AI technology is moving fast. Learning, reading, and writing still takes some time. From American

Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino. It's been almost exactly two years since ChatGPT burst onto the scene and made teachers' lives a whole lot harder.

A report from Common Sense media earlier this fall showed 70% of grade school students use AI in some way for school or fun. But a majority

of those students' parents and teachers were unaware. Lila Welles is a 7th and 8th grade

English teacher at Arts Space Charter School in North Carolina. And she recently asked her students

how they use the technology.

I took a poll, and they admitted almost to a person using AI in all sorts of ways from the

adorably innocuous, such as using them to help edit a TikTok video, you know, generating a pumpkin template so that they could carve a

jack-a-lantern. I mean, you know, there are some cute things that they do with it. But then there

were some in the gray area like getting AI to brainstorm for you, which I found problematic, but then

there are some kids who's just straight up cheated. I mean, they

admitted absolutely to pleasureism and using AI to write paragraphs for them and turning those

paragraphs in to be scored as if the work was their own. Has this changed the way that you

teach at all? That's an interesting question. I have conflicted feelings about the

technology. I don't want to completely ignore it. I think it serves a purpose sometimes. But I guess,

you know, if you've ever heard of the, there's like, there's fast food and then there's sort of

its counterpart, the slow food movement.

I would say that that same idea applies. What I'm discovering is that I'm tending to dig my heels in

more and almost like create a slow education movement in my classroom where I want them to do these things for

themselves. I want to increase their stamina. There's an expectation of students that things should be

easy, entertaining, immediately accessible, and if it isn't, they quit. And so my job is to teach them, hey, you know, give this more than five or ten minutes.

This is a difficult task you're doing.

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