Earlier this year, English teacher Erick Rector was conducting his infamous “Rector Roast” activity in his ninth-grade class — an activity where students volunteer their essays to be projected on the screen for constructive criticism — when the essays he was reading raised suspicion, prompting him to check their version history. One showed large paragraphs had been copy-pasted all at once — leading him to conclude that some of it had been written by AI.
According to EducationWeek, “In the 2023-24 school year, 63 percent of teachers said students had gotten in trouble for being accused of using generative AI in their schoolwork, up from 48 percent last school year.”
Since the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022, teachers have been running into AI usage in alarming numbers in essays and other work, and it’s forcing them to change the way they design assignments and assess them.
English teachers say the reliance on AI is keeping students from learning valuable skills.
“The act of truly writing an essay is an example of reading comprehension, synthesis, original thought, deliberate writing and revision, and that whole process is now being taken away from students,” Rector said.
As a result of the technology, English teachers are more and more feeling like academic integrity cops. Determining whether a student has used AI can take hours and takes away from what a teacher should be doing, they say. It is disheartening for them to read work and constantly wonder whether it was written by a student or a machine. Some have even stopped assigning take-home essays altogether and are doing more of the writing process for essays in class.
Emily Wu, who teaches AP Language and 10th and 12th grade English classes, has been having her students work in class to brainstorm ideas and create outlines to be fully prepared for writing their in-class essays.
“We really want to hone in on the skills and acquire those skills without any AI crutches so we have moved a lot of our writing process into in class writing and in class prep,” Wu said.
Other English teachers are turning to the oldest method of all: in-class handwritten essays, which guarantee authenticity but have many downsides of their own.
Students like sophomore Katie Lu say they dislike writing essays by hand in class.
“I find it harder and more time-consuming to write,” she said. “Not only do you have to bring all your articles and resources to class, you only have an hour and it’s physically a lot more demanding to write with your hand.”
Also, the process of hand-writing an essay requires much more time compared to typing it out on a computer, and it often leaves students with too many thoughts and not enough time to capture them on paper.
To address concerns around handwritten essays, the English department has requested the implementation of lockdown browsers for in-class essay writing next year. This tool would eliminate the need for handwritten essays while maintaining academic integrity.
Teachers say these AI-caused adjustments have been challenging to implement.
“This approach is a work-in-progress, and we are trying to be very thoughtful and careful about the changes we make as a department,” English teacher Mary Palisoul said. “We as teachers have to sacrifice class time for this process, so we have to make tough choices about what to keep and what to eliminate.”
