Not long ago, artificial intelligence was banned from classrooms, dismissed as a shortcut for lazy students. Today, it’s becoming a study partner, lesson planner, and even a teaching tool.
In New York City schools, that shift is already reshaping daily life: it’s showing up in homework, lesson plans, and the fine print of new school policies. Teachers are reworking assignments to account for chatbots, administrators are scrambling to write rules for tools they barely had time to understand, and students are figuring out where “Getting help” ends, and “cheating” begins. At the center of all this is a question schools can’t avoid much longer: Is AI actually changing how we learn, or just how fast we turn in work?
“I think AI can be a great tool for students. One really good way to use it is to be able to get feedback on how your writing is and so forth and so on,” Mr. Baker, the AP Seminar and AP Research teacher, said.
Mr. Baker often encourages, and even requires, students to use AI to give feedback on the intensive research they do in both classes, which raises both concern and curiosity over how AI is affecting both students and their quality of work.
AI hasn’t just been used by students. Teachers are utilizing AI while teaching for clearer lessons.
“I like using writing and image tools the most because they make lessons clearer and more engaging,” said Mr. Lee, a math teacher known for teaching pre-calc and statistics. Popular AIs like ChatGPT, Claude, and many more are gaining popularity from students and teachers alike as a personal teacher, where AI can explain study concepts, create practice problems, and even help you understand your mistakes, so teachers using it isn’t very surprising.
However, it does raise questions about how it affects students’ learning and development. Generative AI has been problematic and a form of plagiarism since its explosive popularity, causing schools to develop policies when students use AI to complete their assignments with the use of just one prompt. Some teachers use AI detectors due to the enormous amount of AI-generated writing and essays turned in. So how are teachers mitigating that?
“When things come down to the performance-based assessment, where you have to defend what you know, you’re not going to be able to do that if the AI does the work for you, right?” Baker said. “If AI is doing all the work for them, you’re not using AI. AI is using you. And that is going to be very evident in the way the student is attempting to talk about their material.” A strong indicator of someone using AI to just write their essay is if they can even explain the topic thoroughly. If they can, it can be assumed they used AI for the purpose of improving their writing and learning from it, rather than just having it made for them.
Not all student are incredibly supportive of the requirement of AI in their assignments. Some students have mixed feelings about using AI.
“On one hand, I do appreciate how quick it is to provide constructive feedback. But on the other hand, it is frustrating to constantly get flagged for my responses unless I write exactly the way the AI wants me to,” Aylin Mahmud, senior, said.
Aylin is part of AP Language, where AI is frequently encouraged to give feedback on the student’s numerous essays in preparation for the AP exam.
“I feel as though my writer’s voice is being pushed to the side,” Aylin said.
It’s a common feeling amongst students, with AI as a form of assessment, students feel the need to change their writing to meet AI’s standards, rather than write in the style they are most comfortable in.
But there’s a question many people are asking: Should AI be taught in more schools? “You’re not going to lose your job to AI, but you will lose your job to somebody who knows how to use AI better than you do,” Baker stated the importance of AI literacy in this tense job market.
While all the people we’ve talked to agreed there have to be guardrails on AI, we have to be aware of the future needs of the different skills they require from us students.
