“Are you with me now” A J Ryder
“Operator said that's privileged informationAnd it ain't no business of mine.”
Ron McKernan aka Pig Pen
Times have changed. There are few if any telephone operators but in the work we do hopefully there is lots of Privileged Information (PI) but unless you have a personal relationship, “You ain’t getting’ it.” Privileged Information is passed from student to teacher, parent to child, or colleague to colleague. Privileged information encodes knowledge derived from experience and not found in any textbook or raw data stream. In their quest to understand how we learn, AI developers continue to research how PI is actually transmitted. Years ago, I shared an article that I will attach to this TGIF about Privileged Information.
“The thing that AI brings to the table is that it forces us to get into the details of how everything works,” says John Laird, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan. If there was any doubt that good teachers are important, machine learning is helping put it to rest.”
Our work with AI is way different than how most educators might be using it and that’s because when youth are in the real-world outside of school they are getting PI from mentors. What AI developers are finding out is that how the best teachers/mentors pass along Privileged Information is more nuanced and different than what people imagine. It might look like a wink or a nod or a touch on the shoulder or it might be through a story that has little to do with what the work is but everything to do with what they want you to learn.
There’s so much BPL can contribute to changing how we educate our young people. I’m hoping our focus remains on how to get better at what we do well and have a greater understanding of why it really works. As we use AI more and more, it may bring better understanding to adults and youth alike about PI?
Barriers
“Zero gravity is to say and do things in the present moment,”
“Free of the weight of the past, unrestrained
by limiting notions and expectations.” Wayne Shorter
My time in Winnipeg with Sonn was the kind of challenge I’m up for. We have a province, districts, energetic leaders and real problems to surmount in contributing to a full-scale version of change in and outside of schools with community. Sonn worked with schools becoming BPL schools and I worked with middle schools, a high school and a CTE school that are all at different milestones on their journey. The great news is that we could feel the changes happening as we worked over the four days. Winnipeg is a community with a large Indigenous population The feeling that our design translates here is similar to how it translates on Kauai. Without elaboration here, I will say the Tech Voc is onto some really great New Ways of working with disengaged youth.
Over the course of the four days, I had dinner with Deputy Minister of Manitoba Brian O’Leary and breakfast with Winnipeg Division Superintendent Matt Henderson. Matt has been an advisor and a principal of our school in the Seven Oaks district and as Superintendent of Seven Oaks Brian brought us to Winnipeg close to 20 years ago. These meetings were just great and quite frankly they don’t happen anywhere else. My time with Matt included talks about IBPLC, B-U, BPLiving, ImBlaze, Harbor Freight Fellows and so much more around change. Both Sonn and I addressed all their principals at a gathering around the issue of barriers to change. In a few weeks Carlos will be in Winnipeg doing a book talk and a Leadership Journeys. I can’t say enough about Matt and his team’s leadership. They deal with what’s in front of them and they stay true to doing “what’s best for kids.”
The following little slice of our meeting captures how we can tell similar stories because we have done similar work. At dinner with Brian, I told a story about one of our students from Oakland who came to us as labeled on the spectrum. His interest was bivalves. We got him an internship with a professor at Berkeley who was an expert in bivalves and lo and behold through their research this student was able to get into Oxford. You could say they were happy as clams. Then Brian relayed a similar story to me about a student named Riley who was in Matt’s school when he was principal. Riley came in with a giant ledger of a sped plan. What he was interested in was insects. His advisor got him connected to a professor of etymology at University of Manitoba and next thing you know he was publishing some incredible research. The Superintendent of Seven Oaks Brian was so impressed he asked if Riley could come address the school board. At the meeting, Riley blew everyone away. When one board member asked him if he wanted to work on the big problem of eradicating mosquitoes from Winnipeg, Riley responded, “I don’t want to kill mosquitoes, I want to understand them.” And so, we’re back to privileged information.
One more thing...
At the principals meeting Matt started everything off by talking about student absence, the topic du jour of most school districts this Fall. It turns out that on that same day Scott and I submitted a piece to the NY Times titled: Students are Absent when We are Absent. Kismet
Great talk with Erin Walsh from HFF on policy. Devon, Anthonette and Pam on Devon’s experience with Unschooling and BU. A BPL policy talk. A talk with Viv and Sandra Milligan on the IBPLC. And always some great advice from a call with Peter on the IBPLC.
Loved BPL Doncaster’s new promotional material.
Be well!
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