By my junior year, ChatGPT had fully taken over, and students had almost unanimously decided to use AI for some or all of their assignments. While teachers scrambled to adapt their curriculum to the new technology, students took full advantage and quickly stopped doing their own work. As someone who had no time and was constantly busy, I had no intentions of limiting my own AI use. However, the response of one teacher unexpectedly managed to eliminate AI use from my work for the rest of the year, leaving an impact on me that would last for the rest of my time at Galileo.
The introduction of ChatGPT had a massive impact on all of our student careers from the moment it was introduced in November of 2022. From then on, almost all text-based assignments became optional. This affected most of our classes, but English class was easily the most impacted. We all watched to see how teachers would react, but the general stance of both sides was clear: teachers needed to figure out how to make their assignments AI-proof, and students needed to figure out how to keep using ChatGPT for as long as they could without getting caught.
The introduction of ChatGPT had a massive impact on all of our student careers from the moment it was introduced in November of 2022. From then on, almost all text-based assignments became optional. This affected most of our classes, but English class was easily the most impacted. We all watched to see how teachers would react, but the general stance of both sides was clear: teachers needed to figure out how to make their assignments AI-proof, and students needed to figure out how to keep using ChatGPT for as long as they could without getting caught.
It was the beginning of my junior year, and I had just completed a weeklong rhetorical analysis essay project for my English teacher Ms. Gates. I tend to like English class, so I took pride in writing my own essay. However, I was incredibly busy with extracurriculars at the time, and ended up only having time to finish my essay the night before it was due (a situation I’m sure many of you are familiar with). After many hours spent working on my body paragraphs, I still needed a conclusion. Rather than run on 4 hours of sleep the next day, I decided to have ChatGPT spit out the concluding paragraph and call it a day.
Ms. Gates was one of my first teachers to address AI usage. The very next day, she announced that if you admitted to AI use on your essay, she wouldn’t penalize your grade. A few things ran through my mind at this moment. On one hand, there was no real benefit to confessing, so I had no real reason to admit to anything. But on the other hand, even though we were only a few months into the school year, Ms. Gates had become one of my favorite teachers, and I felt bad at the fact that she seemed very clearly stressed about not being able to tell how many of her students used AI.
I decided to admit to using ChatGPT, but I was extremely nervous about it. Even though she said she wouldn’t doc anyone’s grade, there was definitely more risk than if I didn’t admit anything. After all, if I admitted to cheating, why should I get the same grade as everyone else?
After much anticipation, her response was basically “Ok, I get it.” She told me that she understands how stressed her students are with homework and extracurriculars, and was sympathetic to why we would want to use AI in the first place. This caught me off guard, since I didn’t expect a teacher to be sympathetic to something that was threatening how they do their job. But she also imparted to me that ChatGPT had become a crisis for all teachers, English teachers especially, and that she didn’t really know how to proceed other than hope her students would be honest.
This understanding and honesty where most teachers would penalize made me feel like I was in some sort of unspoken contract with Ms. Gates. She chose to excuse my cheating when she absolutely didn’t have to, so in exchange, it only felt right that I wouldn’t use AI in the future, even when I absolutely could’ve. Ms. Gates’ small gesture of goodwill was infinitely more effective than a docked grade or lecture would’ve been, and as a result, I didn’t use AI in that class for the rest of that year.
Ms. Gates’ understanding and realness is part of what made her one of my favorite teachers at Galileo. Rather than be driven by rubrics and grading requirements, she always put her students first, which made those in her class feel more comfortable talking to her as a person rather than just an arbiter of grades.
Although I can’t say that I never use AI now, I definitely feel like I use it more sparingly. Although it’s too much of a time saver to resist sometimes, I no longer use it to do entire parts of English assignments. While I think it can be a helpful tool here and there for research or ideation, I’ve also realized that it’s not fair for our teachers to be grading something that their student didn’t even write.
