Epistemology. $10 word. Sounds fancy. It just asks how we know stuff.
John Dewey said we learn from doing. Not reading. Not staring at pages.
My father-in-law nailed it at my doctoral graduation. He grinned. “Evie, some things you just can’t get from a book.”
I didn’t know what to say. Then.
Teachers get it. You don’t really learn to teach until your feet hit the floor. Student teaching. That first job. The mess. I prep pre-service teachers for a few years. Now? I see a shift.
The TikTok way of knowing.
The Creed and The Creep
I hate AI. So I make them hold pens. Real ones.
First task. A teacher creed. On nice paper. Something they read on hard days. Reminders to show up. To be someone’s favorite adult, even when exhausted. They pour heart out. I will stay positive. I cringe. A veteran teacher would laugh. But I want to catch that hope before it burns out.
Second task. A “One Pager.” Map their brains. Doodles. Connections. No straight lines.
I sit with them. Five minutes each. They show the work. I see who thinks. I see who memorized.
Then comes the confession. Every single semester. Same words.
“It’s not research. But a TikTok said…”
“A Reel told me…”
“My favorite creator posts this…”
It’s a secret. Guilty. But true.
Sometimes their notes were trash. Unverifiable. Other times? They expanded my thinking. I stopped arguing. Started asking. Who made this? Why do you trust them?
This is what scholars call inquiry as a stance. Don’t just consume. Investigate.
We are dismantling the silos that keep research locked away. But the floodgates are open now.
A Shift in Ground
Henry Jenkins talks about participatory culture. Teachers aren’t just students of texts anymore. They are learners of voices. Short videos. Lived experience. Shared in real-time.
It’s democratizing.
It’s also destabilizing.
I cried in my car for years. Early on. If I’d had the internet? If I’d scrolled through feeds of burnt-out teachers quitting? I might have quit too.
I stayed. It’s hard now. But grounded. Fulfilling.
We know conditions suck. Sometimes they are toxic. But how do we guide new teachers through the fire when the loudest voices online are those who already walked away? Narrating from the safe distance. Some content helps. Most is loud noise.
Are we keeping up?
We hack at the plant climbing the wall. Trying to kill the vine. Maybe we should just look at it. Maybe it’s part of the structure.
What if we become weavers? Not gatekeepers.
Connect the research to the story. Let lived experience stand next to data. Not replace it. Complement it. We have real-time voices from classrooms. Yesterday. Today.
Just because it’s visual? Clickbaity? Doesn’t mean it lacks pedagogical value.
This happens whether we like it. We can’t ignore the room we’re standing in. So? Teach them to navigate it.
Rewriting the Lesson
I’m trying things. Messy. Maybe good.
Ed Content Fridays. Students bring what they scrolled. Connect it to reading. We analyze it together. Use CRAAP test vibes. Look at the creator’s motive. Is it profit? Passion?
C3WP Strategy. Start with what they saw. A Reel. A post. Write free. Then defend it. Force the citation back to the text. If they brought the topic, they must find the source.
Share the Good Stuff. Don’t hide in the ivory tower. Put reputable online voices on the syllabus. Curate a feed that actually sings.
Let them Create. CapCut is easy. Edit apps are plug-and-play. Make videos. Not rants. Arguments. Based on history. Research. Add thoughtful voices to the chaotic stream. We can reform. But we can also listen.
My stepdad was right. Books miss some truths.
Maybe our students hold other pieces of the map. Even if we don’t speak the dialect yet.
We can learn from them. Or we can keep watching them drift away, scrolling in silence, convinced that nobody gets it.
The choice is the weed and the vine.
