Does AI belong in the English Classroom?

It wasn’t that long ago when Google rattled classroom teachers with all its bells and whistles. Skeptical teachers lamented the "Good old days" of learning and postponed its use for as long as they could until "Google," the noun, became "Googling," a tool they could no longer ignore.

Suddenly, the technology they most dreaded became a necessity driven partly by students' curiosity and hunger to use it. Now, Google Classroom, Google Maps, Google Drives, etc., are as critical to a teacher's success in the classroom as was the blackboard.

When we thought things couldn’t get any more techy, here comes AI, and teachers have to face an even scarier learning monster and, once more, go through the five stages of what I call "Educator Grief."

Denial: This is not real; it will go away soon. I’ll just ignore it and tell my students to do the same. I'll start deducting points and give them zeroes if as so much as I detect a hint of AI in their papers.

Anger: How could this be happening? I spent hours enforcing the plagiarism policy in my classroom.

Bargainning: Fine. I’ll attend all the AI PDs and training to appease admin., but I will never use it in my classroom in any way, shape, or form.

Depression: I just can’t anymore. I am ready to quit teaching. If I can’t teach writing the old-fashioned way and motivate my students to think for themselves, it’s not worth teaching.

Acceptance: Breathe. Let’s see what this thing can do and how I can use it to my advantage.

Like Google, AI will not go away anytime soon. In fact, it’s growing in popularity and usage—from the classroom to the job market. Rather than avoiding it, I am going out on a limb and asking my fellow educators to embrace it, albeit with caution.

Let’s face it, everything forbidden becomes attractive. If we tell our students not to use AI, guess what they will do? They’ll find ways to skirt the system and use it. Take it from this English teacher who initially was 100% against using AI in her classroom.

Technology doesn’t surrender to our fears. I would be the first to admit that I'd rather see my students using dictionaries, paper, and pencils to write their essays. But that's not reality--nor should it be. This generation is eager to embrace and use technology. As educators, our job is to show students how to properly use AI--not to ban it. Rather than telling them “no” and acting as barriers to progress, let’s usher it in, embrace it, and adopt it into our classrooms smartly.

1-    Brainstorm topic ideas: Don’t discourage students from using AI. Show them different ways they can use it without cheating. For instance, encourage them to use ChatGPT or HyperWrite to brainstorm ideas for topics. Recently, during a research paper lesson, I asked my 11th grade students to write down things they wanted to know more about. I then asked them to input their ideas into ChatGPT. The topics they came up with were fascinating, to say the least.

2—Peer Edit Papers: Ask students to work in pairs to edit their work. Then, have them input their papers into Grammarly to see if they caught all the mistakes. Have them highlight their most common mistakes and create a lesson to address them.  

3—Make Literature Fun: Use tools like Mubert to turn a lesson about the American Revolution into songs. Have students write pamphlets, a la Thomas Paine, about a cause they care about, and then use Mubert to turn those pamphlets into songs.

As teachers, our job is to encourage our students to adopt a growth mindset and think beyond what’s possible. Let’s model that for them by adopting an open mind when it comes to AI in our classrooms. Rather than forbid them from using it and then complain about plagiarism, let’s show them how to do it properly, set clear limits and rules, and let them experiment with it.