Another launch...

With enjoyable and thought-provoking conversations happening over at Daily Delirium, I've launched my second Substack: AI Enhanced & Human Still. Here, I will reveal more of my professional self as I explore AI tools in relation to my role as a secondary school educator.

As a veteran high school English teacher, I always strive to help students develop their thinking and strengthen their voices through the study of literature. I am now fully aware that AI introduces a new era in education with chatbot tools like ChatGPT.

How can we grow with AI?

For this conversation, I plan to share stories, insights, classroom-tested strategies, and philosophical reflections on what I think contributes to the evolving role of technology in education. I would like to empower students with AI tools so that they can develop their own thinking and strengthen their learning with amazing technology. AI can so easily help students in their writing by supporting fluency, clarity, precision, and research. Since AI is far more capable than this, we cannot allow students to use AI as a replacement for their core learning. To develop personal strength and voice, students must independently generate their own ideas, process complex information, analyze, evaluate, and synthesize. I want to explore how students may be able to use AI responsibly to enhance their academic inquiry, careful thinking, authentic expression, and ability to communicate with conviction.

Let's maintain honesty, integrity, and humility while talking about AI Enhanced Learning.

How can we best develop ourselves with help from powerful tech tools?

We don’t need to compete with AI—we can learn with it. I would like to share what I think is working, raise questions I’m exploring, and initiate conversations around best practices for learning, teaching, and growing in the AI era.

I'll be very busy trying to post fresh content for our discussion.

Thank you for considering my work!

Drumroll please...

BIG announcement: I’ve officially joined the Substack community!

This latest @jetlit adventure will be my weekly attempt to capture fun, meaningful observations—and hopefully spark thoughtful, humorous exchanges. Humor meets humility.

Even how we share exact same things can vary—our talking points decidedly sound different at home, at work, or when we're out with friends. Situational language can be fun for us on Substack.

I imagine johnoverman.com will continue to be a place for sharing my bigger life updates and personal milestones, while Substack will be where I show up weekly to connect in a more casual, candid way.

For me, writing is all about making meaningful connections with genuine intentions.
At Substack, fun-filled posts might start with comedy and end with contemplation (or vice versa).

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for your time and attention!
I’d love for you to comment here—and I’d love to see you over on Substack too.

Here's the link: https://jetlit.substack.com/

Book Review: James

 James

by Percival Everett

 My Rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having taught Huck Finn with utmost sensitivity to high school students, I felt intrigued by Percival Everett's idea of James, an imagined retelling of runaway life from Jim's perspective. In Twain's work, I certainly found Jim to be a most sympathetic character - he helps Huck after the escape from his abusive father, prevents Huck from experiencing potential trauma, mourns for his own family, and never addresses the boys' misbehavior. The non-condemning character of Jim persists to survive and escape condemnable injustice. Though Huck has his "I'll go to hell" epiphany, Jim remains static. He has his freedom, but he surely has much more depth than shown. Everett's James put me at a crossroads - would I love this new fictional life or fully favor the original? I applaud this deep study of a most plausible, conflicted, and rightly critical James. And in the end, readers are given more reason to engage in profundities of natural and perceived identity.

Congratulations to Percival Everett for winning the 2024 National Book Award!

CSPA Spring 2019: New Media Classroom

In summary of my presentation at the CSPA's spring conference for 2019, I discussed the incredible benefits of publishing student journalism online. For starters, young journalists can build online portfolios for themselves that can speak volumes of their skills and abilities. Some website programming allows each user to create a biography that features picture, bio, and a links list of all stories published by the student journalist. Imagine the positive impact students can have on college boards and future employers when reviewers can easily access student work published online. Carefully produced portfolios online can significantly help students in future endeavors.