AI in school. Horrible. Detestable. Can’t stand the thought of it. Sick to the stomach.
AI in school. An opportunity. Learning experience. Helpful.
AI in schools has been a largely controversial topic for the past two years, and is a topic that is not unfamiliar to Parker. This raises the question: AI in Parker—Does it have a place in the classroom?
“Teachers could do a better job of teaching students how to embrace AI while not having it do the entire assignment, as opposed to just saying ‘bad AI’ or ‘no AI’ and slapping a student on the wrist, figuratively, if they suspect them of using AI,” sophomore Sascha Keller said. Keller is not alone in this outlook. In fact, Head of Upper School Cory Zeller agrees. “I think [AI] is beneficial. I think it is a tool. I do think that if we can move to a place where it’s helpful to teachers, if students can use it as a tutor rather than a replacement for their own thinking, it will actually help us do more efficiently and innovatively. I just think it’s a beneficial tool that we haven’t really tapped yet,” Zeller said.
Zeller’s perspective on AI as a tool has manifested in many ways, one of which is teachers incorporating AI into their curricula. “I have used [AI] a couple of times. I took my instructions for an assignment and ran it through AI, tweaked it, and told students, ‘I ran my instructions through this AI, and I asked it to give me different versions and break it down better. I altered a few things.’ I let them know how I used it….I wanted to kind of role model it,” Upper School history teacher Kevin Conlon said.
The use of AI in the classroom isn’t just for teachersnumerous teachers are having students use AI for assignments. “This year, I decided to have the students start their outlines using AI. I figured, let’s get it out there, let’s get it out front. I figured they could come up with a whole body of stuff, and then corroborate everything, finding sources. It went okay. I thought that by having the conversation up front, ‘Here’s an assignment where we will use AI, later you’re gonna have assignments where you don’t use AI’. I thought that that was a clear distinction, but apparently, I was wrong,” Upper School history teacher Jeanne Barr said. “My thinking was, we’ll try it out, see the capabilities, and we’ll utilize the best aspects of AI. It kicks up a bunch of facts, a bunch of possible research terms, and then you can do a lot of thinking and so forth around processing it. I think I found that it worked pretty well for some kids, and for other kids, the AI did the work.” While AI seems to have a place in the classroom, Barr’s project illustrates that there is never a guarantee that AI works in the best interests of students or teachers.
“There has been a recent uptick in students resisting sitting in the struggle and just being able to work it out on the page. They need a teacher to fill in the blanks for them, or they want something to do it for them so they don’t have to,” Upper School English teacher Alicia Abood said. What Abood is describing is perhaps the most appealing part of AI: replacement.
“It is disturbing. I feel that students are taking shortcuts in their learning. I know from my own experience and mountains of research that the writing process is one of the many ways we train our brains to think, to process, to analyze, to compare, to sort, to express. All of these things happen through the writing process. As a result, our brains are creating new synapses as we make connections and neural networks. Not only are students not forming those neuro pathways that come from deep and complex thought, but they are representing themselves as knowing things that they don’t know, which is short-circuiting their ability to progress,” Barr said.
Another effect of AI has been teachers implementing new assignments to avoid the use of AI. “What’s frustrating and disappointing is that it’s not authentic to the writing process. I was listening to the poet Kate Bear talk in an interview yesterday, and she was saying that the majority of your writing sucks first or second draft. The majority of it sucks. You have to be able to embrace the drafting process. With creative writing, I want students to be able to go home and work on it. With things like literary analysis or in-class close reading, I feel like right now, I feel like unfortunately, I’m doing that more in class,” Abood said.
Teachers aren’t the only group feeling the results of the in-class work. Students are observing an increase in stress related to the number of in-class assignments. “A lot of classes have implemented in-class assessments more because of AI and the fear that students will entirely ChatGPT an essay if it’s a take-home assignment…Obviously, some kids might do that, but they’re therefore cheating themselves out of those skills, and that’s on them…I’ve been in multiple situations where in-class essays and such have caused people to have panic attacks and not being able to complete the assignment because of the added stress, and these are people that wouldn’t be using AI in the first place,” Keller said. In-class assignments have proven to be a double-edged sword for students and teachers alike. “Can you even give homework anymore? Am I gonna spend more time assessing if something is AI, versus assessing what my students think?” Barr said.
The truth is, AI is here to stay. At Parker there is agreement that if AI is used correctly and in a manner that supports students’ independence and growth, AI can be an incredibly useful tool for learning. “[Mr. Navin] is introducing a red, yellow, green system. Green meaning use AI, yellow meaning here are the specific parameters, and red, this is an assignment where I don’t want you using AI. That might be a good next step for us,” Zeller said. Mr. Navin’s AI strategy is one way that AI can be used to help both teachers and students.
“We’re all using AI every day, every one of us. If I Google something, ‘What’s the lineup for Lollapalooza this year,’ and I look at what Google tells me, it’s not from the Lollapalooza website. It’s from what AI churned out. It’s ubiquitous in our lives. The question is, how do we make it a tool for learning, and not a tool for misrepresentation,” Barr said.
