When Craig Schmidt gave his high school English students an assignment based on “Fahrenheit 451,” he threw them a curveball: He told them to use ChatGPT.
Schmidt asked the class to write several paragraphs reflecting on the dystopian novel, then feed them into the artificial intelligence chatbot for feedback. He distributed worksheets explaining how to use ChatGPT as a “writing partner” by instructing it to assume the persona of a critic or teacher and describing the feedback it should provide.
“The A.I. will NOT always give you great advice!” Schmidt wrote in a worksheet for students. “It might suggest something that doesn’t fit what you want to say. You need to use your EDITING skills.”
Vince Lombardo, one of Schmidt’s students in that 2024 class, said it was the first time one of his teachers had suggested using an AI bot during an assignment, rather than warning students against using the tools at all. He fed paragraphs from his assignment into ChatGPT and, using Schmidt’s worksheet, crafted a prompt to ask for advice.
There were some points Lombardo disagreed with, like starting the essay with a rhetorical question, but to his surprise, he found most of ChatGPT’s feedback helpful.
“I thought it was great,” Lombardo, 15, said. “Ever since then, I’ve kind of been doing the same thing.”
As educators around the country grapple with the effects of AI, a growing cohort of English teachers are finding ways to bring tools like ChatGPT into their pedagogy as tutors and brainstorming aides. For students like Lombardo, learning how to prompt a chatbot for feedback — and when to question AI’s advice — has become an essential part of the writing process. Coaching from AI, personalized and accessible at any time, is now shaping how they write.
“Sometimes I can go into AI and be like, ‘My teacher wants me to be able to do this,’” Lombardo said. “‘How can I do that within my writing?’”
(The Washington Post has a content partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI.)
Schmidt, an English teacher of nearly 30 years in Libertyville, Illinois, said he was dismayed when he began encountering student work that appeared AI-generated. Software for detecting AI writing was unreliable, and he said he found it difficult to confront students about AI use. Schmidt had to decide on his own how to handle it.
Several years after generative AI became accessible to students, figuring out how best to include — or exclude — AI tools in the classroom often still falls to individual school districts and teachers.
“We don’t have a department policy,” Schmidt said. “The district doesn’t. I think everybody feels it’s still kind of the Wild West.”
On one end of the spectrum, some teachers are letting students draft their own AI policies. On the other, the most skeptical teachers are using formats like oral exams to restrict the use of AI as much as they can. Schmidt has joined a growing cohort that is trying to find a middle ground.
“Whether we liked it or not, the technology was going to be in the hands of our students,” said Kimberly Cooney, an English teacher at Chattahoochee High School in Johns Creek, Georgia. “And so we could either teach them how to use it ethically and responsibly and teach them to actually augment their thinking, or we could, you know, do nothing.”
One of Cooney’s lesson plans teaches her students to use AI to help brainstorm themes in the Arthur Miller play “The Crucible,” walking them through the technique of structuring AI prompts and then asking them to paraphrase the chatbot’s responses. In another, she shows the class an AI-generated paragraph on an essay assignment and asks students to critique it.
“I said, ‘Okay, AI works on algorithms, and it works on predictability. And as a result of that, it tends to create the most predictable, mid-level, sort of bland writing that you can have,’” Cooney said. “… They need to be making much more assertive arguments than that.”
Jill Stedronsky, an English teacher in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, has had some of her eighth-graders use prompts to create AI “writing partners” intended to be regular sources of advice and feedback. Throughout the year, her students entered journal entries and essays into the chatbot and reflected on them in conversation with the AI tool.
Both Cooney and Stedronsky see teaching students how to prompt AI bots as a way to help them think about their writing.
“In creating the ‘writing partner,’ they had to really think about what they wanted to ask and what kind of feedback [to ask for],” Stedronsky said.
Are chatbots giving out good writing advice? Schmidt, of Libertyville High School in Illinois, thinks so, most of the time. But he, Cooney and Stedronsky are quick to emphasize to students that they should look at the suggestions they get from their AI “writing partners” critically. Their exercises usually require students to critique the advice they get from AI. (Schmidt said he has also seen less cheating with AI since using chatbots in his teaching.)
When Lombardo, Schmidt’s former student, first asked ChatGPT for feedback in class, the chatbot told him to simplify some of his sentences, suggested changes to make the writing less “choppy” and advised him to write a stronger conclusion. He discarded some suggestions but found most helpful.
Lombardo was moved up to an honors course after taking Schmidt’s class, he said. Using AI to plan and edit his assignments has now become routine.
“I feel like now, I’m able to write stuff better than I ever have been, even without using AI, because like, I’ve gotten those different kinds of suggestions over and over again,” he said.
Amiyah Harish, a high school junior who was introduced to AI “writing partners” in Stedronsky’s class, said she has kept up the habit of using an AI tool in her writing. At each step in an assignment — after she brainstorms ideas, drafts an outline or writes a paragraph — she feeds her work into a chatbot to look for improvements. She likened the practice to talking through an essay with an attentive friend.
“It’s kind of like a discussion,” said Harish, 17. “Instead of the teacher giving a lecture about ‘This is the exact formula for how I want you to write the essay,’ it’s the student discovering their own voice, using AI as a tool.”
As Harish and her peers adopt AI, school and classroom policies are continuing to evolve around them. Stedronsky said her school recently adopted new policies that restrict some chatbots, including the website where she had students create AI writing partners. She said teachers should continue to find ways to use AI to promote inquiry and critical thinking.
“If we don’t … we will be left with students who cheat and teachers who revert to pen and paper, rather than using AI to be a critical thinking tool,” Stedronsky said.
The post In some classrooms, teachers ask: Can AI teach students to write better? appeared first on Washington Post.
