Embracing AI cost me my teaching job
A Personal Reflection on current attitudes and the Future of Education
Yes, it is frustrating to lose a teaching job, especially when you have invested so much time and energy into learning the school culture and how things are done in that particular place, adjusted your lesson planning formats, and learned new fancy ‘edubabble’ words used only in that institution. But when you lose your job for going above and beyond trying to integrate the correct use of AI in a classroom to prepare the kids for the next paradigm shift, it feels outright absurd.
Recently, I received the news that my contract won’t be renewed for the next academic year (2023–2024). I acknowledge they had other reasons for the decision, such as the failure to meet admin deadlines and one really poor formal observation (although it remains unclear why a single bad evaluation led to my nonrenewal… May that be another reflection somewhere down the road). But what mattered to me most was the school management’s way of condescendingly telling me off for my usage of AI bots in the classroom. According to them, it was “way too advanced for Grade 5 students” and if I teach them to use chatbots now, soon “students don’t need to learn how to read and write any more.”
I retaliated with a big smile on my face, stating with true conviction and from the heart, that incorporating artificial intelligence tools into the classroom has been the best thing I’ve ever done in my career and has the potential to substantially enhance student learning, making it more differentiated and personalized than any single teacher could accomplish alone, and if we introduce AI tools early, students will understand the reason why reading and especially critical and analytical reading is still going to be a skill needed in the future.
So how did it start?
The first time I realized that AI had penetrated our classroom was around March 2023. I had been fiddling with image generators like Stable Diffusion and was actively following ChatGPT hype and daily LLM updates, had tried to clone some GitHub repositories to my own computer in the hopes of fine-tuning my very own model that would swear without self-censorship. That’s around the same time I found out that my students were paraphrasing their end of unit performance tasks with Quill Bot. “So all that work I checked and graded with ChatGPT wasn't even their own? “How dare they cheat by improving their English language writing with AI tools?” I recognized myself as Mr. Garrison in South Park’s ChatGPT episode (Deep learning), So instead of telling my students off, I introduced them to (in my mind) the proper usage of AI tools:
We looked at examples of the most blatant hallucinations, discussed them and why these super smart LLM’s are doing it, and through effective questioning we were approaching critical prompt building. My students understood that AI Chat Bot is not a silver bullet but can give them ideas for their writing and provide feedback before submission. Additionally, I had fine-tuned a student bot in poe.com (work in progress) that speaks at G5 ESL student level and can be further adjusted with Lexile.
I tried to explain this to the school management, but their misunderstandings and blatant non-interest about technology seemed to deflect any reason I might have had. They insisted that this was something the students should look at in university. In the end, the conversation ended with me saying, “Well, maybe my class is the first class in this school that is comfortable with AI tools, or I am barking mad.” The jury is still out.
It’s challenging when the school doesn’t share your vision or understand the potential of technology in education. However, I am confident that AI tools can help improve students’ learning outcomes and equip them with the skills needed for the future if we teach them how to use them as a tool.
It can free up teachers from admin to spend more time with socioemotional learning, as long as there is a mutual understanding that AI is not a silver bullet to ‘not studying ever again’, but by banning and vilifying AI tools in class, that’s exactly what kids will think it is (not to mention the useless time loss for teachers trying to hunt those who have visited ChatGPT over the weekend). I hope that more educators and schools stop ignoring the AI coming and embrace the technology in the classroom, as it has the potential to revolutionize the way we teach and learn. I refuse to be the maths teacher who shouted at us back in 1998: “You need to learn to do these in your head! You will never walk around with a calculator in your back pocket!”
Hey Siri? How do you feel about that?
I’ll close with a quote from Marjorie. A teacher assistant bot I created for myself:
AI can evaluate students’ work and provide feedback in real time, giving students more opportunities for practice and formative assessment.
New tools for instructors: AI teaching assistants and tools can reduce teachers’ administrative workload, freeing up time for more high-impact tasks like individualized instruction and mentoring.
However, AI will not replace human teachers — it is meant to augment and assist them. The social, emotional, and human aspects of education will still be best provided by caring human instructors. AI will be most effective when it is used to support, not replace, human expertise and pedagogy.
- https://poe.com/s/730NgHfWCjMuHw0RwQOu
