Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:00]:

Today on episode number 536 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, stressing pedagogical principles over AI promises with John Warner.

Podcast Production Credit [00:00:14]:

Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:00:23]:

Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak, and this is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches, so we can have more peace in our lives and be even more present for our students. Anytime I have a chance to have a conversation with John Warner, I come away being more curious and challenged in the best possible ways, and today’s conversation is no different. John Warner is a national voice on the teaching of writing, faculty labor, and institutional values, both as a frequent speaker and long time contributor to Inside Higher Ed where his just visiting column has run weekly over 10 years. He’s also the author of why they can’t write, killing the 5 paragraph essay and other necessities, the writer’s practice, building confidence in your nonfiction writing, and sustainable, resilient, free, the future of public higher education. A former college instructor with 20 years of experience across multiple institutions, University of Illinois, Virginia Tech, Clemson College of Charleston. Warner now works as a writer, editor, speaker, and consultant.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:01:57]:

In addition to his work in education for over a decade, he’s been a weekly columnist for the Chicago tribune, writing about books and the habits of reading as his alter ego, the biblioricle. In 2021, he started an associated Substack newsletter, the biblioricle recommends, which was a Substack featured production for 2021. A native of Chicago, Warner lives with his veterinarian wife, Kathy, in the Charleston, South Carolina area. He is a faculty affiliate at the College of Charleston. John Warner, welcome back to Teaching in Higher Ed.

John Warner [00:02:39]:

Oh, always a pleasure to be here.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:02:41]:

In July of 2024, I gave a session as part of the Myfest community along with Alexis Caudill, and we were talking about becoming a critically reflective teacher. And in our conversations, a lot of it came out with the messiness of what happens when we try to look at anything, think about anything, reflect on anything, and we do so without any structure at all. So the example in this case, what does it look like to look at one’s student course evaluations without any kind of a structure or a process and other lenses to use. Just all the messiness I was talking about, the self deprecation that I can often get into. And we looked at Steven Brookfield’s book, becoming a critically reflective teacher, and he talks about his own experiences of self flagellation, trying to be the perfect ten, you know, trying to rely more on on charisma. So having come out of that conversation, it it’s so quickly connected with me, John, to some of the things you’ve been reflecting about and writing about as it comes to the blank page. So as someone who helps to coach and develop other people who are writers, talk to us about this messy blank page and what it looks like when we don’t bring some kind of structure to it.

John Warner [00:04:04]:

Yes. If you just tell somebody, oh, write whatever you want. You’ve given them no structure, and what looks like freedom actually becomes a kind of a morphous blob of restriction because too much of our sort of mental and emotional bandwidth is taken up with, well, what should I say? Who should I say it to? What do I have to say? Do I have anything to say? And these sorts of questions are unproductive if, you know, a sort of writing process is is the goal. So I think a huge part of of being able to write is having some kind of structure around what you’re trying to do so that you can begin to break it into a problem that can be solved. And the the easiest way in writing is is the rhetorical situation, message, audience, and purpose. Right? Now within, a rhetorical situation, you can then give a an author or writer great freedom to operate in that. You know? Choose your audience, choose your message, Choose your purpose. Or you can say, hey.

John Warner [00:05:10]:

I want you to write to a specific group or I want you to write about this subject, but you can choose the other parts. So even with that structure, there’s still lots of things to negotiate and and figure out, but it gives it some shape. You know? Thinking about the specific example you used, teaching evaluations, the the kind of horrible dread I used to feel when I would open mine, usually months after they they could have been opened and accessed, because I was kind of dreading what they would say. Not because I feared a bunch of negative feedback, but because I feared any negative feedback. Right? It could be 90% positive and 10% negative, and it would it would stick with me. Then what I realized is that the instrument of the student evaluation that had been developed by my institution had very little relationship to what I cared about with my own teaching, with how I thought about the experiments I was running in my classroom as a teacher. So I I think a a lot of what we bring to these occasions is a matter of what are your values, what are your priorities, what are you trying to get out of it. So once I kind of realized that with my own teaching evaluations, I would only look for the things that I thought mattered most, and that was related to kind of the pillars of my own teaching philosophy around, primarily around transparency.

John Warner [00:06:26]:

Did students know what I wanted them to do and how I wanted them to go about trying to do it? And everything else became extraneous. So by giving yourself structure, I actually argue we give ourselves great freedom because that structure allows us a kind of focus to put our minds to work on something that we can actually process and execute rather than just sort of, hey. Do whatever you want. That that’s I don’t think that works in very many contexts at all, but particularly ones we’re expected to teach or learn within those kinds of nonstructures.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:06:58]:

As we both reflect on our own reactions in the past to course evaluations, so much similarity comes out of what it’s like as a person who thinks as a human being. And when as a person who thinks as a human being attempts to put those often messy thoughts into the written word. And there’s just this idea of just self deprecation in some cases. I’m not a good writer. Or when we think about the audience, you know, maybe that audience might judge me in some way or I’m maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I don’t have good enough words for that particular audience. And so there is this idea of how difficult it can be to do that, the vulnerability that’s required. So you talked about your teaching philosophy.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:07:47]:

Did they know what you wanted them to do and how to do it? I imagine that someone who doesn’t know you well, John, that could seem potentially I I don’t I mean, there there could be a lot of assumptions that get put into the very few words that you use to describe that. So could you talk more about how that actually can be freeing from all those voices in our head that are telling us, I don’t know how to write, and I don’t know how to write. And I also don’t know what this person wants. This is a person in a position of power. And what does he want from me as a writer? What is he gonna think about my clumsy, messy words? So talk more about how this very simple act of kindness and clarity in your transparency helps to quiet some of those voices, and then what does it do instead of what might have happened without your level of transparency?

John Warner [00:08:40]:

Well, so one of the core principles with which I I use in any writing course and have for a long time is that it’s the students the the writers in the class are not writing for me. They’re not writing for the purposes of evaluation by an instructor who is their audience for the things they’re writing. So I don’t want them thinking about me, their teacher, and evaluator or in that role, that evaluation role as a teacher at all when they’re doing their work. I want them writing in authentic situations with a message and audience and a purpose and an audience that is not the teacher, and a purpose that goes not just goes beyond sort of getting a grade, but where, the the grade is a relevancy to the thing that is being written. I have a I have a number of mantras around writing. I probably shared them in my previous appearances on your podcast, but one of them is that writing is thinking. And so out of the gate, I want students to look at the writing they do in in the course as a series of exercises in building what I call the writer’s practice, the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and habits of mind of writers. While doing these pieces of writing, they’re building their practices.

John Warner [00:09:55]:

And once they’ve done the writing or as even as they’re doing the writing, they’re reflecting on their own metacognitive understanding of their own practices. Right? So this idea of writing is thinking, I want them working on a a particular writing problem and and trying to express that in a rhetorical situation express themselves well in a rhetorical situation. But then after that, I also want them to be able to think about what they’ve done, the choice of choices they’ve made, why they’ve made those choices relative to the rhetorical situation. And all of this is independent of me, the teacher. We’re talking about we’re thinking about writing. We’re thinking about what writers do and how writers think and how how writers feel and how writers communicate. And so when I get those end of the semester evaluations, what I’m looking for is feedback that gets at those dimensions. Do they think about elements of the writer’s practice? Do they, you know is the focus away from me as the teacher and on the material of the course? These are inferences I can make from their feedback that maybe is not direct in the questions they’re asked, but I can I can get by implication in the kinds of answers they give? So it’s really about not just looking at sort of the ratings, like, oh, you were 4 and a half out of 5 on prepares well for class or something like that.

John Warner [00:11:21]:

It’s it’s, you know, it’s it’s a more focused look in terms of the kinds of experiences that I think are productive for them to have in class. And if they perceive those experiences as productive to themselves and if there’s a disconnect there, that’s what I wanna think about. I wanna think about how to bridge that gap.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:11:39]:

And as you think about those self deprecating voices and I mean, the this is not something that happens in the first assignment where we can rid, you know, that all of the unlearning that needs to take place in order to trust you, that you actually live out in a series of practices and skills yourself, those values that you described, the value of writing as thinking. And I wanna I wanna first have us explore a little bit. I I think so many times when we start bringing in any kind of tool, technology, or or avenue in which people may take shortcuts, There’s so much judgment. I mean, I I really even I wanna even say that I don’t like my word shortcuts. Efficiency. I mean, people yearn to not waste their time. People all of us. This is a universal thing.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:12:32]:

I’d I I’ve never met a person who’s like, yes. Please waste my time. You know? That idea, there’s so much judgment where anytime that we start talking, and it’s judgment across multiple perspectives, but there’s a lot of judgment behind, oh, there’s a blank slate. There’s a blank piece of paper, I’m supposed to start writing, and I don’t know what to do, that it seems like to many, including many faculty, AI is the answer to. So tell us a little bit and to the extent, like, I’m not doing a good job of removing the judgmental sounding words and phrases, but truly, truly, what happens? And and by the way, John, I use AI. I use it, I might be getting to twice a week, 3 times a week. I mean, to me, it’s a tool that can be I love, John Ippolito recently was talking about that, you know, you choose the right type of vehicle to go on a particular journey for a type of terrain. And the examples I’ve used on the podcast in the past, which was hard for me to admit, John, but I can do this.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:13:36]:

I’m getting better at it. I find it far more effective to use a large language model to write formal letters of recommendation, either for students or for faculty. The quality of the output for those particular audiences is better than what I can often do on my own, but particularly, it really is a time saver. So the output is, it’s either going to be just as good or or better than what I would have on my own produced without any help, but it’s also, oh my goodness gracious, so much faster. Having said that though, John, I don’t use it for, I don’t use it to help prepare me for the podcast. I don’t use it for other types of writing. So take me through just your thinking where I go, yeah. I’m I’m about to write something, John.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:14:23]:

I’m I’m struggling with just there’s just a blank page, and I don’t know who my audience is. I haven’t thought through those things. What I miss if I decide to take the very thing that you say and prompt AI with it? So I tell AI, this is my audience. This is my intent. You know, this is what I’m looking for. And I just get that pump that prompt, just so, and it does that work for me. What do I miss?

John Warner [00:14:45]:

Yeah. So this gets into the the dual aspects of what I mean when I say writing is thinking. So writing is thinking in the sense that we are trying to we have a notion or an idea in our heads and we’re like, I’m trying to capture this and put it on the page. That’s part of the thinking. But the other part of writing is thinking and anybody who has spent any time writing has experienced this, is while you are in the act of writing, you are processing your own idea and some new and previously hidden aspect of your own idea or new idea or way of talking about the idea will come to you because you are in this kind of active writing process. And so if you outsource that initial draft, that aspect of thinking to a large language model, you will get an a mass of material, which is a kind of great averaging, right, of of what’s in the training data. And what you get is likely to be, okay, presuming it’s not hallucinated and accurate and and all that kind of stuff, which are things we can check once the the syntax has been generated. But what you’ve shorted yourself is the opportunity to actually discover your own, topic.

John Warner [00:16:03]:

And so in thinking about when we might use this or why we might use it using your example of of a recommendation letter, if we know that a piece of writing has a very well defined purpose, It is a highly structured genre and that the information that goes into the letter is essentially known already. We could look at using a large language model to generate that as as a productivity shortcut, where we arrive at a, if not the same, a highly similar output as to what we would do otherwise. And in in the example you cite, I think your your your feeling is that perhaps the tone of what the large language model produces is is more appropriate to the occasion. Maybe it’s more business like or less personal or something like that. I would maybe dispute the notion that that makes it more appropriate. I I I’m maybe I’m an outlier on this thing, but I think the best recommendations really are sort of quirky and spiky and interesting in and of themselves. At least that’s how I try to think of them when I’m tasked with doing them. The other aspect, so it’s it’s not that it’s, like, wrong to use the stuff to do that.

John Warner [00:17:22]:

It’s just that some things are going to be missing from that process. Right? But if it’s a purely instrumental exercise, like, I need you to generate this text because somebody else needs to prove that they can get a college faculty member to write them a recommendation, sure. It works well for that. I would question why we’re even writing those recommendations if the if the core purpose of that is just to prove that somebody will write one for you. Mhmm. You could just, you know, you could get a a stamp or a wax seal that is unique to your

Bonni Stachowiak [00:17:54]:

An NFT token.

John Warner [00:17:56]:

Yeah. And, exactly. The other thing that and this is it’s interesting because I actually use the in the book I have coming out next February on this stuff, I used the recommendation letter as an example of a a kind of writing that is in this in between space where you could use a large language model to produce something that is very much like what Micah produced anyway. But the other aspect that I would argue that goes missing when you outsource that kind of thing is the reflective process that you would experience in writing that letter. When I write these letters, it forces me to go back and remember the student, reflect on the work they did in in whatever course we, were in together. It forces me to remember what I taught, why I taught it. It’s the teacher I might have been at the time the student was in the course. And over the years, writing those recommendations, those sorts of things, particularly when there’s a significant gap between, say, when a student was in the course and when they need a recommendation from me for something, has really been a powerful reflection tool for me on my own teaching, where I’ll look at their assignments and what they wrote and all my feedback and everything.

John Warner [00:19:08]:

It’s like, oh, wow. I would never assign that kind of thing again, or the feedback kind of feedback I give is totally changed. And this is the act of being human, right, of reflecting on our own lives and thinking through them. So I I think there’s a a benefit in that. Now whether or not that benefit outweighs the time and effort for the end result of that product, that’s something we have to each individual has to weigh for themselves. Right? But my message now and in the book is really, we shouldn’t be so quick to outsource these things just because a large language model could produce something that is acceptable. There is some aspect of our humanity that’s that is being compromised when we outsource writing that has traditionally been done by humans or we expect to be done by humans to one of these, large language models.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:20:00]:

I’ve been very intrigued by your writing and reflections on the ways that a particular tool can help us to demystify this blank slate, the blank page. So if it’s not that I quickly take the shortcut to potentially use AI and miss out on some of the things that you just described, tell us about Frankenstories and the the ways in which it’s designed to develop a writing practice.

John Warner [00:20:25]:

Yes. So Franken’s story is really interesting. I mean, I, I’ll take you back a little bit. So when in November of 2022, when OpenAI released chat GPT and, the world started freaking out, I was not freaking out because I had been talking about, quite as badly. I mean, I was amazed by the technology, but, you know, as you know, because we’ve talked about this previously and and anybody’s familiar with my work knows, I’ve been sort of, had my hair on fire about the problems around the kinds of writing we ask students to do in school for a decade or more. And so when this thing could this technology showed up that could write a high school literature essay that would get a a b, you know, in seconds, I was my first response was, like, good. Let’s stop doing that now because we know that this technology that can’t think, can’t read, can’t feel can do it. This is a sign that what we’re asking students to do is not necessarily worth and how we’re asking them to do it is not necessarily worth their time.

John Warner [00:21:26]:

So I I I wrote some stuff around this, and and the Internet being as it is, I got sort of discovered as somebody who’d been thinking about these things before ChatGPT came out, and I started to get contacted by software companies who were kind of working on these problems or developing tech or were jumping on sort of the chatgpt thing. And I talked to a bunch of them, maybe, hit, let’s say, a handful, 5 or 6. And almost invariably, these are very nice and very well meaning folks. They’re not sort of just looking to make a bunch of money and and invent a lousy product. But what became clear is that by concept of how writing works as an experience and the writer’s practice of the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and habits of mind, we’re we’re not in sync, to the point where there was one company where this guy was super nice, and he was very enthusiastic. But I at the end, I said, I I mean, you know offense, but I I hope this doesn’t work because I I think, like, this product will be attractive to schools. But if we if we have students doing this, I think it’s going to only exacerbate the problems that I’ve already you know, I’ve been talking about for quite some time. But this Frankenstories was was was different.

John Warner [00:22:39]:

It’s a company out of Australia. This guy, Andrew Duvall, emailed me and it’s sort of a bootstrap startup. And he showed me this thing and it’s really Frankenstories as a game. And it’s a game where it’s played collaboratively. You have 5 or 6 or 7 players. You can have more, but it it sort of begins to get a little chaotic with more than that at a time. And you are shown an image, like it might be a basket of kittens or something like that, and then you’re given a prompt. And the prompt might be something like, write like these are mortal enemies.

John Warner [00:23:12]:

So you have a picture of basket of kittens, a prompt that says write like these are mortal enemies, and then you have and you have a set number of rounds, 5 being the default. But in the first round, you just take that prompt and you start writing. And, you have 2 minutes to write, like like the basket of kittens in this particular scenario, like this basket of kittens are mortal enemies. And the thing that really works around it is there’s no time to second guess. There’s structure. Right? You have a prompt, you have a picture, and it says do this, and so you’re compelled by it. There’s a timer and, an empty box and you type for, 2 minutes or however long it takes you to to get some text in there and then it’s over. After every player, has their entries in the first round, each player is shown what the other players have written.

John Warner [00:24:04]:

There’s a voting stage. Whichever response is voted as the best becomes the first section of the story, and then we go to the the next section. We try to build on the story. Sometimes the prompt may may change, sometimes it continues, and it’s just continue the story based on this. And what I saw, both in playing the the game myself and then seeing students from anywhere from 3rd grade through high school play this thing is that it fires up sort of the engagement engine without engaging that self deprecation and that worry that students have around writing because it’s not graded. The games are often sort of fun, sometimes silly. They’re collaborative. Everybody’s sort of doing it around you.

John Warner [00:24:55]:

If you’re doing it in a classroom or online together, if you’re doing it online, it’s fun to have a Zoom open while you’re also playing the game in real time. And I just became very I became very taken with it and, you know, did a little work work for them because I, you know, I thought I could be helpful to them. And then I ended up when it was all said and done, I ended up acquiring a vanishingly small portion of Frankenstories Mhmm. Just as a sort of an excuse to, to keep working on it. Because I think it’s it’s the kind of thing that we should do more of, like here’s the thing that that kind of really boggles my mind is that writing doesn’t need to be a misery. It doesn’t need to be this thing we hate and we fear. Writing can be fun. Writing can be fulfilling, and not just in the, oh, I’m I’m glad I wrote.

John Warner [00:25:49]:

Right? Not in the I hate writing, but I’m I’m glad I wrote sense. But in the in the actual act and it’s something we’ve gotten away from over time. Like, I I’m I’m sitting here paging through my 5th grade writing portfolio in missus Minch’s class in 5th grade. And 54, so you can do the math. I guess this is, like, maybe 1982. And the things missus Minch had us write, there’s a we had to write a limerick. We had to write a speculative fiction, science fiction story. We had to write historical fiction.

John Warner [00:26:21]:

We had to write something from the point of view of a of an animal, and I chose my dog, Melvin, who was both my greatest love and my chief tormentor of my childhood. We wrote for holidays. We wrote for seasons. And for whatever reason, I’ve kept this thing for 40 plus years. And when I look back on it, I see an experience that was fun, where I was practicing my writing practice without really knowing it. And instead, over time, we’ve turned students into sort of school automatons. Right? Like, they’re always doing school rather than writing. And so one of the things I really loved about Frankenstories was it gets students writing without having them worry about school.

John Warner [00:27:02]:

School really increasingly, has become sort of the enemy of students learning to write, I I’m I’m afraid, for all kinds of reasons and and to no fault of teachers or even, I think, any intentional, intentionality in terms of schools or districts, so that sort of stuff. It’s just we’ve lost sight of these things. And Frankenstories is a way to bring these things back into vision, the the idea that we when we write, we can have fun, we commune with others, we communicate, we invent, We’re creative. We’re human. And this is what I think about when I write every day, so why shouldn’t students experience this too?

Bonni Stachowiak [00:27:38]:

I’m about to do something very unfair to you, and that is to ask you to explain another concern that you that you have in in short order because we’re gonna get to the recommendations segment here just shortly. But I would love to hear you talk a little bit about the dangers involved, what what we miss. You’ve you’ve described what we miss when we go straight from the blank page to artificial intelligence. What happens when we go straight to using historical figure chatbots in an attempt in a noble attempt at trying to engage students, at at trying to, you know, use creative ways to get them to experience, what history looks like and use some animal I mean, lots of good motives go into this, but what gets lost that people may not realize when we go straight to using historical figure chatbots?

John Warner [00:28:28]:

Yeah. I I I just think the historical figure chatbot is an interesting idea that is, entirely underbaked. It’s I I call it I I wrote a post at my engaged education substack where I called it digital necromancy, which I do mean partially in a sense. Like, we’re we’re trying to resurrect the dead through these large language models. I I just think the notion it’s like a lot of the other generative AI technology where we are dazzled by these things out of the gate, like the sort of video generator. Like, oh my god. This is the future of filmmaking. But it turns out we’re actually watching a highly controlled demonstration of a possible future application rather than a technology that is ripe.

John Warner [00:29:12]:

So my first worry is that these things are just underbaked. Like, the the enthusiasm for them is based on something that they they can’t and and, maybe will never do. So one of the things is, like, it’s not really a conversation. Right? It’s, a kind of call and response where you ask a chatbot a question, and it responds basically with an answer that could have been taken out of a textbook. It’s not an actual give and take like we’re having in a podcast, right, where, Bonni says something that makes me have to think about what I’m going to respond to and generate an answer. It’s an illusion of conversation rather than actual conversation. I think also we need to be very, very careful about the kind of authority that students would invest in these things. If you say you’re talking to Harriet Tubman or you’re talking to George Washington, we know this is not true because we know how this technology works.

John Warner [00:30:11]:

It does not think. It does not reason. It does not judge veracity or truth. It is simply a predictive process of syntax generation that is not actually grounded in the ideas and, beliefs and values of these figures. So treating these things as though they’re that way and encouraging students to see them as though it’s in the voice of, they’re speaking to these these historical figures. I think that sends a a a message that is is dangerous in terms of disempowering students from really being kind of active interrogators of of history. And then, of course, there’s this when we resurrect these historical figures and say, here they are in 21st century or 21st century world. We wanna ask them about these things.

John Warner [00:31:04]:

We create what I call the Bill and Ted effect if we, if you remember that film where they Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where they go and get these they get, like, Socrates and Abraham Abraham Lincoln and Joan of Arc, and they bring them to their Southern California high school. And these figures sort of go nuts in town because they’re not suited to 21st century life. And I I think that’s inevitably true of of these these, historical figure chatbots. And so we put guardrails around them, and we say, well, you can’t talk about these issues that would be relevant in the past. But then we’re silencing our chatbots. Right? So we not allowing you know, Jefferson would have, he would have thoughts about something like same sex marriage. It would be foreign to him, but he could conceptualize it if he were here today, if we could resurrect him. And so I just think it’s it it ultimately becomes a kind of bogus, experience that is masquerading as engagement, but it’s really just sort of a surface level thing.

John Warner [00:32:05]:

And, really, the there there’s also, I think, just a a have a kind of moral objection to taking humans that walked the earth. Right? They were real people, had real impacts on the world, leave behind a legacy in terms of their work and their writing and their own histories, and say, we’re going to resurrect you in the form of a an algorithm. I I just think that that should trouble us, from a a moral standpoint. So the enthusiasm, I think, is is premature. My hunch is as more people use these things, we’ll be like, oh, yeah. Well, this actually isn’t all that great. But I would I would like some additional skepticism out of the gate rather than these things sort of fart on their face because they’re they’re not worth something. In general, I think we need more critical consideration of the integration of this technology into educational spaces before we start introducing it than after it’s already introduced.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:04]:

It’s so often that we’ll talk about as educators the fears or frustrations involved in something that we say or do being take out of taken out of context. And so, yeah, I mean, imagine all the viral clips of classrooms that are devoid of context. And so it’s like that to me amplified far more of the concerns.

John Warner [00:33:27]:

There’s people out there who are like, I’m gonna make a a teaching chap teaching bot of myself, and that sounds crazy to like, it really sounds like madness to me. Why would you untether your yourself, your literal self, from the presentation of your own ideas in the form of this this bot? I mean, talk about taking it out of context. It it it removes it removes your humanity and get kind of kind of husk. So I’m I’m with you. I I don’t I don’t understand it, honestly. I don’t understand the enthusiasm in education circles, especially.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:33:59]:

I can’t think of a better transition to the recommendations segment. John, when I get depressed or afraid or angry about this lack of appreciation and honoring of the human parts of being human, I often go to poetry, and I am not someone who has studied poetry. I feel quite self deprecating to go back to our earlier earlier parts of our conversation when it comes to it. But I’ll tell you, when you come to something with a beginner’s mind, there’s a beauty that maybe someone who’s been studying poetry couldn’t possibly access. So I’m gonna come with all of my newness and and my novizeness of poetry, and I wanted to share 2 poems. They are both read by Harry Baker. The first one is authored by Donna Ashworth. There will be all the links in the recommendations and the show notes to get to what I’m about to share with you, because I suspect that you, like me, as you hear the words that Harry Baker will read, will want to come back and revisit them.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:35:01]:

He he speaks fairly quickly, and so it may be one of those things that you do wanna go watch the video because he does have the captions then on the video, and they’re just such, such beautiful poems. So the first one is a poem by Donna Ashworth, and it is all about joy. So I’m gonna share with you now a poem, joy comes back, and it is read by Harry Baker. And on Instagram, he’s Harry Baker poet, and so here we go. We can take a a listen to Joy Comes Back.

Podcast producer [00:35:36]:

When you finally realize that joy is less fireworks, more firefly, less orchestra, more birdsong, She will come back much more often. For joy will not fight with the fast pace of this life. She is not in the shiny or the new. She breathes in the basic, simmers in the simple, and dances in the daily to and fro. Joy has been beckoning you for many a year, my friend. You were just too busy doing to see. The very next time joy wraps her quiet warmth around you, as the garden embraces your weary body in its wildness, Tip her a nod. She doesn’t stay long, but if you are a gracious host, joy comes back.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:36:24]:

Oh, such a gorgeous poem. And the second one is authored by Harry Baker and also read by him. And he doesn’t share a title on the post, but he claims he states that it is a reminder to myself to never take for granted how wonderful life can be. So this is Harry Baker reading his own poetry, and I will also link to it so that you can get his every word and revisit them. Here we go.

Podcast producer [00:36:55]:

Do you always picture where you are as where you’re meant to be? May you take in your surroundings like you visited especially. We all end up in the soil eventually. So may you carry such goodness that it nourishes for centuries. May you see life as a show, and may the entry fee be empathy, set front row with an empty seat for friends in need. And when you’re on form, be generous and spread that energy. And when you’re not sure, be gentle with yourself and don’t forget to breathe. You need not be defined by your many feet. You are not a centipede that is a joy in doing something terribly.

Podcast producer [00:37:28]:

May you share bruise and bruises, and may you do this tenderly, you are the most improved you that has ever been. Of all the words you’ll ever hear, remember these, life is too short to eat celery, Life is too long to feed jealousy, and life is likely just the right length to need therapy. May you be seriously silly. May you be wickedly kind. May you be brilliantly dumb sometimes, and yet stupidly bright. May you certainly have doubts. May your weirdness be the norm. May the coolest thing about you be your warmth.

Podcast producer [00:38:05]:

May you be powerfully vulnerable, or at least mightily soft. May you be a contradiction and yet at the same time not. And whether you are any, none, or all of the above, above all may you know that you are loved. May you understand that it’s okay to change your mind, particularly if your views are not the same as mine. May you always make room for playfulness. It may just save your life, and trust whatever makes your heart grow cannot be a waste of time. It may not make you money. It may not even make sense.

Podcast producer [00:38:36]:

But if it makes you happy, it is worth it in the end, and it is worth it at the time, and it deserves your very best, and you were never too busy to catch your breath. Just as you cannot be in traffic without being traffic. Life is not something that you are stuck in while it happens. There is more in you than you could possibly imagine. The very fact that you exist makes everything a bit more magic. When it all feels too much, and there is little you can do. May you still see the best in people, and may people include you. May one thing match the gravity of all you’ve ever done.

Podcast producer [00:39:08]:

This wonderful reality, the best is yet to come.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:39:13]:

Oh, John, you could imagine why I thought that might be poetry worthy of sharing with you today, and I I can’t think of a better couple of poems that to to almost finish out our conversation together, just as I’m reflecting back on our conversation. Such beautiful beautiful important words. And, John, I’m gonna pass it over to you for whatever you would like now to recommend.

John Warner [00:39:37]:

Sure. This this is always the hardest part for me because there’s a million things I’d like to recommend. But I’m just gonna go with what’s at the top of my mind because this afternoon, I’ve been writing a review of a new book of short stories called The History of Sound by Ben Ben Shattuck, s h a t t u c k. And it’s just sort of the best collection of stories that I’ve probably read, not exaggerating, in the last couple of decades. I just think it’s a masterpiece. And to the point where I finished reading it and I started reading it again from the beginning after I finished because the the stories are it’s individual stories, but they’re linked in such a way where there’s sort of these connections in between them, and I wanted to go back and and appreciate those connections once I read it. So I just think it’s a it’s a great book. It blew me away.

John Warner [00:40:27]:

I had no expectations. I started reading it, and I know I was reading something very special. And any chance I can get for the next, at least, several weeks, I’m gonna be telling people to read this book. So I appreciate that you give me an opportunity to say so to your audience.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:40:41]:

People often tell me that the recommendations are also their hardest part, and I so appreciate it. I have read many of the things that you have recommended in past episodes and have never been disappointed, so I suspect this will not be the case. And I I also appreciate that we’re kind of talking about genres. I don’t do a lot of reading in poetry as well as short stories, and so exciting to do that. By the way, I was gonna mention that I will be linking not just to Harry Baker reading these poems on Instagram, but I’ll also be linking to his books of poetry. I tend to not recommend books that I have not read all the way through or movies I haven’t watched all the way through, etcetera, etcetera. So I will save up recommending his entire books of poetry until I have done my homework and read them, but I can only anticipate based on all the ones I’ve watched of his on Instagram that they will be tremendous books and worthy of our reading. So, John, it’s so great to be able to talk with you today.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:34]:

You had already talked about over email that you’re willing to come back and share more about your book closer to when it comes out or after in, February of 2025. And so until we meet again, I’m so looking forward to the next time we get a chance to share it together.

John Warner [00:41:48]:

I’ll see you in February, if not sooner.

Bonni Stachowiak [00:41:52]:

Thanks once again to John Warner for joining me on today’s episode. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonni Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented Andrew Kroeger. Podcast production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Priest. If you have yet to sign up to the weekly update from Teaching in Higher Ed, I encourage you to head over to teaching in higher ed.com/subscribe. You will receive the most recent episodes show notes along with some other goodies that don’t show up in those regular show notes. Thank you so much for listening and being a part of the community, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.