We are constantly told throughout the school day that AI is prohibited as a tool to help with any school work, and if we use the technology that is taking over the world we’ll receive a 0. However, it is inevitable that AI will creep into all aspects of our lives, especially school. Many CHS teachers have interesting takes on whether or not there is a way to harness AI to become a helpful learning tool, or if it should never be let into the classroom. The fact of the matter is that AI is getting more accessible via tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini. With the accessibility, they are getting harder to control and harder to detect.
However, studies have shown that AI can be a very helpful tool for teachers due to its ability to create lesson plans, come up with creative ideas, and overall lighten the workload. In the Charlottesville City Schools policy manual, there is nothing written about whether students and educators can or can’t use AI, making it a teacher by teacher decision. KTR spoke to some of the CHS teachers to hear their opinions on using AI in the classroom. We talked to teachers who actively promote and use AI, and others who want a screen free school.
While interviewing, KTR asked if the teachers use AI in lesson planning, and if it is helpful? While talking to Ms. Horne is a 9th grade English and Public Speaking teacher, and an active advocate against AI. “I have never used AI anything,” she said, and she even tried to turn the automatic Google AI overview off. “It’s fine if we started to make AI do things that are not good for humans like coal mining […] but instead, we make our AI do creative things, which is what makes us humans.” She told us that when teachers use AI it makes her think “Don’t you want to keep your job? And you [teachers] do things better than AI because you do things weirdly that wouldn’t be expected.”
When asked the same question, other teachers said they embrace it and choose to use it in planning and constructing lessons and assignments. Mr. Wood, Wrestling Coach and 12th grade English teacher, says he “hasn’t used it that much yet for lessons, but it can be really useful for generating quizzes, flashcards, and slideshows.” He also spoke about how he sometimes uses AI in his coaching. In order to create a nutritional guideline for wrestlers, he had to sift through condense information from a large number of major sports schools: “It does a pretty good job with it. I had to do a lot of reformatting, and I have to do some rearranging. It doesn’t make logical sense, and does get a bit repetitive.” However, even though it took some extra work, he was able to heavily condense the information with the help of AI. “It could be really useful for not a shortcut, but just collapsing the time.”
Ms. Henky, a 9th grade English and Newspaper teacher, was using AI when we interviewed. “I’m actually doing data analysis right now. I look at the standards that they [her students] scored the lowest on. Google Geminis are approved by the city schools, and Gemini will accumulate different kinds of questions based on those standards, and I use them as bell ringers for my students.”
KTR also asked about whether or not teachers promote the use of AI in their classes on the student end. Mr. Wood’s response coordinated with his openness to teacher use of AI. He says that it is unavoidable, and that students should use it as a tool, not a shortcut. However, when asked about the future of AI in classrooms, he had a different response. “I don’t think that our students are ready for that. At some point, we’re going to have to add courses about how to generate good prompts.” He added that AI needs to become a lot more advanced before students can be trusted to use it carefully and in the correct way.
When Ms. Horne was asked about promoting it in her classroom. She said “my classes are screen free and I will not take a paper in my English class unless it has been handwritten in front of me first […] and if it’s publishable, you can type it up.” Horne mentioned how she’s done a lot of research about this topic. “Your brain is like a muscle […] and if you stop using it, it’s going to get flabby. There are neurons that connect your reptile brain to your critical thinking brain, and the less you read […] and make yourself do hard things, those neurons go to sleep. […] that’s how we end up with people thinking the Earth is flat.”
As AI use is already growing in schools, CHS teachers have opinions on whether or not it will be used throughout all schools in the future. “We’re entering an age of technology where we can’t avoid it, and lots of workplaces will almost want you to use it or promote it. So I think if we’re teaching kids how to be prepared for their lives outside of school, it’s smart for us to teach them ethical ways to use different types of AI,” Ms. Henky mentioned
Mr. Mace, one of our U.S. History teachers, believes that it will be used in schools: “It’s just a question of how it’s going to be used.” While he doesn’t use it for lesson planning or for personal use, it is still a relevant tool for many people in the younger generations. This tool can be abused, as Mr. Mace noted, but it can also be used to an advantage. “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened in this world and the worst thing that has ever happened to this world. […] I don’t think there’s any way to avoid it.”
We recognized the issue about how it seems unfair if teachers ban AI in their classroom, but use it for their own work. Ms. Henky told KTR, “There’s a different set of standards for teachers and administrators […] we’re using AI to facilitate learning instead of using it as a shortcut.”
At the end of the day, AI is a powerful tool used throughout the world, exponentially growing in use. 79% to 84% of American high school students report using AI for schoolwork. It is unavoidable that this software becomes relevant in our society, as other AI such as music and advertisements have become increasingly hard to filter out. While some of our teachers are attempting to keep AI out of our lives, such as Ms. Horne, who declared, “I would go move in the woods with a bunch of people before I use AI,” others are more open to accepting it as a tool when used correctly, such as Mr. Wood, who said, “It’s a useful tool if you approach it as a tool.” Either way, the use of Artificial Intelligence technologies is rising and will only continue to grow as the world comes to heavily rely on it.
