Many English teachers tell students not to use AI or Chat GPT, but why not?
Like many high school students, you might be wondering the same thing. Taylorsville High School’s English teachers’ thoughts and opinions were very similar. “ As a teacher, I really do not like AI!” said 12th-grade English teacher, Kenzie. Twitchell. Most teachers have mixed feelings about AI, but most are uncomfortable about the future or are annoyed when students use AI. In a study this year at Emmanuel College they have found that, “With the introduction of ChatGPT in November of 2022, similar surveys indicate that 70% to 80% of high school students and 50% to 70% of college undergraduates have cheated on assignments.”
While a lot use ai for cheating other students use it for other things like another research study done at Harvard they found that, “The most commonly reported use for AI was getting information (53%) and brainstorming (51%).” and some students have report generative AI users ages 14–22 surveyed, 31% said they use it to “make pictures or images,” while 16% “make sounds or music” and 15% say they use it to write code. There are many ways that students can use and do use AI for.
“It’s frustrating when I realize that students are using AI for several reasons,” said an 11th-grade English teacher, Eliza Compton. All this to say, some teachers have mixed feelings about AI. But what about in their classrooms?
Natalie Huntington, a 9th-grade English teacher, said that she believes that AI should be used as a tool to help students learn, not a tool for them to do their homework. It may not always be seen that way when teachers say stuff like believing that it should only be a tool. Huntington has a pretty easy-going view, but not all teachers feel that way.
Usage of AI can be very interesting because sometimes it’s not always the students who are using it the most; sometimes it’s teachers. This is kind of eye-opening in a research study done by the University of Illinois, they say that according to a national survey conducted by Tyton Partners in 2023, 27% of students reported being regular users of generative AI tools, as opposed to just 9% of instructors. Nearly half of students have tried AI writing tools at least once; 71% of instructors have never tried AI tools.”
Some teachers don’t use AI in their classrooms, but some do. Some teachers think that it’s fair that they can use AI like Compton. “I think it’s fair because we already have the skills and the discipline that students still need to develop,” Compton said.
Though she might have a point that students haven’t developed all the skills quite yet. Skills such as critical thinking like what’s factual and what’s not factual. Can you comprehend what it’s saying and use that information while understanding what it’s saying.
But what about when we are doing similar things that the teachers are doing, like finding research for an essay, which saves us a bunch of time, but teachers tend to have mixed feelings about it.
English teacher Rachel Borrowman feels that if students use AI as a tool to help them refine search criteria during research, for example, it can be a great learning experience. But at the same time, we have to make sure that we aren’t using it for the wrong reasons, like doing all our work for us. Like Compton says “it’s fine for students to use any AI platform for receiving feedback on their writing as long as it’s not altering the student work.”
A lot at taylorsville teachers have a polices where they give students automatic zeros when they have been caught using AI to cheat like Huntington says, “I have a policy in my class that states that if a student uses AI to complete an assignment, whether that be an essay, a quiz, or a worksheet, they automatically receive a zero on that assignment with no chance to redo it.”
