What Worries Me About Teachers’ Use of AI

When I’m asked what I’m most concerned about with AI as a high school English teacher, my answer for the past year has had absolutely nothing to do with students.

It’s the adults.

Since the public launch of ChatGPT during the 2022–23 school year, many of the headlines have focused on what students were doing with it: Articles on students cheating their way through college and the end of critical thinking in the classroom have been shared among educators.

I can only speak for myself, but this does not track with what I’m hearing and experiencing.

Our classroom this year looks and feels very much like our classroom four years ago. Students are discussing their readings thoughtfully and pushing themselves to grow authentically as writers, and aside from a handful of incidents with students making poor choices—choices, I’d add, that a handful of students would make even before AI tools were around—the classroom continues to be a good place, a place that I’m very proud of and grateful to be in.

Talking with students and watching what’s happening beyond the classroom, though? I’m really concerned about the decisions adults are making around AI.

And there are three patterns I’ve seen developing around adult choices that have very real consequences for students. I write this with humility, given the rapid pace of change in this technology, but I also write this with purpose, as I believe that missteps moving forward can end up setting us back.

Lack of Transparency About AI Use

I’m typically quite open-minded as a teacher about people using different approaches in different contexts, but there are some values that should be universal—and one of those is a commitment to transparency around our practices.

Unfortunately, the normalization of AI usage by teachers and educators has somehow sidestepped this commitment. In a 2024 survey by EducationWeek, 80 percent of educators said it was not necessary to disclose their use of AI in planning lessons to students and families, and 48 percent said this was the case even when using AI for grading and feedback.

There is nuance across different uses of AI—for example, using it to brainstorm for a new unit is quite different, in my view, from outsourcing all your grading and feedback—but I find the overall trend deeply concerning. As a teacher, I’ve often told students that if they are unsure of whether something is OK to use in their work, there is an easy solution: Ask if it’s OK.

“When you aren’t willing to be open with what you used,” I’ve said to students countless times over the years, “you’re sort of telling on yourself.” The surveys referenced above demonstrate that a lot of educators are telling on themselves by not disclosing their AI use.

Transparency builds trust, not to mention valuable opportunities for conversation and better understanding of one another. Isn’t this the exact thing we need to prioritize right now in our schools, and in education more broadly?

Regardless of your perspective on AI, there should be some easy things we all can agree on—and I believe a commitment to transparency has to be one of those easy things, especially with our students and families.

Disconnect Between AI Norms for Adults and for Students

Near the end of the last school year, I asked students to share their views on AI usage for both students and teachers alike—first in a survey and then in an online discussion among themselves.

The results were quite fascinating, but one of the clearest takeaways for me was how frustrated students were at the notion of teachers using AI themselves while prohibiting students from using it.

In the words of one sophomore, “It’s just another way that teachers are being hypocrites.”

Once again, I acknowledge the nuance in different usages of AI by teachers. I teach in a high school, and policies for student AI use should probably be different in elementary and middle schools. That said, if you are a high school teacher and believe it is 100 percent OK to be using AI extensively in your work but not at all OK for your students, at minimum I would suggest not only being transparent about that choice with students but continually touching base with how your students feel about this disconnect. David Cutler, a journalism and history teacher, is transparent with students about why he uses AI and why he doesn’t allow them to use it in the writing process, and he writes that “students value that openness.”

Beyond student perception, I believe part of our work as teachers is to be academic role models for students, and there is a ton of value in walking the walk as much as possible alongside them. For example, if I expect students to be able to craft an essay with zero support from AI, there is a ton of value in me going through the same process in crafting exemplar essays beforehand.

The other point I’d offer based on many conversations with students: We do not get to control how students perceive our actions as teachers. There are many students in our classrooms right now with a skeptical or negative view of the use of AI for myriad reasons, even when we are open with them about our process and rationale.

So yes, I believe we need to hold ourselves and other educators accountable to a standard of transparency around AI use. I also believe we need to be mindful of how students may be perceiving adult use of AI, particularly if they are not being allowed to use it themselves.

The Cost of Prioritizing Efficiency

The final consideration I want to raise here is one I bring up with utmost generosity, as I fully recognize how teachers are systematically under-resourced when it comes to the time we need to fully do our jobs. The vast majority of AI usage by teachers has been justified as a tool not for improving the depth and quality of our work, but rather for the single, understandable purpose of saving time.

If I am honest, there is a part of me that worries considerably about the long-term impact for the teaching profession of using AI rather than addressing deeper labor concerns, but I want to instead focus here on a consequence that is here-and-now: the real costs that can result from prioritizing efficiency as a teacher.

First of all, time spent on something as a teacher sends a signal to students about how much we value it—and lack of time spent similarly sends the opposite signal. This is one of the reasons I am so against the use of AI-generated feedback for student writing: How can I ask them to care about their own writing if I do not invest my time in reading and responding to it?

There is also real value in the time we spend doing our work. It takes considerable time as an English teacher to thoughtfully read essays and craft meaningful feedback, yes, but the end result is that I have a deep, authentic understanding of what my students need individually and collectively as writers—the foundation, I believe, of what can be truly transformational work in the classroom.

Finally, I often hear teachers remark that our current education system too often pushes students into a transactional experience, one that limits the value of learning for the sake of learning. I agree with this! Yet when we teachers prioritize efficiency for ourselves, how can we expect students not to do the same?

We’re at a Crossroads Right Now With AI

We are at a moment of considerable disagreement over what to do with AI in our classrooms with students, in our work as teachers, and in society at-large. As a result, I imagine there are a number of people reading this who might disagree with these points. Completely fair, and I believe that we need to continue talking with and learning from each other—and with our students, I’d add, as Brett Vogelsinger lays out here.

While this piece is framed as a list of potential consequences, given the crossroads we are with AI I think it can also be read as a list of questions for educators exploring AI in their own work:

• Are you being transparent with students and families about your use of AI?
• If you are using AI but prohibiting students from doing so, how do they feel about it?
• If you are using AI to save time, are there any downsides of prioritizing efficiency?

All of us work in our own contexts and, particularly at this moment, it is going to be difficult to arrive at any type of consensus when it comes to the use of AI by adults in education.

Whatever direction we move with AI, though, we as educators need to be mindful of the potential consequences of our choices, as they impact classrooms beyond our own and, most importantly, our students.