On February 6, 2025, Mr. Kim, an 8th-grade English teacher at St. Mary’s International School, made a surprising and bold decision of allowing students to use AI to improve their dystopian short stories. After their dystopian short stories were successful with the assistance of AI, Mr. Kim has also allowed the use of AI to write a theme analysis literary essay of a dystopian story, and currently, students are also using it to improve their journalism articles.
At the start, students were surprised by the decision being made, glancing at their screens with access to AI in hesitation, unsure whether they were avoiding work or innovating. This was because before Mr. Kim allowed the use of AI, SMIS had been strict about AI usage, and students were prohibited from using it. As a result, initially, several students expressed confusion and hesitation about using the AI in class, as it is a new experience. However, as time passed and the students noticed other students exploring the tool, they eventually got used to the application of AI in school and were more comfortable with using it.
As students enhanced their work using AI, and it became integrated into the class, the students became grateful that Mr. Kim allowed the use of AI. AI became a silent tutor and a resource that is always available, and can provide students with constructive feedback to enhance their learning and work.
After students experienced being allowed to use AI in school to help improve their work, a survey shows that 71.9% of the students want AI to be more widespread and used more in school. Many students enjoyed that Mr. Kim decided to allow students to use AI, including Go, who is a student in the 8th-grade English class where AI has been accepted. Go thought that it was “good because English can be challenging and complex, and with the assistance of AI, [he] could get feedback to improve his work”. Through receiving a lot of feedback from AI, Go could enhance his writing, which helped him receive a proficient grade in English.
However, towards the start, when writing the dystopian short story, Go was tentative about using AI. This was because he thought that “students would end up relying on AI too much, … and would become too attached to it”. So, Go felt that if he used AI, he would struggle without it, and he feared that he “would take advantage of it for every single task”. Currently, Go uses AI, and he feels that he is able to refrain from using AI when it is not necessary.
Mr. Kim allowed the use of AI because he thinks that “it’s really important for the students to learn how to use it”, because it is a new tool that will eventually be integrated into society and be used more commonly. For example, Google and laptops have been integrated into society and are now used very commonly. He believes that “it is very important for [people] to know what’s available to them… and what could assist them in their learning” (Mr. Kim).
AI can be helpful, as “students can ask it questions that they may feel embarrassed to ask a teacher… and AI is there 24/7 to assist [people]” (Mr. Kim). AI can also be beneficial, as it can “help with completing lower-level, easy, and time-consuming tasks, so that [people] can focus on the higher level, and challenging tasks” (Ishan).
However, without thoughtful use, AI poses risks that could undermine the learning that it is supposed to support. If students use AI “to do the work for them, [or] to pass off work” (Mr. Kim), it can negatively affect the students’ learning. For example, if students use AI when a teacher is trying to assess how much the student knows, so that the teacher can help them learn based on their learning, the teacher cannot help the student, as it may seem like the student knows everything.
Users should also be more cautious when using AI, as it can sometimes give false information. For example, it can “make up or summarize quotes from books” (Terry). AI can also be counterproductive, as it can cause temptations for students to simply plagiarize from AI and make it do all of the work. This can disturb the students’ learning, because if students use AI to generate everything for them without their own analysis, they won’t think for themselves about a question or assignment. This can hinder intellectual growth and promote academic dishonesty, as students may misrepresent AI-generated work as their own. This can lead to even more problems in the future, as they would become too attached and over-reliant on AI, being incapable of completing assignments or solving problems on their own.
Ultimately, as classrooms and societies evolve with emerging technologies such as AI, people must learn how to harness these tools, while understanding the cruciality of using them responsibly and being educated on the dangers of using them without attentive consideration. Through utilizing AI responsibly with careful thought, it can assist people in various aspects and overall improve society as a whole.
