Embracing Change: How Students and AI Are Shaping the Future of Learning in My Classroom

Mid-Year Update: Amazing Learning Opportunities

AI is not just a tool but a collaborator, challenging students to refine, evaluate, and personalize its output. It is transforming how we teach critical thinking and creativity in writing.

[Cross-posted from my teaching blog.]

One of my New Year’s resolutions for the new school year back in August was to blog frequently about what we’re doing in class, writing engaging, forward-looking text to help support the creation and development of learning mindsets I treasure as a teacher. In the event, I had so much fun doing the latter that the former fell by the wayside.

The fall semester of 2024 was a time of ambitious learning goals, getting to know amazing students, and a constant challenge to draw attention to reading, writing, speaking, and listening in a world of algorithmic distraction. One bit of advice repeated to me over the years has been that teachers should outsource as much work and thinking to students as possible, not only because of severe constraints on the time of teachers expected to engage with many more individuals than are possible under Dunbar’s theory but also because it’s the students who need the practice doing the work to build their knowledge and skills. With that in mind, one of my resolutions for the new calendar year is to give students more responsibility for communication about what we’re doing.

But that’s not to say I don’t have a seemingly infinite variety of topics about which to write:

1. Student engagement with technology that is faster, more efficient, and can be programmed to be even kinder than I am when giving feedback and advice to students about their academic development.

2. The clash between existing mindsets and forward-looking ideas about how to exploit technological progress. Check out the Instagram post in which an academic influencer liked and commented on my comment on a reply to his post: (Reply of @pjwilk to @jmhammon67 and comment by @aarondinin) (Yes, even I am subject to the dopamine rush of social media recognition.)

3. Our curriculum for the year, which in the WCSD follows the same order for sophomores and seniors:

   1. First quarter: Informational text

   2. Second quarter: Narrative

   3. Third quarter: Argument

   4. Fourth quarter: Research and synthesis

4. Using Canvas discussion boards to help sophomores and seniors engage with each other on their most important learning goals and methods.

As a student of economic history, I can’t avoid discussing how the development of artificial intelligence changes the skills and knowledge that will help today’s learners succeed as contributors to our community, nation, and world. We had an interesting discussion with GPT4o as a class toward the end of the fall semester. Here’s a partially edited and annotated transcript:

Us: [Uploaded this image from our in-class AI writing tool, Writable, to GPT4o along with the prompt that follows]:

Analyze this in the context of high school seniors today entering a world in which much writing is likely to be generated or assisted by AI.

GPT4o gave a lengthy response, so to encourage you to continue reading this post, I asked Claude 3.5 Sonnet in Explanatory to summarize it in 150 words. Here’s Claude’s summary (I corrected one grammatical error by Claude, which inserted an unnecessary comma between an independent clause and a dependent phrase):

The text addresses the challenges and opportunities of AI-assisted writing in education, specifically for high school seniors preparing to enter an AI-influenced world. It emphasizes that students should not simply copy and paste AI-generated content but rather use it as a foundation for developing their own critical thinking and creativity. The text outlines strategies for effectively working with AI-generated content, including incorporating personal perspectives, improving conceptual structure, and adding literary devices. It suggests that educators should frame AI as a collaborative tool rather than a shortcut, helping students develop essential skills in editing and analysis. The piece also proposes practical teaching activities, such as comparing AI and human-written drafts, practicing targeted editing of AI content, and exploring the ethical implications of AI use in academic settings. The overall message advocates for teaching students to actively engage with and enhance AI output rather than passively accepting it.

Okay, now we know what leading AI thinks about, er, leading AI, but what do us humans think? Since AI is trained on a vast corpus of human-created text, one would expect our answers might be similar. And yet…us humans bring our own individual contributions of logic, emotion, and judgments of credibility. We’ve talked a little bit about Aristotle’s concepts of logos, pathos, and ethos in class already. These are especially valuable for our Argument module, so we will use them extensively this quarter.

Our conversation with GPT4o continued:

Us: This is kind of a messy situation for high school seniors today as the writing process is changing quickly while schools are changing slowly, and students are trying to be prepared for a world that won't necessarily reflect current practices in schools, isn't it?

GPT4o: Absolutely, it is a complex and challenging situation for high school seniors. The rapid evolution of AI is reshaping the writing process, and many schools are struggling to adapt quickly enough to ensure students are prepared for the world they will enter. This disconnect creates tension between traditional approaches to teaching writing and the practical realities of how writing will be done in workplaces, higher education, and daily life.

The Changing Nature of Writing

AI tools like ChatGPT are not just spellcheckers; they are co-creators that can generate, edit, and analyze text. This fundamentally alters what it means to “write.” In the professional world, the ability to refine, evaluate, and personalize AI-generated content is increasingly important. Yet, many schools still prioritize older paradigms of writing—drafting from scratch, emphasizing handwriting or rote memorization of rules—over teaching how to critically use AI tools.

The Lag in Schools

Schools, by their nature, are often slow to adopt change. Curriculum development, teacher training, and systemic policies take time to catch up with technological advancements. While some forward-thinking schools are integrating AI literacy into their programs, many are hesitant, seeing AI as a threat to traditional academic integrity rather than a tool to enhance learning. This hesitation leaves students navigating two conflicting realities: one inside the classroom, where AI is often restricted or penalized, and one outside, where it’s increasingly central.

The Pressure on Students

High school seniors are caught in the middle. They are tasked with mastering traditional skills like crafting essays and analyzing texts while knowing that these methods may not be the most relevant in their future careers. They face the dual challenge of proving mastery in current school frameworks while preparing themselves for a future that prioritizes adaptability, critical thinking, and tech-savviness. It’s like training for one sport while knowing you’ll soon be competing in a completely different one.

Potential Solutions

1. Integrating AI into Learning: Schools should teach students how to use AI responsibly, emphasizing its role as a collaborator rather than a replacement for human creativity and critical thought.

2. Focus on Critical Skills: Skills like editing, evaluating arguments, developing original ideas, and ethical reasoning will remain valuable, no matter how writing evolves.

3. Revising Assessment Methods: Schools should assess not just final products but the process students use, including how they interact with AI tools, revise content, and demonstrate understanding.

What Students Can Do Now

Until schools catch up, students should focus on blending both worlds. They can practice traditional writing to meet school requirements while also exploring AI tools to understand their capabilities and limitations. Learning to critically engage with AI—by revising, improving, and adding personal voice to its outputs—will prepare them for future challenges while meeting current expectations.

This is indeed a messy, transitional period, but it also presents an exciting opportunity. Those who can navigate the chaos and master both traditional and emerging writing methods will not only adapt but thrive in this rapidly changing world.

Word tells me this piece is already more than 1,300 words long, which is testing the limits of student attention spans, so let’s wrap this up by setting the stage for some brainstorming opportunities about what we want to accomplish during the third quarter, which runs until March 14:

• I believe most of my students have already had much exposure to “Argument” and are relatively good at it compared to their abilities at negotiation. Therefore, I’ve re-titled our content this quarter as “Argument and Negotiation.” This connects well with our previous quarter's content on narrative because of the consensus that storytelling is the most effective way to argue and gain the upper hand in negotiation—if, indeed, we believe it’s a virtue to have an “upper hand.” In my experience, negotiations work best when both sides benefit from outcomes. Having been a student and teacher of economics, it is a truism to me that our primary system of allocating scarce resources, the market, works best (really, only “works” at all) when both sides benefit from the outcome of a transaction. What negotiation tactics should we focus on this quarter? What practical real-life questions should we practice negotiating?

• Here are our most important standards to master or make progress toward mastery this quarter as mandated by the State of Nevada:

  • Cite strong textual evidence to support analysis

  • Analyze authors’ points of view

  • Analyze and use rhetoric effectively

  • Write arguments with valid reasoning and relevant evidence

  • Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information

  • Write arguments to support claims with valid reasoning and relevant evidence

  • Present clear and logical perspectives and address opposing views in discussions

District rubrics for writing arguments, evaluating sources, and effectively presenting information are all posted on Canvas, as are suggested texts, tasks, and vocabulary. With the idea that student autonomy supports intrinsic motivation and, therefore, learning, we will use a Canvas discussion board for students to brainstorm real-life examples that might give them valuable knowledge and skills to make more extraordinary contributions in their futures. If you are a family reading this, please work with your student to make the most substantial contributions. Creative thinking and alternative ideas are always welcome.