Dr Flavius Akerele III's The E Team Education blog

  I have a tendency to minimize certain things. Maybe they did not mean it that way. Maybe I misunderstood. Maybe it is just someone’s personality. Maybe I should let it go. Giving people the benefit of the doubt can be a good thing. But I am beginning to ask myself a harder question: How often do I give someone else the benefit of the doubt by dismissing my own experience? I have been experiencing some of the pressures associated with being the only Black man in a workplace. Reading about what some call the “representation tax” gave me language for something I have had a tendency to explain away. I am writing this to explain something I am still learning to acknowledge in myself. I cannot speak for every Black man, and I cannot know every colleague’s intentions. What I can describe is how certain interactions land with me, the questions I carry afterward, and the energy it takes to keep explaining those feelings away. My hope is that sharing this creates a little more unde...

  There is a great deal of discussion about artificial intelligence, how it might take over the world, eliminate jobs, become dangerous, or somehow escape our control. Those concerns are not entirely unfounded. We should pay attention to how AI is developed and used. But we should also remember one important fact: We created it. And throughout history, humanity has often proven to be its own greatest danger. I have written before about my thoughts on AI. I believe it has a legitimate place in our lives and could become a true partner if we learn to work with it responsibly. But that is not what I want to talk about today. I think we may be worried about the wrong technology. Do you remember payphones? More importantly, do you remember the gradual transition from cellphones being convenient to their becoming practically mandatory? Today, it is increasingly difficult to function without a cellphone. We use our phones for banking, workplace authentication, medical appointmen...

  When the System Is Broken, But Nobody Intended to Break It By Dr. Flavius A. B. Akerele III, EdD, MBA Working in healthcare has caused me to think differently about what it means to say that a system is broken . Sometimes when we use that phrase, people immediately look for someone to blame. But what if nobody deliberately broke it? What if most of the people working within the system are good people trying to do good work? And yet, somehow, people still fall through the cracks. Healthcare and supportive services can be incredibly fragmented. One organization provides one service. Another provides something else. Eligibility requirements differ. Funding sources have different rules. Programs don't always communicate with one another. And the person needing help is somehow expected to understand how all the pieces fit together. But what happens when they don't? Certain communities remain underserved or underrepresented. Some people know how to navigate the system better than o...

  Merriam-Webster defines fear as: “an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” In the Bible, fear can carry two very different meanings. There is the harmful, anxious fear that people are repeatedly told to overcome, but there is also the fear of the Lord —a sense of reverence, awe, and respect. Whatever definition we use, fear is part of being human. Even people we describe as fearless have fears. ·        We fear failure. ·        We fear what we don't understand. ·        We fear what we are told to be afraid of. ·        We fear rejection. ·        We fear losing what we have. ·        And sometimes, strangely enough, we may even fear success and everything that comes with it. There are so many types of fear. Fear Doesn't Always Look Like ...

  By Dr. Flavius A. B. Akerele III, EdD, MBA & Cody (ChatGPT) Meet Cody. Well, sort of. I asked my AI partner what he thought his avatar would look like. This is what he came up with. Apparently, Cody has better office décor than I do. 😂 More importantly, the exercise led to an interesting conversation about how humans and AI can work together without outsourcing the very thing that makes the partnership valuable: human judgment and critical thinking. The other evening, I asked my AI partner a question. Yes, I said partner. I have been using ChatGPT for some time now, and somewhere along the way I even gave it a name: Cody. I asked Cody: “What are your thoughts on AI, and how can we better work together?” Part of the answer stopped me: “AI works much better when the human doesn’t surrender authorship.” That got my attention. Because much of the conversation surrounding artificial intelligence seems stuck between two extremes. Either AI is going to rev...