Redrafting the text:
In the bustling halls of Amity Middle School in Orange, Connecticut, Bill Henry, an 8th-grade English teacher, is revolutionising the way students learn and write. Henry's innovative approach to teaching incorporates the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support and guide students in their writing journey, rather than replacing human creativity.
Henry's school utilises a platform that allows teachers to control the AI's interactions with students, ensuring a safe and ethical learning environment. The AI is not intended to replace thinking or creativity, but to act as a tool to help students develop their writing skills, integrate technology, and understand the processes behind writing.
Henry's students, initially intrigued by the use of AI, may initially perceive it as a means to cheat. However, Henry stresses its purpose: to improve, not replace, their writing. He emphasises the importance of critical thinking, originality, and ethical transparency in the use of AI.
The teacher's strategies for effectively and ethically incorporating AI into K-12 and college English classrooms include modeling AI use, coaching and scaffolding AI interaction, using AI tools for personalised feedback and brainstorming, maintaining ethical use standards, fostering students’ authentic voices, and leveraging AI-supported corpora and error correction tools.
By modelling AI use, Henry demonstrates to students how to generate ideas, draft, and revise writing critically, emphasising human judgment over blind acceptance of AI output. He provides teacher support, clear guidelines, and incremental practice to help students develop skills gradually and avoid over-reliance on AI.
Henry also uses AI tools for personalised feedback and brainstorming, such as AI chatbots guiding students to expand their thoughts or connect text with personal insights. These tools can enhance student engagement and stamina in writing tasks.
Maintaining ethical use standards is crucial, and Henry requires students to disclose AI assistance, verify AI-generated content, and properly cite sources. This cultivates academic integrity and transparency.
Fostering students’ authentic voices is essential to ensure AI does not homogenise writing. Henry encourages reflection on writing choices and helps students understand the purpose and audience for each assignment.
Leveraging AI-supported corpora and error correction tools helps students improve vocabulary, grammar, and genre awareness, enabling them to learn the mechanics and nuances of English writing from authentic data.
Ethically, educators must set clear policies on what constitutes acceptable AI use and engage students in discussions about the role of AI in their learning. This approach ensures AI enhances students’ writing skills and understanding of the writing process in an ethical, transparent, and pedagogically sound manner.
Henry's innovative approach to teaching English with AI has been met with success. Students generate theme statements using AI, create prompts for the AI, and even improve their prompts based on the AI's advice. The AI is not designed to provide actual theme statements, but rather to offer advice on how to improve prompts and generate theme statements.
While some students may initially try to override the AI with inappropriate prompts, they ultimately meet the lesson objective. Henry believes that the fear of AI making English teaching jobs obsolete is misguided. Instead, he sees AI as a tool that can help students better understand the processes behind writing when used in conjunction with the district curriculum and goals.
In conclusion, Henry's embrace of AI in his teaching demonstrates a forward-thinking approach to education. By integrating AI ethically and effectively, he is preparing his students for a world in which AI will likely play an increasingly important role. His students are not only learning to write effectively, but they are also learning to collaborate productively with AI without outsourcing their unique voices or critical engagement.
- Bill Henry, the 8th-grade English teacher at Amity Middle School, uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support and guide students in their writing journey, rather than replacing human creativity.
- Henry's school utilizes a platform that allows teachers to control the AI's interactions with students, ensuring a safe and ethical learning environment.
- The AI tool is not intended to replace thinking or creativity, but to help students develop their writing skills, integrate technology, and understand the processes behind writing.
- Henry emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, originality, and ethical transparency in the use of AI, and stresses that it is meant to improve, not replace, student writing.
- By ethically incorporating AI into K-12 and college English classrooms, Henry is preparing his students for a world where AI will likely play an increasingly important role in education and self-development, enabling them to collaborate productively with AI without outsourcing their unique voices or critical engagement.
