Artificial intelligence in schools: More teachers are cautiously on board and using it themselves
When Eva Grasso, a former English teacher, first heard of ChatGPT just after it was launched in 2022, her gut reaction was: “Oh, no!”
“There goes the essay. There goes the written word,” recalled Grasso, a library media specialist at Port Jefferson schools, referring to the online chatbot that can produce essays and solve math problems from a single prompt.
Since then, Grasso’s perspective has shifted to “more of a ‘Oh, no. And now what?’ ” she said. “The reality is we can’t huddle in a cave and pretend it's not happening.”
Grasso’s change in attitude may reflect a larger view of how educators are coming to terms with artificial intelligence’s role in the classroom. Just this past week, New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks said in a speech that AI can “revolutionize” how that school system functions. He noted that AI cannot replace the power of a great teacher, but could help elevate their work.
The use of generative AI, such as chatbots and image generators that create content, has grown in schools, not only among students but teachers themselves. In some Long Island districts, more teachers are using these programs to help craft lesson plans, design classroom activities and grade certain assignments, educators said.
“People realize it’s here to stay,” said Scott Bersin, assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and assessment in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District. “With each passing day, more and more people are beginning to use it as a tool.”
Bersin’s district and others on the Island have embraced AI, encouraging teachers to use AI-powered applications to make their job more efficient and introducing AI electives where students learn to build their own chatbots.
Concerns of misuse remain, as students have used such tools to turn in homework they didn’t do themselves. And teachers are divided in how they see AI's benefits versus harms.
A quarter of U.S. teachers say AI tools do more harm than good in K-12 education, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted last fall. About a third say there’s an equal mix of benefit and harm, while another 35% say they are not sure.
Even those in support of AI caution that such tools could undercut student learning if their use goes unchecked. But the potential misuse, some argue, underscores the need to teach students how to navigate an ever-changing digital landscape ethically and productively.
“We need to teach kids how to use it safely rather than [us] being afraid of it,” Bersin said.
Some educators compared the arrival of generative AI to the introduction of calculators or the internet, something they said must be incorporated into schools because understanding it is an "essential skill,” as a vision statement Lindenhurst schools released last month put it.
“When the internet launched in education, everybody was afraid of Google. … Students can just research and cut and paste,” said Jennifer Freedman, director of instructional technology and innovation at Lindenhurst.
“Now in any classroom, you see students on a Chromebook using the internet to supplement their lessons,” she said. “I think AI is going to go in the same direction.”
Nationwide, nearly 1 in 5 K-12 teachers reported using AI for teaching and another 15% have tried it at least once, according to a survey conducted last fall by Rand, a research nonprofit headquartered in Santa Monica, California. About three quarters of teachers who already use AI said they expected to use these tools more in the future.
In Lindenhurst, teachers are provided with two applications this year: Chat for Schools and Diffit for Teachers.
Chat for Schools, which is powered by Skill Struck, is a chatbot, like ChatGPT, but with built-in privacy protection and guardrails that can catch trigger words students may write such as “gun violence” or “suicide,” Freedman said. Diffit can help teachers generate lesson plans appropriate for different grade levels.
Tools used by Island districts and teachers differ. Other commonly used programs include ChatGPT, Magic School AI, Brisk Teaching and Canva. There’s also Turnitin, which does not detect plagiarism but produces a similarity report to help educators make a judgment call, according to the company.
Sy Doan, a policy researcher at Rand who co-authored the survey findings, said teachers have used AI algorithms to work on what he called “tasks around the edges.”
“There's a lot of concern that teachers are using generative AI to make full lesson plans,” Doan said. “We really haven't found that to be the case. It's things like image generation or adjusting content for certain groups or using it to make more versions of different worksheets that already exist.”
In Lindenhurst, there’s also a new course at the high school called Advanced Computer Science Principles and Artificial Intelligence, taught by Glenn Habibi. Habibi said learning how to use AI programs prepares students for a career in computer science and other fields.
“Sooner or later, they're going to have some kind of job somewhere where having the knowledge and background in AI tools is going to be worth something to them,” he said.
AJ Bolkvadze, 16 and a junior at Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, was among eight students who were in the new Artificial Intelligence With Python class on a Friday earlier this month. The course, with a focus on the computer programming language Python, was open to students from the other high schools in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District.
AJ would like to get into video game design or coding as a career, the teen said.
“I’ve always been into video games,” AJ said after class. “I'm really excited to be a part of the future and possibly create my own video games.”
A day earlier at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station, teacher John Karavias warned students of a different future AI could bring: One where the information presented is inaccurate.
The science teacher was visiting the class of fellow Walt Whitman High teacher Fred Feraco, who was going over some AI-powered tools for a dozen students so they could use them to help with their research projects.
The night prior, Karavias said, he had asked Google: How many clownfish have symbiotic relationships with anemones? And the AI-generated answer listed at the top of the search page was wrong.
“I have better-than-basic knowledge of clownfish and anemones. I knew it was wrong,” Karavias told the students. “But if you don't know what's wrong, you're going to put that down. And if you're not verifying it, and it's in the paper, your professor or teacher knows it. You may be called out on [it].”
Having a mistake in a school paper may be of low stake, but blindly trusting AI-generated content without verifying the information could have calamitous effect writ large.
“This is a dangerous future if you don't play it right,” Karavias concluded.
Kimberly Latko, who has taught English at Walt Whitman High for 33 years, is not opposed to using AI in school. She uses AI-driven search engines and encourages her students in a research class to use those applications to test ideas and do research. But for her AP language and composition course, she made it clear to students that there’s no place for AI there.
She sees AI’s benefits in freeing people from mundane tasks so they can focus on what’s important. But she also fears that students will use it in a way that supplants — rather than supplements — learning.
“My biggest issue with AI is that it's too easy for kids to let it do their work,” Latko said.
And she has seen it happen — students turning in work that was generated by AI. She has redesigned her curriculum and now includes a lot more handwritten assessments than she used to have in class.
She said the line for her is whether students are using it to help them learn, or blindly letting AI do the work for them.
“They need to understand how to exercise that control and to consistently remind themselves: ‘What is it I'm trying to do here? Am I trying to shortcut the learning? Or am I trying to support my learning?'” she said.
David Hendler, who teaches the AI elective at Calhoun High, said he has a similar concern but believes the solution is to teach students by using these tools.
“My concern is using it to think for you,” he said.
Teachers said that outside of giving on-paper, in-classroom assignments, it's difficult to prove that a student has used AI to do their work. To detect that, teachers need to be in tune with their students’ writing styles and learning progression, they said.
“You really need to get to know your students,” Feraco said.
When Eva Grasso, a former English teacher, first heard of ChatGPT just after it was launched in 2022, her gut reaction was: “Oh, no!”
“There goes the essay. There goes the written word,” recalled Grasso, a library media specialist at Port Jefferson schools, referring to the online chatbot that can produce essays and solve math problems from a single prompt.
Since then, Grasso’s perspective has shifted to “more of a ‘Oh, no. And now what?’ ” she said. “The reality is we can’t huddle in a cave and pretend it's not happening.”
Grasso’s change in attitude may reflect a larger view of how educators are coming to terms with artificial intelligence’s role in the classroom. Just this past week, New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks said in a speech that AI can “revolutionize” how that school system functions. He noted that AI cannot replace the power of a great teacher, but could help elevate their work.
WHAT TO KNOW
- The use of generative AI, such as chatbots and image generators that create content, has grown in schools.
- In some Long Island districts, more teachers are using these programs to help craft lesson plans, design classroom activities and grade certain assignments, educators said.
- Concerns of misuse remain, as some worry that such tools could undercut student learning. The potential misuse, some argue, underscores the need to teach students how to navigate an ever-changing digital landscape ethically and productively.
The use of generative AI, such as chatbots and image generators that create content, has grown in schools, not only among students but teachers themselves. In some Long Island districts, more teachers are using these programs to help craft lesson plans, design classroom activities and grade certain assignments, educators said.
“People realize it’s here to stay,” said Scott Bersin, assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and assessment in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District. “With each passing day, more and more people are beginning to use it as a tool.”
Bersin’s district and others on the Island have embraced AI, encouraging teachers to use AI-powered applications to make their job more efficient and introducing AI electives where students learn to build their own chatbots.
Concerns of misuse remain, as students have used such tools to turn in homework they didn’t do themselves. And teachers are divided in how they see AI's benefits versus harms.
A quarter of U.S. teachers say AI tools do more harm than good in K-12 education, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted last fall. About a third say there’s an equal mix of benefit and harm, while another 35% say they are not sure.
Even those in support of AI caution that such tools could undercut student learning if their use goes unchecked. But the potential misuse, some argue, underscores the need to teach students how to navigate an ever-changing digital landscape ethically and productively.
“We need to teach kids how to use it safely rather than [us] being afraid of it,” Bersin said.
David Hendler teaches the AI elective at Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick.
Credit: Rick Kopstein
The trend
Some educators compared the arrival of generative AI to the introduction of calculators or the internet, something they said must be incorporated into schools because understanding it is an "essential skill,” as a vision statement Lindenhurst schools released last month put it.
“When the internet launched in education, everybody was afraid of Google. … Students can just research and cut and paste,” said Jennifer Freedman, director of instructional technology and innovation at Lindenhurst.
“Now in any classroom, you see students on a Chromebook using the internet to supplement their lessons,” she said. “I think AI is going to go in the same direction.”
Nationwide, nearly 1 in 5 K-12 teachers reported using AI for teaching and another 15% have tried it at least once, according to a survey conducted last fall by Rand, a research nonprofit headquartered in Santa Monica, California. About three quarters of teachers who already use AI said they expected to use these tools more in the future.
In Lindenhurst, teachers are provided with two applications this year: Chat for Schools and Diffit for Teachers.
Chat for Schools, which is powered by Skill Struck, is a chatbot, like ChatGPT, but with built-in privacy protection and guardrails that can catch trigger words students may write such as “gun violence” or “suicide,” Freedman said. Diffit can help teachers generate lesson plans appropriate for different grade levels.
Tools used by Island districts and teachers differ. Other commonly used programs include ChatGPT, Magic School AI, Brisk Teaching and Canva. There’s also Turnitin, which does not detect plagiarism but produces a similarity report to help educators make a judgment call, according to the company.
Sy Doan, a policy researcher at Rand who co-authored the survey findings, said teachers have used AI algorithms to work on what he called “tasks around the edges.”
“There's a lot of concern that teachers are using generative AI to make full lesson plans,” Doan said. “We really haven't found that to be the case. It's things like image generation or adjusting content for certain groups or using it to make more versions of different worksheets that already exist.”
In Lindenhurst, there’s also a new course at the high school called Advanced Computer Science Principles and Artificial Intelligence, taught by Glenn Habibi. Habibi said learning how to use AI programs prepares students for a career in computer science and other fields.
“Sooner or later, they're going to have some kind of job somewhere where having the knowledge and background in AI tools is going to be worth something to them,” he said.
Fred Feraco teaches a class at Walt Whitman High School. As for guarding against the misuse of AI, he says, “You really need to get to know your students.” Credit: Rick Kopstein
The future
AJ Bolkvadze, 16 and a junior at Sanford H. Calhoun High School in Merrick, was among eight students who were in the new Artificial Intelligence With Python class on a Friday earlier this month. The course, with a focus on the computer programming language Python, was open to students from the other high schools in the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District.
AJ would like to get into video game design or coding as a career, the teen said.
“I’ve always been into video games,” AJ said after class. “I'm really excited to be a part of the future and possibly create my own video games.”
A day earlier at Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station, teacher John Karavias warned students of a different future AI could bring: One where the information presented is inaccurate.
The science teacher was visiting the class of fellow Walt Whitman High teacher Fred Feraco, who was going over some AI-powered tools for a dozen students so they could use them to help with their research projects.
The night prior, Karavias said, he had asked Google: How many clownfish have symbiotic relationships with anemones? And the AI-generated answer listed at the top of the search page was wrong.
“I have better-than-basic knowledge of clownfish and anemones. I knew it was wrong,” Karavias told the students. “But if you don't know what's wrong, you're going to put that down. And if you're not verifying it, and it's in the paper, your professor or teacher knows it. You may be called out on [it].”
Having a mistake in a school paper may be of low stake, but blindly trusting AI-generated content without verifying the information could have calamitous effect writ large.
“This is a dangerous future if you don't play it right,” Karavias concluded.
The debate
Kimberly Latko, who has taught English at Walt Whitman High for 33 years, is not opposed to using AI in school. She uses AI-driven search engines and encourages her students in a research class to use those applications to test ideas and do research. But for her AP language and composition course, she made it clear to students that there’s no place for AI there.
She sees AI’s benefits in freeing people from mundane tasks so they can focus on what’s important. But she also fears that students will use it in a way that supplants — rather than supplements — learning.
“My biggest issue with AI is that it's too easy for kids to let it do their work,” Latko said.
And she has seen it happen — students turning in work that was generated by AI. She has redesigned her curriculum and now includes a lot more handwritten assessments than she used to have in class.
She said the line for her is whether students are using it to help them learn, or blindly letting AI do the work for them.
“They need to understand how to exercise that control and to consistently remind themselves: ‘What is it I'm trying to do here? Am I trying to shortcut the learning? Or am I trying to support my learning?'” she said.
David Hendler, who teaches the AI elective at Calhoun High, said he has a similar concern but believes the solution is to teach students by using these tools.
“My concern is using it to think for you,” he said.
Teachers said that outside of giving on-paper, in-classroom assignments, it's difficult to prove that a student has used AI to do their work. To detect that, teachers need to be in tune with their students’ writing styles and learning progression, they said.
“You really need to get to know your students,” Feraco said.
Dandan Zou covers education for Newsday. Previously, she worked for a community newspaper in Maryland and a personal finance magazine in Washington, D.C.
