How to encourage smarter AI use in the classroom

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Chatbots took many schools by surprise upon their release a few years ago. Suddenly, students carried an app in their phones that could magically answer almost any homework question or spin up an essay in seconds. Of course, teachers can often tell when a student is using AI—models make mistakes that most humans don’t, and some teachers say that AI-generated text has simple giveaways like too many em dashes .

Nevertheless, the generative AI boom increased the burden on teachers, who were already working long hours to plan lessons, make homework assignments, and grade exams, and now needed to adapt to a new technology. For many, it still feels like there’s no clear path forward. Organizations ranging from OpenAI to UNESCO encourage AI use in the classroom, but many teachers feel confused about how exactly to handle it.

Cheshire Academy is a private boarding and day school in Connecticut with about 400 students in grades 9 through 12. Administrators there don’t force instructors to use AI at all, though the school’s librarian and technology coordinator George Aiello claims the “vast majority” of instructors use it in some way. The educators there are trying a patchwork of programs, including general-purpose chatbots like ChatGPT and Perplexity as well as more specialized tools like MagicSchool , an AI-powered platform meant specifically for educators.

That patchwork approach is partly because the school, on the advice of consultants, opted to train its staff on general techniques for how to use AI instead of prescribing certain tech. The staff training covered topics like how to craft useful prompts but also stressed the technology’s limits, highlighting its potential for generating incorrect and biased responses.

Now, teachers there often use generative AI to prepare class materials. This means asking the AI of their choice for help with planning lessons or creating grading rubrics. Some even want to use it to help them give feedback to students, though concerns over quality, personalization, and privacy have prevented any of them from doing that just yet.

Others, like Miriam Przybyla-Baum, who teaches French, don’t use AI themselves but do address it with their teaching. Przybyla-Baum says she doesn’t really need AI’s help since she’s built up plenty of classroom materials across nearly 30 years of teaching. But she started seeing students try to use AI-powered tools like Google Translate to take shortcuts on their assignments years before ChatGPT’s launch.