Bryan Arbut

English Teacher/Writer - Teacher Consultant @ChippewaRiverWP - @NCTECEL Emerging Leader fellow - Reading Specialist - MSU Spartan x 2

[Bryan Arbut @BryanArbut]

@DeputyGrocott I'd appreciate the link, good sir!

[Robert Pondiscio @rpondiscio]

"Teach 'em how to read. That's a social-emotional program."

[Boze Herrington, Library Owl 😴🧙‍♀️ @SketchesbyBoze]

Not exaggerating when I say the future of our world depends on people recovering the ability to spend an unbroken hour or two reading a book without being tempted to look at their phones.

[Marshall Steinbaum 🔥 @Econ_Marshall]

Maybe we shouldn’t have deprofessionalized K-12 teaching & shifted solely to test prep despite that being the elite bipartisan consensus for my entire life.

[andrea @teachbk]

“Schools and colleges are rapidly embracing AI as though they are in a race, with little understanding of how it will impact the quality of learning experiences.” - @PedroANoguera

We need an AI moratorium, now.
https://t.co/oRCWkJENq2

[The Atlantic @TheAtlantic]

For more than a decade, a seventh-grade math teacher used technology in his classroom. This year, he took the Chromebooks away—and quickly learned how the computers were holding his students back, Jenny Anderson writes. https://t.co/P0KZYUAiYg

[Adam Boxer @adamboxer1]

We've seen graphs like this before, back in 2016 when everyone was discovering Roediger and Karpicke's studies on retrieval practice.

They showed that ineffective strategies (like re-study, re-reading etc) worked in the short term, and depressed outcomes in the long term.

Effective strategies (retrieval practice) depressed outcomes in the short term, and boosted them in the long term.

Yet here we are again, with educators and "thoughtleaders" advocating exposing students to AI and letting them use it. There is NO REASON to think that this is a good idea at the moment, and it's why I'm in favour of an outright ban on student facing AI until at least KS5 (and even then only under extremely niche circumstances.)

You can hear me talk about my scepticism more on a podcast I did with @mrbartonmaths - there aren't many AI sceptics left in EdTech...

https://t.co/thwMEinzsp

End/

[Tuki @TukiFromKL]

🚨 Do you understand what just happened at OpenAI..

on January 26.. Sam Altman told his own employees "we are planning to dramatically slow down hiring.. we think we'll be able to do so much more with fewer people"..

that was 54 days ago..

today OpenAI announced they're nearly doubling their workforce.. 4,500 to 8,000.. by end of year..

the same man telling you that AI replaces workers.. just announced hiring 3,500 more humans because AI couldn't replace his..

so either the AI isn't good enough to do the work.. or Anthropic scared them so bad they threw the whole playbook out the window..

both answers are embarrassing.. but only one of them is true.. and Sam knows which one.

[Bryan Arbut @BryanArbut]

@XpatEducator Rosenshine

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Scientists put kids through 100 hours of reading, then scanned their brains. New wiring had physically grown inside the language regions. Communication between brain areas sped up by a factor of 10. Kids who didn't read showed zero change.

That was a 2009 Carnegie Mellon study. It gets wilder.

In 2013, Emory University scanned 19 students every morning for 19 straight days while they read one novel chapter each night. Mornings after reading, the brain areas responsible for understanding other people's emotions lit up with new connections. So did the region that processes physical sensation. Their brains were simulating what the characters felt, as if it were happening to them. Those changes stuck around for 5 days after they finished the book.

Now flip to scrolling. A massive review published in Psychological Bulletin last September pulled together 71 studies covering 98,299 people. Heavy short-form video use (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) showed a clear pattern: worse attention, weaker self-control, and more anxiety. Consistent across teenagers and adults, across every platform tested. Oxford didn't name "brain rot" its 2024 Word of the Year for nothing.

A 2024 brain wave study found that people hooked on short-form video had weaker activity in the front of the brain, the part that controls focus and impulse control. Separate brain scans showed the same thing: heavy scrollers had less activation in the exact regions that deep reading strengthens.

UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has been studying this for decades. Humans were never born to read. There's no gene for it. Reading is something we invented, and it hijacked neurons that were originally meant for recognizing faces. Over time, it built entirely new brain circuits connecting language, vision, and emotion. But those circuits only survive if you use them. Stop reading, and they fade. Wolf's conclusion is simple: screens built for speed produce a speed-wired brain. Books built for depth produce a depth-wired brain.

One honest caveat: most of these studies are snapshots, not long-term tracking. People who already struggle to focus might just prefer short videos. But the same pattern showing up across nearly 100,000 people is hard to shrug off.

The tweet repeats the line seven times. The research backs it up with brain scans, EEG data, and white-matter imaging across tens of thousands of people.

[David Didau @DavidDidau]

Feedback can make lessons look slick or it can make learning more durable. It cannot do both at once.
When feedback is constant and immediate, performance improves but understanding often doesn’t. When we delay, reduce and summarise feedback students are forced to think, judge and remember.
This post explores when we need to boost performance and when it’s better to allow students to struggle.
Link below ⬇️

[Christopher Such @Suchmo83]

Pupils who can't read fairly fluently never want to read independently.

And the number one reason pupils don't become fluent readers is the lack of scaffolded reading practice to build on what they learned from phonics and develop word recognition automaticity.

>>

[Bryan Arbut @BryanArbut]

@sjbearssports #DMGB!

[Bryan Arbut @BryanArbut]

@sjbearssports CAN’T HIDE THAT BEAR PRIDE!

[Bryan Arbut @BryanArbut]

@MatRyanELATeach Fellow hyper-bowl joker. A lit term joke staple with freshman. I can’t accept its legitimacy!

[Bryan Arbut @BryanArbut]

Great race in Fort Myers for #globalrunningday & @fortmyersff BIG Run at Lakes Park. Needless to say I got smoked by this speed demon, but it’s hard to train for 92 & sunny in Michigan!

[Dissident Teacher @edudissenter]

There is more “social-emotional” learning in one Shakespeare sonnet than all the SEL programs in the world. Great literature, well-taught,is the grander, more beautiful, earlier version of SEL.

[Zach Groshell @MrZachG]

It’s time high schools got their act together and banned phones. I’m being told that 8th graders can’t be expected to abide by a phone ban because they know their high school teachers will waste their education in a few short months. Ban them, ffs 🤦‍♂️

[Bryan Arbut @BryanArbut]

And for most we’re talking an increase of less than a Netflix subscription cost per year. Good grief.

[Bryan Arbut @BryanArbut]

@rebelEducator Do you think schools/outcomes for kids would improve if teacher salaries doubled? So in Michigan, first yr teachers would make 70-80k instead of 35-40k.