As artificial intelligence takes over education, English teachers are faced with new challenges, from ensuring academic integrity to giving their girls the confidence for ownership of their own work. Mrs. Edith Diaz, the English Department chairperson, is wrestling and trying to overcome the inclusion of AI as a primary source students use on a daily basis.
“At the end of the day, someone knows whether you wrote it or not,” Mrs. Diaz said. “If you use AI then you’re not going to learn how to do it, so when it’s time to write that AP Language essay and they block you from everything, then how are you going to do it? That’s the biggest challenge because the temptation is there.”
Other English teachers are also grappling with working around the use of AI.
“We in the English department are kind of torn with AI,” Mrs. Melissa Falcon said. “It takes away the student’s voice because it’s a machine that is creating the writing, it is not the actual person. Students tend to lose their voice when they use AI and I think that’s been the biggest detriment.”
While students and teachers may disagree, the thought that AI can enable creativity and help unique ideas stem from students, coincide.
“If you use AI and ask yourself what articles it uses in order to gather information you will have a better insight,” Mrs. Diaz said. “It’s kind of like looking at a TikTok about the news and then actually going to Apple News to see what they say, TikTok is just a teaser, just like AI. If you learn to use it like that, I think it’s going to be effective.”
Students also find a way of making AI be useful to their benefit for creativity and bringing their ideas together.
“AI can be helpful to students when used the right way,” freshman Zoe Rodriguez said. “AI can give students suggestions on how to make their writing more formal and take it to the next level.”
English as a subject has enhanced students’ critical thinking and understanding, not only about the specific book they are reading in class, but diving deeper into other subjects where they need a greater understanding.
“I think English helps develop a deeper understanding of literature and helps refine the way you speak, read, and write,” sophomore Anna Carolina Vieira said. “I found the techniques I used in English especially helpful during my AP World History class in freshman year, because that class required comprehension skills and vocabulary skills that I was able to learn in English.”
As teachers strive to steer the challenges posed by AI, they attempt to foster students’ knowledge and challenge them to become their best with anything they go through in life, not just in their English class.
“If I could give one piece of advice to my students, it’s to ‘not take shortcuts’,” Mrs. Falcon said. “Taking shortcuts is always going to cost you in the long run. Put in the work and go through the revision process with anything in life.”
