As I get ready to attend the TCEA 2025 Convention later this week in San Antonio (the best event in the best city), I am packing technology. That tech is for presenting…for tracking and processing new ideas, I will rely on handwritten notes in a slim notebook 📓 I got for free from a vendor at another event.

That’s why I can’t help but admire Chanea Bond’s approach:

“A lot of people say to me: ‘Aren’t you afraid that they’re going to get behind?’ And my response is: ‘I know that when my students leave my class that they know how to think and they know how to write.'”

Recent data suggests educators may be embracing AI more than they’re eschewing it, like Bond has. Roughly 60% of surveyed teachers said they used AI at least a little in their classroom, according to a July 2025 poll from the EdWeek Research Center.

The article quotes her further:

“They didn’t know the material because they had outsourced that level of thinking and they didn’t have to come to a conclusion or an argument about the text they were studying on their own.” (source)

There are many times when I see the value of using Gen AI…but Chanea Bond is spot on. You have to put the work in to get the long-term information retention benefits for your brain.

That’s true whether you are student in K-16, or an adult learning something new.