

I use A.I. to produce cover lessons, so my classes are doing something relevant when I can’t teach them.

Anyone suggesting A.I. can replace an actual teacher, with 30 children has zero idea what teaching involves.

Which would suggest that there isn’t much of the mental/emotional kind of exhaustion in some the jobs you gave as examples as being harder than teaching eg welding if I remember rightly. It’s not just the physical kind that makes one feel absolutely knackered after work.

But you are mistaken if you think exhaustion is only physical. Mental exhaustion is real and can have detrimental effects physically and cause illness

It’s bloody insulting too. There’s subject knowledge for a start then there’s knowledge of our classes and individual pupils and gaps in their knowledge, their needs, etc.

That you refer to "simply exhaustion" just shows how little you know about any type of exhaustion.

So do you think having 3 different kinds of exhaustion might be worse than just one? And still you haven’t addressed the ‘more exhausting than most’ issue. Maybe welding is one of the more exhausting jobs. Maybe it’s not. But do you think teaching is not exhausting at all? Less exhausting than most jobs? What?

You clearly don’t understand exhaustion. Physical exhaustion isn’t the only kind.

In the next 20 years there will be AI teachers that are indistinguishable from human teachers.

If teaching was just about imparting theoretical knowledge you would have a point.

Would you want your 6 year old taught by AI teachers? I wouldn't. Big tech harvesting their data. No strong and trusting relationship between children and teachers. Nobody paying attention to my child as a person rather than a statistic or data point.

Maybe AI teachers will be the future, but I bet the tech bros of silicone valley will be sending their kids to exclusive private schools with actual human teachers.

That’s some serious back-tracking right there. Feeling a bit foolish OP?

I know AI is going to change the world and transform many industries but I think suggesting that ai could totally replace a reception teacher, for example, is laughable. Maybe I’ll be out of a job in 20 years but humans, especially small ones, need humans to teach them social and emotional skills. Once the AI has completed its ten minutes of phonics teaching (somehow showing children how their mouths should move to make each sound - and no, a picture on a screen won’t work as it’s too abstract for small children), how will they be setting up and supporting play based learning as children freely move between activities?

It’s a bit like saying AI is going to replace parents one day and we can leave a newborn or toddler with AI and not see any negative outcomes in terms of emotional wellbeing or social skills. I’m all for making the most of technology but not just because it’s available. I think AI would’ve suited rote learning perfectly - those school master of the past would’ve been redundant - but educators have moved on from that style of teaching because it’s not what works best. Like I said - humans need humans. Their peers and their teacher.

You say AI will be indistinguishable from human teachers and yet you also say there will still need to be ‘learning facilitators’ in the classroom. That doesn’t sound indistinguishable to me. Teachers will still be there, they’ll just be watching kids lose their spark staring at screens whilst a bot keeps them hooked to the screen.

Learning on a screen worked so well during covid, I'm surprised we didn't continue doing it...

There will not. That would require humanoid robots. We are not nearly there.

You are totally right OP but few will admit it. Having worked in a private girls prep in a 'very nice' area, I can tell you that some teachers there have been teaching the same lessons for years...... hard work it is not. I am sure the experience would be different at a different school, but at the school I was at, all I heard was how hard work was and how they couldn't wait to head off some truly amazing holidays.

How ridiculous. A private girl's school in a nice area is so far from the norm it's not worth a mention in a debate like this. I work in a very nice private school and whilst hectic, I am absolutely not a good example of the norm for most teachers but Ive done my time in a "bog standard comp" and unless anyone has frankly, they have no right to suggest teachers are exaggerating. If course some fww schools and some staff in some subjects will have it easier, that doesn't undermine or negate the norm

I can see you don't go in for any extended argument or analysis, but do you mean on-screen or a humanoid in the room?

Yeah, I'd like to see AI cope with 30 five year olds LOL.