Let’s Talk About It
Standing up in the AI waters flooding our classrooms
The helicopter of summer circles the school building. In anticipation of its landing, I check my backpack one more time; it holds 25 years’ worth of teaching. My colleagues ready themselves as well, and a symphony of snaps, zips, and murmurs swells as if it’s the last five minutes of class. This transition is never smooth, but the excitement and promise of another fresh school year draw us.
“Okay, folks, change of plans,” the pilot announces. We look at each other, curious, nervous. “The Waters of the Unknown have risen too high and there’s no safe place to land. Too much AI. You’ll all have to jump.”
“What?!” A few exclaim in unison, the rest shocked into silence.
“Wait, jump into the actual water?” I ask.
“Yes,” is the answer. “It’s the only option.”
Shit, I can’t swim.
Is this a dream? Well…It’s a metaphor, and what is a metaphor if not conscious dreaming in search of understanding? So, sort of.
My anxiety levels have been rising over the past few months while exploring the emergence of new AI technologies and the issues they bring–yet another set of issues teachers will be tasked with solving.
Technically AI has been around for a while, helping us correct our spelling, mapping our destinations, and making all sorts of tasks easier and more efficient. But new AI programs like robot humans now instantly churn out volumes of seemingly thought-out, rational, even poetic text based on single-sentence prompts. Fun and entertaining gadgets, cheating machines, the end of humanity — this is the range I’ve heard about AI over the summer and have been trying to process in time for September.
But I have no solutions. No answers. There’s so much I don’t know: What level of access and experience will my students have with AI (ChatGPT in particular)? What will AI’s capabilities be in a couple of months? How will AI impact my curriculum and state standards?
As I prepare to jump from summer, all I see is a big torrent of I. Don’t. Know.
I think about the education books I’ve read, the seminars I’ve attended, the internet searches I’ve browsed–all in the quest to improve my instruction over the years. I love to learn, to change things up, to continually push myself to be a better teacher for my students. But once in a while, I need to stop myself from reading, attending, or browsing my way to compensate for what I don’t know, take a breath, and redirect myself to what I do. It’s time to look in my backpack:
- I know students bring funds of knowledge from their homes and backgrounds and that these strengths are utilized, sustained, and enhanced in the classroom.*
- I know students write better when we focus on the process and when we talk about their writing along the way, when they have agency over the content and style of what they write and have space to experiment, to fail, to problem-solve, to find their voices.
- I know that I am patient and understanding and rooting for all of them to experience the power of their own words.
AI is a tool. A cool and powerful tool, but just a tool. When I approach the teaching of writing as I do, my classroom practices are already well-positioned to help students resist using AI to cheat, to do their writing for them. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore this tool.
I don’t have to have it all figured out, but I do need to figure out how we start. How will I position AI within the context of my classroom?
I suspect my students’ metaphors for AI are not as dramatic as mine, but they, too, are dropped from summer, landing in front of me in September, clutching their own backpacks and joined by their friends. So why not have an open and transparent conversation about AI?
This conversation must center students and the integrity of what we’re trying to accomplish in our shared space. I’ll start with questions like:
- How do you as human beings benefit from writing? From reading?
- What type of reading and writing is important for you to do? Why?
- What can make reading and writing hard to do?
- Should everyone work on developing these skills or just some people?
- What do you know about AI and tools like ChatGPT? What can it do?
- Is it an enemy or a friend? How so?
- Can we use it in ways to maintain the integrity of our work? How?
I want them to look into their own backpacks and share the knowledge and experiences they already possess and carry with them. The point of this conversation is not to decide everything for the semester but to help lay a foundation of integrity and to realize that even when we feel like we’re in over our heads, our classroom will always provide higher ground.
I value the knowledge and experiences my students bring into the classroom, and I want them to know that on Day One. Then we can dive into the writing process along with all the patience and understanding we’ll need from each other.
Teaching in the age of AI isn’t going to be easy. Teaching never is. But the more we reflect on what we know and value, the more we talk to our students and colleagues about AI–or anything that throws us a loop–the more we’ll realize the Waters of the Unknown aren’t as deep as they seem. In fact, we can stand up in those waters right now.
*Taken from Design Principles for Culturally Sustaining Learning Partnerships created during the 2020–2021 school year by participants in the course, What We Can Become through the Greater Madison Writing Project. I’m focusing on this principle in particular and I plan instruction and work with students this school year.
