I write a lot. And I mean a lot.

In addition to this article, I need to finish and proofread ten forward-facing pieces of content, a marketing campaign, and a press release. I also need to write the text for the four videos I need to shoot tomorrow.

As I said, I write a lot. And despite all of my years of practice, apparently, I am bad at it.

Don't believe me? Read below.
I know what you are thinking - "Scott, I find your prose effortless, witty, insightful, and a joy to read!"

Well, someone would beg to differ! And their name is Grammarly.

As I said, I write a lot. When coupled with a lack of time and personal shortcomings, the volume and demand can sometimes mean that my writings require...

Let's call it refinement.

So, before sending anything out, I run it through my editor and a writing software called Grammarly. Over the years, the two of them have saved you from reading far too many guffaws, and me countless hours of work.

At least, I thought they were countless. Apparently, Grammarly does some counting in addition to editing.

Yesterday, I received an update from Grammarly - a report card of sorts, and my grades were not good. I did not ask for their review, but they sent it anyway. It was a bit jarring and insulting to read. The header graphic is above.

Accurate? Well, yes, but I was still crushed.

Seriously? They have the never to tell me every mistake I have ever made? That's my children's job! And keeping score is for spouses. Since you are neither, and I didn't ask for your opinion, how about you suck on a power surge!

To its credit, Grammarly tried to be nice. The subject line of the email read, "Prepare to be impressed." However, Grammarly was clearly not (impressed). The first line of the analysis was, "Well done! You were more productive than 77% of Grammarly users." Seriously, 23% write more than me? Is James Patterson on here? James Jordan?

And it quickly went down hill after that.

According to this AI interloper, in the past week alone I have received over 1,000 suggestions for corrections—some of which I ignored. It also noted that my accuracy rate was in the lower half of Grammarly users, and I used more "unique" ( I think they mean "made-up") words than 88% of my more author-minded peers.

So I'm dumb, talk to much, and make stuff up.

Ouch, that hurt. True? Yes! But, did you have to use numbers and everything? Numbers are why I don't step on scales, do my taxes, or take IQ tests.

But, G-man (I assigned Grammarly a gender, since it's an arrogant jerk, we can all agree it's likely a man, and plays the trumpet) didn't take his foot off the gas there. He pressed the pedal to the medal.

Want to know my top five mistakes? I DIDN'T - but you guessed it, they shared them with me them anyway. According to jerkface, they are (in order):

1. Missing periods
2. Incorrect use of quotation marks
3. Missing commas in compound sentences
4. Missing closing punctuation
5. Unnecessary ellipsis

Ok, #3 is fair. And if were being honest, how "misuse of semi-colon" didn't make the list is beyond me, because I have NO idea when to use that sucker.

But ellipse? Who doesn't love an ellipse? It's such a valuable and playful punctuation mark.

After the initial shock faded, I began to see a parallel between my new nemesis and myself—the parallel between Grammarly's job and ours. We both make suggestions to help others fix things that are wrong.

Think about your last rehearsal. We're most of your comments negative? Were you coming from a place where your knowledge exceeded others? Did you offer an opinion that wasn't asked for? Did you make lots of corrective suggestions?

In my household, we call that Tuesday, or any other day.

What if we counted them all the way Grammarly did? What would we discover? For instance, yesterday, how many:

Wrong notes did you fix?

Wrong rhythms did you correct?

Articulations did you change?

Behaviors did you modify?

Adjustments did you make?

And if we're brutally honest, how many:

Intonation problems did you miss?

Bad postures did you ignore?

Minutes did you waste?

Words did you needlessly use?

Negative comments did you say?

Similar to my experience with Grammarly, the results would likely be jarring, but it does bring up an interesting idea.

Why not let AI assess our instruction?

We're not far from it. For all I know, we may already be there. If we were not, at the pace AI is developing, we're not far from it. So let me ask it again: Why not have AI assess us, not just at the end of the day or class period, but in real time?

As I write this, Grammarly is giving me feedback in real time. What if, as we taught, we received instantaneous feedback on our performance as teachers?

We're closer than you think. After all, we already use tuners, metronomes, and midi-files. We have tone generators, electronic drill, and music assessment software.

"But Scott, a computer can't assess the tone of a teacher's voice and understand feelings."

Wrong!

According to Grammarly, my writing is admirable, curious, personal, informal friendly, and not at all assertive!

Those qualities are EXACTLY what I am going for in the Why Not series and my writing in general.

NAILED IT!

If AI can comprehensively assess our students and our performance, shouldn't we consider using this? Don't we want that information? Aren't we trying to improve our ensembles and refine our teaching skills? As painful as it is, shouldn't we get ongoing feedback that helps us to hone our craft?

What would yesterday's report say?

How would you use it?

What grade would you get?

How would it make you feel?

Would it be helpful or hurtful?

What would it say about who we are and how we teach?

I don't know your answers, but I do know that it would be more informative than any of my other evaluations.

Should AI be doing our PD?

Why not?

Scott

p.s. I was going to include a snarky comment about Grammarly spell-checking its name, but I was misspelling it. UGH! That's not going to help my accuracy score.