I never stop hearing about AI at the moment, anyone else? Every day there seems to be more analysis and conversation around whether AI is going to replace humans in the workforce. And even if it can’t fully take over it is likely to significantly change our roles.
I thought teaching face to face yoga made me immune from this takeover, until my sister reminded me that I could be replaced by a yoga bot who is actually better at yoga than me! Harsh! Devastating. And true…
I have resisted AI for ages because I don’t want it to be good, useful or indispensable. Stamping my stubborn fist and knuckling down to laborious human labour.
However, everyone in my life is raving about how efficient it is and how much time it is saving them. From planning daily meals to ensure we are getting the right balance of nutrients each day, to organising our finances, to collating data at work into neat reports and presentations.
So I started wondering if I was the only one still doing all of my work from scratch. Still bent over my desk at night finishing my homework whilst everyone else is playing out?
I’d love to say that I set this up as a personal experiment to assess the value of AI, but in actual fact I was feeling quite busy and wanted someone to do some of my work for me. Sucked in by this superior level of efficiency everyone else was taking advantage of. If all of my lesson planning was sorted then I would have more time for promotion, marketing and CPD?
I teach a few different classes each week in schools and I tend to stick to a theme for all of the classes and then adjust and adapt depending on the needs of the class, the energy of the students, and whether something is working or not on the day.
So I asked a bot to compile my lesson plans for me. I used them as a first draft only. And I still adapted my lessons in real time based on how the children were behaving and what I felt could help the energy on the day.
In all honesty, the plans looked great, like something I would have put together myself. They had a good mix of energy boosters, sensory activities, focus and relaxation time. So off I went and used them as a general outline for my classes.
However, after doing this for only 2 weeks, a girl in my class asked if we could go back to the types of lessons we had a few weeks ago. All of the students in that class agreed. I asked what they meant. And they said “you know like that funny weird stuff you do?!”
Students do often comment on how I always have the strangest things they’ve ever seen in my giant bag of mindfulness tools. But how did they know so quickly that something had changed in the way that I was planning their lessons?
It is sometimes argued that children can be more perceptive than adults. They are not yet bogged down by outside influences and can sense shifts and changes more easily due to high levels of neuroplasticity and cognitive development.
I realised that the children in my classes aren’t looking for a teacher who will show them how to do a perfect downward facing dog without making any mistakes. They are not impressed by how efficient and organised you are. They want someone who falls over and laughs, shows them that making mistakes and being human is fine. Someone who brings in silly objects they find around their house and makes up games that allow them to be themselves, in the moment, for a while.
In allowing AI to do some of my work had I lost a connection to the classes?
In letting a machine help me create something had I forgotten to put myself back into the work?
I feel bad for ever thinking that AI could be better at my job than I am. Equating being more productive with being a better teacher. And bad that I didn’t show up fully as myself in the classroom for a couple of weeks.
Though I am grateful that it showed me that it can’t do what I do in the same way or replace me on the mat. The lesson plans that it compiled looked very similar to any lesson plans that I put together but something important was missing.
A certain magic that only comes from a human imagination perhaps? A connection to creating something from scratch yourself? The process of concocting fun and inspiring ideas?
I swiftly returned to doing all of my planning from scratch myself, knowing that I am the best person for the job. I might be slow, I may have a car boot full of fidgets, feathers and slime. But I have classes full of real laughs, tumbles and a je ne sais quoi that may never be figured out by the bots.
Thank you so much for reading. Until next time, take care sweet humans x
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