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Complete and Commence

3-2-1 Reflection:

Three things you didn’t know before we began.
Two things you would like to continue to research as your curiosity has been piqued.
One thing you will consider changing in your personal or professional life.

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May 16, 2025

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“Solastalgia”

Albrecht, G. “Solastalgia”. A New Concept in Health and Identity. PAN Philos. Act. Nat. 2005, 3, 41.

Cf Nostalgia
nostos: “return to home homeland”
+algia, meaning “pain” (GRK)

Solastalgia has its origins in the concepts of ‘solace’ and ‘desolation’.

Solas (Latin Root “solari” meaning alleviation of distress provision or consolation
compare desolare, desolate)
+Algia meaning pain or illness

Solastalgia is the pain or sickness caused by the loss or lack of solace and the sense of isolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory.
Environmentally derived distress (due either changes over time or suddenly)

Galway, L. P., Beery, T., Jones-Casey, K., & Tasala, K. (2019). Mapping the Solastalgia Literature: A Scoping Review Study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(15), 2662. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16152662

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Disruption

Covid-19: 2020 : 18-24 months
ChatGPT: November 30, 2022
Brain as a predictor
Mental Model based on past
Relationship
Co-regulation
Solastalgia…

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AIRD (McNamara and Thornton, 2025)

Artificial Intelligence Replacement Dysfunction (AIRD): A Call to Action for Mental Health Professionals in an Era of Workforce Displacement
“The psychological and existential distress that could be experienced by individuals facing the threat or reality of job displacement due to artificial intelligence (AI). As AI systems increasingly automate tasks across industries, workers may present to mental health professionals with symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, depression, or identity confusion symptoms that may reflect deeper fears about relevance, purpose, and future employability.”
McNamara S N, Thornton J E (September 23, 2025) Artificial Intelligence Replacement Dysfunction (AIRD): A Call to Action for Mental Health Professionals in an Era of Workforce Displacement. Cureus 17(9): e93026. doi:10.7759/cureus.93026

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Love and Literacy

For reasons we will talk about today, one-shot professional development has a poor track record and so the continued and ongoing conversations and practices that such communities sustain area absolutely essential for our continued learning.
Communities in practice and conversation

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Thank you for your writing practices

How many people think of themselves as writers, maintain a writing practice at some level?
Model of yourself contain the identity “I am a writer?”
How true for our students is this?

Readers
Writers

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Authorship->Authenticity->Authority

“Dawson (2017) identified multiple benefits for teacher-writers: (a) teacher-writers have a well of examples from their personal writing to draw from that they can then implement in the classroom as part of their writing instruction;
(b) teachers can reflect on their practice as teachers through writing; and
(c) teacher-writers who publish their work both create and share information.” (Premont et al., 2020)
Quote from/Cited in Premont, David; Kerkhoff, Shea; and Alsup, Janet (2020) "Preservice Teacher Writer Identities: Tensions and Implications," Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: Vol. 8 : Iss. 1 , Article 1. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol8/iss1/1
Dawson, Christine. The teacher-writer: Creating writing groups for personal and professional growth. Teachers College Press, 2017

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Past Experience….(in the context of writing)

Call to mind a student right now…

Maybe someone who grew over the year or maybe they did not grow as you had hoped for them
Maybe someone with whom you connected or did not…

Alternatively, a colleague(s), a conversation…

You felt effective
You felt affected, a conversation that led to a breakthrough or path forward

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Writing, Thinking and the Brain

Invite you into a conversation that started 7 years ago which resulted in
Writing, Thinking and The Brain: How Neuroscience can Improve Writing Instruction
Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, Jovi R. S. Nazareno, Christopher Rappleye (Teachers College Press, 2024)

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“Now More Than Ever…”

Love and Literacy 3

Christopher Rappleye

June 15, 2026

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Why write now

Why work to write well?
In an age in which a competent written product can be produced by a generative AI

WHY WRITE?
What would you say to that student? To you colleague?

What does literacy mean now In an age of multiple and –in terms of time—competing literacies

Reading
Writing
Numerical literacy
Digital literacies
Information literacies
Media literacies
Visual literacy
Cultural literacy

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Lucille Clifton on literacies…

“John Haynes, the poet, was saying, he came to my class once and he said that when people started being arrogant because they could read print many of them stopped learning how to read leaves. And of course, the reading of leaves is in many places extremely valuable, much more than the reading of print.”

(Moyers 1989)

The question of new technologies and novel literacies is real and significant but not entirely new
Cost and Benefit…
Cultural and Cognitive impacts of technologies

Moyers, Bill. "Where the Soul Lives." The Power of the Word, Public Affairs Television, 20 October 1989.

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Why did we start writing?

Records and Receipts
Aide to Memory
Public Memory
Specialists
“Cognitive Offloading”

(Socrates’ fear in Phaedrus)

ADAPTED SINCE….
Cultural and Social Role
Cognitive Load

Amin, O. S. M. (2016). Summary account of silver for the governor, c. 2500 BCE. By this stage of cuneiform writing, the reed strokes are fully wedge-shaped and the writing could convey the Sumerian language in full. Probably from Shuruppak (Tell Fara), Iraq [Photograph]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Summary_account_of_silver_for_the_governor,_c._2500_BCE._By_this_stage_of_cuneiform_writing,_the_reed_strokes_are_fully_wedge-shaped_and_the_writing_could_convey_the_Sumerian_language_in_full._Probably_from_Shuruppak_(Tell_Fara),_Iraq.jpg

Photo by Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Today’s Cognitive Offloading

“The Creative Link Between Words and Ideas is Weakening in the AI Era” (Moon et al, 2026)
Moon, K., Kushlev, K., Bank, A., Luttges, B. L., Viskontas, I., Kaufman, J. C., … Green, A. (2026, February 5). The Link Between Diverse Words and Original Ideas Is Weakening in the AI-Era College Admissions. Retrieved from osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jsz58_v6
Richer vocabulary has been a proxy for our brains more competence, more creativity for generations….

We are not used to grading this….

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Disguise: we are misled by our own training

The college essay: 370,000 students,
after ChatGPT essays suddenly used “diverse and colorful language,” but lacked truly creative ideas.
Post-ChatGPT essays were initially rated as “more creative” by human judges
BUT on closer examination the substance of the essays were found to be more formulaic in voice, more convergent in thinking, and less creative as measured by originality of topic, of organization, of actual ideas

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Perspective: Understanding learning at the confluence of Mind, Brain and Education Science

MBE Science

Mind (Cognitive Psychology/science)
Brain (Neuroscience)
Educational Research
+ Health
Core Principle: bringing classroom practice into alignment with how the brain actually alters its physical structure.

COGNITIVE SCIENCES

NEUROSCIENCE

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

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Neuroplasticity: the physical substrate of learning

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Neuroplasticity

The Brain (2% of body weight) consumes 20% of caloric energy
Brain prefers low energy states.
The brain physically changes due to experience
This change is the physical substrate of learning
The brain that works is the brain that learns
Cannot help learning (changing)
What we repeat is what we learn
Where the emotion or feeling is where the learning takes place

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Neuroplasticity: repeated effort….

Types of responses

Neurogenesis (?)
Increase in dendrites in response to learning stressors (experience)
Myelination (oligodendrocytes)

Diet (omega 3 fatty acids)

Changes in terminals and receptors across the synapse
Long Term Potentiation: “Neurons that fire together, wire together” (Hebb/Schatz)
Synaptic Pruning

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“Neuroplasticity” and Writing Instruction

Yes, you should teach this: vocabulary of writing instruction

Developmentally Appropriate

Metacognitive awareness of what they are trying to do helps

Weightlifting parallel

MORE THAN ONCE, not just “a unit”

You may be the only one telling them how they learn
Most do not know how to study or why

Speak the language…

Thinking Stages and Neuroplasticity
Growth Mindset
Creating a Culture and norms

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“Writing is the highest form of thinking”

Writing is not the residue of thought; it is thinking and work
Engages and changes more neural networks than anything we found in our research
These networks are shared with and recruited from networks essential to other activities
Just as Writing was recruited from official record keeping to the most complex narrative structures imaginable….
These neural networks play many roles beyond writing alone.

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Each thinking stage associated with distinct neural networks

Writing is the highest form of thinking: more neural networks are activated simultaneously during writing than during any other cognitive activity. (cf Cognitive Load)
When repeated, this activation builds and strengthens the neural networks that undergird these thinking capacities through a process known as neuroplasticity.
Good writing is not simply the residue of good thinking; the practice of writing shapes our thinking capacities through writing process and by changing the underlying neural structures within the brain.
This growth within the brain is how we each learn, and consequently the effects of good writing practice on thinking and of improved thinking capacities on writing outcomes are mutual:

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“Better writers, better thinkers; better thinkers, better writers.”

And the thinking done within the writing process strengthens through plasticity the very neural networks we need to thrive and navigate the individual and the society the collective
Imagination: fiction, poetry…to see, to imagine, to criticize, to advocate
Giving public voice to previously marginalized voices
Public discourse and the shaping of opinions
Preservation of ideas over time
Does this mean that writing is the only means…
Does this mean that those who write are more socially just etc.…?

No! BUT

Writing literacy allows, predicts, lowers the bar to participation, to petition, to voting rates (UNESCO 2023)
Preserves, hones, builds and sustains the neural networks that undergird democratic societies.

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Writing’s affordances

Clarity of thinking (We are all a genius in our own mind)
“Public Thinking” Persuasion
Reflection and processing or thoughts and feelings
Mind Wandering and Creative insight (loosening attentional control and tolerating boredom)
Strengthening of Executive Control systems
“Tolerating” freedom and thriving in freedom (Self Expression)

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Writing’s affordances

Interpersonal skills and interpersonal intelligence
Cognitive empathy
Emotional empathy
Cognitive flexibility
Building capacity for a variety of appeals
Precision of thinking

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Writing is a form of thinking traditionally associated with democratic participation

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
John Dewey (Democracy and Education)
The means of petition or persuasion
E.g. Foundation documents…

for whatever flaws of 3/5s clause and the exclusion of women…
US Constitution (1787) Oldest Written : Enlightenment

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Written by Himself :literacy is central to the more just society
One of the central charges against narratives of enslaved peoples including Douglass’s is the claim they didn’t write it: the right to testify and present in the court of public opinion
AUTHORSHIP->AUTHENTICITY->AUTHORITY

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“Radical Neuroconstructivism”

Continual Exchange of individual with environment, physical, cultural and social
Co-construction of neural networks and the brain’s design
Natural hierarchy of conceptual knowledge from previous core knowledge

0, 1
10
Addition 🡪 Subtraction
Vocabulary🡪 Reading
Knowing Things🡪 Reading Comprehension

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“4E model of Cognition”

Embodied: Thinking takes place in a physical human body, and that embodiment enables and shapes cognition, including the role of emotions in thinking.
Embedded: Thinking is embedded in a context, a specific life moment and history and cultural milieu, and that enables and shapes cognition.
Extended: Thinking is extended, using tools that reach out into the world and people around us, which enables and shapes cognition.
Enactive: Thinking interacts with the surrounding environment, enables and shapes that environment and the environment in turn enables and shapes cognition.

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….Not a Brain in a Bucket

But through senses and our development our brains are richly interwove into our physical and social and cultural environment.
Through our senses, micro expressions
My difficulty teaching through Covid and online teaching
We are part of a larger fabric

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Cognitive and Perceptual Differences…

Differences between Expert’s brain and Novice Learner’s Brain (not just “knowing more facts”)

Observation: Students have trouble with lesson transfer
Structural or functional organization vs surface detail and similarity

“Knowing Things” is not just catalog of facts but schemata and organizational retrieval strategies are automatized (can be hard for experts to teach for this reason)
Chess players…
Teach habits of mind: “deep analogy” ? But…

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Gerlich, 2025

“[S]ignificant negative correlation between frequent AI tool usage and critical thinking abilities, mediated by increased cognitive offloading.”
Younger participants exhibited higher dependence on AI tools and lower critical thinking scores compared to older participants.
Higher educational attainment was associated with better critical thinking skills, regardless of AI usage.
These results highlight the potential cognitive costs of AI tool reliance, emphasizing the need for educational strategies that promote critical engagement with AI technologies.
Gerlich M. AI Tools in Society: Impacts on Cognitive Offloading and the Future of Critical Thinking. Societies. 2025; 15(1):6. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc15010006

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Lee et al, 2025

“We surveyed 319 knowledge workers to investigate

1) when and how they perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using

GenAI, and

2) when and why GenAI affects their effort to do so.”

Participants shared 936 first-hand examples of using GenAI in work tasks. Quantitatively, when considering both task- and user-specific factors, a user’s task-specific self-confidence and confidence in GenAI are predictive of whether critical thinking is enacted and the effort of doing so in GenAI-assisted tasks.
Specifically, higher confidence in GenAI is associated with less critical thinking, while higher self-confidence is associated with more critical thinking.

Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2025). The impact of generative AI on critical thinking: Self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Article 1121, pp. 1–22). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713778

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Lee et al., 2025

GenAI tools appear to reduce the perceived effort required for critical thinking tasks among knowledge workers, especially when they have higher confidence in AI capabilities.
However, workers who are confident in their own skills tend to perceive greater effort in these tasks, particularly when evaluating and applying AI responses.

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Brown University

Whitford, E. (2026, July 8). Brown professor suspects most of his class used AI to cheat. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/07/08/brown-professor-suspects-most-his-class-used-ai-cheat

“Although a majority of Brown student respondents reported using GenAI routinely, overwhelming majorities also identified a significant number of concerns around the use of GenAI in educational contexts. Most students indicated concerns about the impact of GenAI use on their learning (88% of undergraduate and 73% of graduate/medical student respondents, respectively) and fear of negative consequences for their cognitive capacity (87% and 79%, respectively).” (11)

Generative AI in Teaching and Learning (GAITL) Committee. (2026, July). Generative AI in teaching and learning (GAITL) committee final report and recommendations. Brown University.

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GenAI and Interventions: some questions

Am I using this to make up for a deficit in thinking skills with this student?
Am I using this as part of a structured scaffolding to build these thinking skills?
Am I using this because the instructional focus must be elsewhere right now, but this task requires this (e.g. summarizing research)?
How can I use AI to appropriately INCREASE cognitive load for a thinking stage?
General strategy: Student does it first; have AI try; have student reflect on differences and similarities and then strategize improvement (feedback?), compete.
How can I be sure the “taste” for lower cognitive load after this use of AI will not increase resistance to doing the mental work later?

Does student “caring” about the skill matter? How does culture shape that?
Role REFLECTION and Meaning Making

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Reflection and Meaning Making

Meaning Making: individual (past experience, culture and context, empathetic capacities, cognitive empathy, transcendent thinking) connection to a larger, transcendent pattern
Linking individual experience to a larger story about the world how it works and how it should work

More predictive than SES
More predictive than IQ
Increased Life Satisfaction
Increased sense of well being

Gotlieb, R.J.M., Yang, XF. & Immordino-Yang, M.H. Diverse adolescents’ transcendent thinking predicts young adult psychosocial outcomes via brain network development. Sci Rep 14, 6254 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-56800-0

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Are we back to Plato?

Today, for all their promise, new technologies such as generative AI, if not properly subordinated to educational and neurodevelopmental goals, also threaten to undermine the development of these same brain structures by supplanting the agency of students in different phases of the writing process and consequently eroding their underlying thinking capacities, weakening both the individual student and society we hope to maintain.

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Why Write well?

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LESSON 1. TO WRITE WELL, THE INVISIBLE THINKING BEHIND GOOD WRITING NEEDS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

While the writing process has come to be the conventional approach to writing, most writing instruction and feedback has lagged behind, reflecting a focus on the written product (Maxine Hairston “The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing”1982)
Today most feedback and rubrics continue to focus on the written product rather than the thinking process
Most rubrics related to thinking are separate from writing (Joseph et al., 2020).
Students’ products continue to be valued more than their processes (thinking) or their progress as individuals.
How does that impact how students view their work?

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LESSON 2. TO WRITE WELL, WE NEED TO ATTEND TO THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF WRITING

Writing is a social activity (Boscolo & Gelati, 2019; Graham & Harris, 2019; Ives et al., 2022; Williams, 2022) and must be learned within the context and culture of the learner for it to be authentic (Bruyère & Pendergrass, 2020; He, 2020; Winstead & Alterio, 2021).
Writing is often treated as an individual skill, however, people are deeply influenced by each other as they think through expectations, read and interpret each other’s ideas and feelings, and learn from each other’s perspectives (e.g., Hsin & Snow, 2017; Seih et al, 2011).
Students often write for an audience of one.

How does this shape student ideas about their work?

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LESSON 3. TO WRITE WELL, PEOPLE SHOULD WRITE IN MULTIPLE GENRES

All genres of writing stimulate distinct forms of thinking but not all genres are celebrated in school (see Haim & Ravid, 2022).
Students can often be good at one kind of writing, but not so good at others. When the genre they are not so good at is the one that is graded, they label themselves “poor” writers and their motivation to grow as a writer is stunted (Torres et al., 2020).
There is no “hierarchy” of writing genres, although formal writing is prized over the informal, and schools often prize evidence from standardized tests over imagination (Willson & Falcon, 2018).
This helps build a writer’s sense of the world’s complexity and internalize the possibilities of what it means to be a writer in different contexts.
Representative works from multiple cultural backgrounds can help bridge the perceived gap between school and the marginalized.
Writing in a different genre can be a way to find one’s true voice and that in turn can be a driver to further mastery (Xu, 2023).
How does what we ask student to read and what we ask students to write shape what they think of their work and sense of identity as writers?

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LESSON 4. TO WRITE WELL, PEOPLE NEED TO READ BROADLY

Wide and extensive reading acquaints the brain with perspectives and others’ internal thinking processes that are otherwise inaccessible (Eekhof, et al., 2021; Firman et al., 2022).
Culturally diverse readings allow readers to develop diverse possibilities for writerly identity
Reading widely is an opportunity to build a writer’s schema of different genres (Driscoll et al., 2020; Tardy et al., 2020).
When reading is done in a broad range of genres, the brain is exposed to syntactical norms and possibilities in a range that far exceeds that which it gets from direct grammatical instruction (Barnes et al., 2021; Freeman et al., 2016).
Additionally, and paradoxically, we find our voice through the voices of others.

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TRANSFER LESSON 5. TO WRITE WELL, PEOPLE NEED TIME: ALL TEACHERS SHOULD BE WRITING TEACHERS

Benjamin Bloom identified time as the main problem with student achievement

Over 90% of the kids in any given classroom would be able to master the content of whatever was taught, if the students had enough time to do so. (Bloom 1968).

Effective writing instruction depends on time (NCoW, 2003).
Quality writing instruction cannot occur if sufficient time is not available. All teachers need to assume the role of writing teachers and make space for writing activities in class (Russell, 2020; Wolpert-Gawron, 2014);
It should be considered a modality woven into all subjects (Bell-Nolan, 2015).
Graham (2019) noted that teachers around the world reported spending far less than the recommended one-hour per day on writing skills, mostly because not all teachers feel this is in their purview

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Some Questions

LESSON 1. TO WRITE WELL, THE INVISIBLE THINKING BEHIND GOOD WRITING NEEDS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

How can we value and best coach the thinking that goes into writing?
Do our feedback and grading systems favor process or product?
What neural networks are we building with our feedback and grading systems?

LESSON 2. TO WRITE WELL, WE NEED TO ATTEND TO THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF WRITING:

How do we acknowledge cultures and build a distinctive writing culture?
How do we build relationships through writing, and develop the perspective taking necessary for good writing and thinking?

LESSON 3. TO WRITE WELL, PEOPLE SHOULD WRITE IN MULTIPLE GENRES:

How can we best allow for students to find their voices and identities as writers?

LESSON 4. TO WRITE WELL, PEOPLE NEED TO READ BROADLY:

How does our reading curriculum relate to our writing curriculum?

LESSON 5. TO WRITE WELL, PEOPLE NEED TIME:

How can we make more time for writing?

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Why single-shot professional development doesn’t work

Encourage you to continue the conversation and the work
Thank you for your work as a teacher and the relationships you build with your students
Thank you for your practice as a writer, your passion and the model you provide for your student writers
Thank you for caring!

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