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Teacher v. Chatbot. My journey into the classroom in the age of AI by Peter C. Baker, read by

Adam Sims.

Two years ago, at the age of 39, I began training to be a school teacher. I wanted to teach English to help young people become stronger readers, writers, and thinkers,

with a deeper connection to literature. After 15 years of working

as a freelance writer and as a novelist, I felt confident that I had something to offer. But

the further I progressed in my training, the more uncertain I felt. One particular question

taunted me for my lack of an answer. What to do about

artificial intelligence? The immediate dilemma. What does it mean for English instruction

that all pupils now have access to free online chatbots that can produce fluid, fairly complex pros on demand?

This question sits atop a teetering pile of timeless pedagogical quandaries. What are we actually trying to do in school?

How should we go about doing it? How do we know

if we've succeeded? I was a newcomer, negotiating all of this for the first time. Throwing AI into the

mix felt like downing a coffee in the middle of a panic attack. I started frantically seeking out perspectives on AI and the English

classroom wherever I could find them, pedagogy podcasts, pedagogy substacks, pedagogy YouTube channels.

My algorithmic feeds picked up on this interest and started catering to it, serving me an apparently endless

supply of content, including endless advertising from tech companies that promised to help me think

through these urgent questions and ensure I did write by my students.

I quickly learned that this was a world of heated, often acrimonious debate.

On one side, to simplify a bit, were the AI rejectionists,

...