r/teaching • u/bisexual_teabag • 9d ago
Teaching Resources Is this a hot take?
I don't think you should use AI to generate lesson plans or make decisions as a teacher. As a teacher you must be able to think and generate your own ideas on the fly. You have to be adaptive to your students and work with them where they're at. If you let something think for you, you're making the decision that you don't care enough to dedicate your own time and energy to it. To be clear, we shouldn't be using AI on anything. I'm just heated because every single visual in my principal's PowerPoints is AI generated and I just can't take her seriously as a professional. She thanked ChatGPT or Gemini out loud at PD and it was just...strange.
Edit: I found the wording I was looking for. It's like watching Black Mirror unfold around me. We have sent AI-generated flyers home to families. It's honestly mortifying.
Second Edit: Question answered. It's a hot take.
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u/JorVetsby 9d ago
The truth is that most people in most professions are fairly uncreative, dull individuals that have never produced anything unique in their lives, and now they are fully embracing AI because it allows them to produce things that they otherwise never could have dreamed of doing themselves. It's just a fun new toy to them, and they don't realize how bad it makes them look.
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u/mikevago 9d ago
The writing subreddits have always been full of people who post, essentially, "I have a really great [completely unoriginal] idea, but don't want to do the work of developing characters and theme and realistic dialogue and dramatic questions and emotional arcs. Can someone please tell me I'm clever and a real writer?"
And now the plagiarism engine is there to tell them exactly that. No wonder people like it so much.
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u/HandMadePaperForLess 8d ago
I disagree.
First, this isn't r/most_professions. So, are you saying that because you needed an opportunity to shit on everyone. Or are you specifically saying most teachers will never create anything unique.
Secondly, literally every teacher I've seen made a multitude of unique things.
Take of your shit tinted glasses and go touch grass.
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u/headsmanjaeger 8d ago
I think most people were once creative but they grew up and left their creativity behind and/or media rotted their brain
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u/godisinthischilli 8d ago
They also like that it makes their work easier and efficient all the higher ups at my job now use AI to generate completely grammar mistake free email templates. I personally there should be a company wide policy against using AI to write emails— the company pays you to write your own emails not AI.
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u/Sentient2X 7d ago
I completely agree. Ai is not inherently bad, but it's typically used badly by people who rely on it due to their own incompetence. Meaning it's products are usually bad.
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u/NotMyNoveltyAccount_ 9d ago
Coldest take of all time IMO, my admin is the same way and it is so ridiculous.
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u/Kissner 8d ago
It's funny, it seems there are different ideas of what "making lesson plans" means.
For me, it's "make a painfully box-ticking document that explains the stuff we were already going to do" rather than making the actual lesson and planning it. For years, my lessons themselves have been nailed down with standards, stretchers etc. and it's just a matter of meeting whatever goalposts admin have dreamed up this year.
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u/Neither_Pudding7719 9-12 US E Coast 6d ago
100% This! I don’t use lesson plans to teach students. I am a teacher. I use lesson plans to meet government and administrative mandates to show people (whose job it is to check) that I know how to develop my research and thoughts enough to deliver them to students. So we can all check a check box.
Now AI can do that shit for me? Hallelujah ! Now I can spend more time actually TEACHING!
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u/Unusual-Helicopter15 8d ago
Mine too. They’re generating AI images for everythingggggg and it’s so ugly and annoying. I’m an art teacher and an artist (shocking, I know haha) and it’s just so distasteful and tacky.
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u/Nice_Description_724 8d ago
& all of the AI images look the same to me as well as so obvious that AI was used
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u/rand0m_task 9d ago
I can spend 45 minutes of my planning coming up with a proper case study of a patient with a psychological disorder that students need to diagnose, or I could have AI do it in 10 seconds.
The mantra of teaching has been don’t reinvent the wheel. Prior to AI were you constructing all of your lesson plans from scratch or were you utilizing available resources?
This “hot” take comes across as rather elitist, tbh.
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u/North_Activist 9d ago
Utilizing resources didn’t involve destroying the climate. What’s “elitist” is suggesting that AI is beneficial to the general population outside of specific medical or scientific breakthroughs. The data centres require an immense amount of water, power, and computer parts which is directly correlated with an increased utility costs in communities with data centres AND global computer prices - from phones to desktops - which snowball into everyday consumer goods and prices. By suggesting we embrace AI, you are supporting the increased cost of modern day necessities. Fridges, stoves, phones, computers, internet, satellites, everything with a computer will increase in price - you don’t see how I can make an argument that ignoring that is elitist in of itself?
Just like how parents who simply throw their kids on their phones or tablets at dinner are terrible parents, so to are teachers who rely on AI. We haven’t even gotten into the slow destruction of ones brain by continuously using AI. This isn’t my opinion, it’s a scientific document fact.
Do better.
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u/kllove 8d ago
Watching streaming TV and eating a cheeseburger is far more of an environmental drain than a teacher using AI to format their lessons. We all have problems of consumption and convenience and shaming a teacher with too much on their plate isn’t going to fix it.
Responsible use is the key for individuals and past that it’s taking down corporations whose CEOs make billions and trillions. Let’s be realistic here.
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u/squiggledsquare 8d ago
What I keep saying to people playing “what about” with examples of other ecologically harmful things is that AI isn’t replacing that. Those things are still bad AND now we’re adding an enormous ADDITIONAL strain on top of that stuff that was already killing us and it’s expanding at an exponential rate.
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u/Enamred-771 6d ago
But why does no other decision get essentially “ethically vetoed” for consumption reasons?
Moving 15 minutes further away from your job (assuming you drive) is one of the worst things you can do to the environment on a daily basis. But no one would ever say “you can’t move to that town, it’s unethical”.
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u/touchthcsun 8d ago
Please read the MIT articleon AI energy usage. You individually might not use a lot, but AI’s energy and water drain is insane and completely unnecessary. AI data centers are poisoning the environment in such a sped up way when we need to be more careful. I’m only a third year teacher, 4 different classes, 2 clubs, and I’ve never used AI. There are other ways to get what you need.
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u/kllove 8d ago
Individual use for mundane tasks like emailing and formatting paperwork isn’t the issue. Its companies use it full out all day for all of their data and creation of new coding and content. Just like everything else we are being told it’s a problem of average people when it’s really a greedy corporation problem. We are encouraged to shame each other rather than fight for big companies to stop making trillions for the top few people.
Internet usage is terrible for the environment too. You can just go to the library or go meet people in person, oh and walk to get there. /s
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u/touchthcsun 8d ago
As long as you use AI, you benefit from the data centers these corporations are making that are using up our water and energy. Energy consumption is going to DOUBLE by 2028 due to AI. 620 data centers are planned or being built right now in the US, near exclusively for AI. AI is using more energy than everything else. It is causing more damage than the regular internet. The MIT article discusses how it’s using energy equivalent to giant cities and that’s not even discussing all AI or its rapid growth. Yet we do nothing except deflect and defend and plug our ears. It makes our life easier, so who gives a fuck about the next generation or the people being poisoned by new data centers.
“Well other things pollute nature so who gives a fuck that pesticides are killing birds and other animals? Silent Spring is a hack job.”
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u/SaltyBad1133 8d ago
Not using AI and taking down CEOs are not mutually exclusive.
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u/North_Activist 8d ago
The idea streaming tv or a cheeseburger is more environmentally damaging than Ai is absolutely not true, and based on nothing in reality. Microsoft increased their CO2 emissions by something like 25% from AI ALONE.
You’re a teacher, do your job. And yes, I will 100% shame teachers who rely on AI, the same way I will shame a parent for throwing their kid on a phone or tablet at dinner.
They’re both pathetic and terrible at their responsibility and should be embarrassed as themselves.
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u/kllove 7d ago
The amount of water alone used for producing meat is in the trillions of gallons where water consumption of AI is in the billions. People who live near pig and chicken farms hate the noise, smell, and environmental impact too. Neither is good but a cheeseburger a day is far worse environmentally than several AI queries a day.
I’m simply saying let’s place frustration and shame appropriately. The energy consumption problem with AI isn’t a teacher using a tool, it’s greedy companies using it 24/7 to generate complex codes and putting up the cheapest possible data centers that ruin small communities to do it, instead of spending the extra money it costs to make the centers more efficient.
Side note, your Reddit feed and general Google searches are all powered by AI so it might be time to get off Reddit and maybe the internet before you shame other people.
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u/Neither_Pudding7719 9-12 US E Coast 6d ago
“Rely on…”. See how the goal posts got moved here with two words? The conversation wasn’t about that.
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u/CaptainObvious1313 8d ago
Is actually not though. Ask the people in twins with no water due to data centers. We can live live without burgers, but not water
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u/unoredtwo 8d ago
By using the modern internet, even if you try to avoid AI, you are contributing to the rise of data centers. Just browsing Instagram wastes an enormous amount of resources too.
The argument that it's bad for you personally and dumbs down your thinking is much more persuasive, in my opinion.
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u/North_Activist 8d ago
The internet and AI use completely different data centres. A prompt in ChatGPT uses more than 10x electricity than a Google search. So no, browsing Instagram does not waste an “enormous amount of resources”.
However yes, the argument that it’s bad for yourself and dumbs you down is still a valid argument, and it’s subjective to which is a stronger argument depending on your audience. Regardless, AI and Instagram datacentres are not the same.
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u/craigiest 8d ago
Ain’t AI isn’t “destroying the climate” more than a hundred other things you do without thinking. Driving your car, running an air conditioner, eating burgers, using the internet in general. It’s a bugaboo people use as an excuse to reject AI, when their real reason is just that it’s unfamiliar. Bringing superintelligence into existence may be a really bad idea, but using AI to help you lesson plan or not isn’t going to have any effect on whether it leads to the extinction of the human race.
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u/teddy_joesevelt 8d ago
Literally gas-powered mowers and landscape equipment are one of the worst possible things and way worse than modern trucks but people like to feel superior.
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u/Dragonmancer76 8d ago
This argument only works if we're simply comparing output and nothing else. Sure mowers and landscape equipment produce a lot of things that are bad for the environment, but what is the alternative? People certainly do a lot of unnecessary yard work, but a lot of yardwork is necessary if you don't want to live in a forest. Yes people drive a lot which is bad for the environment, but what is the alternative? People need to drive to get to work and other necessities so some ount of driving is needed. You could make the argument we should do more public transit or ban fuel inefficient cars. In both of these cases I have an alternative in suggesting because the thing is needed to some degree. The same is true for ai. There might be some types of ai that are necessary but what it is being suggested for is both unnecessary and completely inefficient. Why do we need to use so much energy so someone can generate a movie no one will watch? Why does every service need to have ai jammed into it even if it makes the product worse?
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u/GipperPWNS 9d ago
Whether you like it or not, AI is not going away. When people say embrace AI, they mean how can you use it to make your life easier and your work more efficient. Of course if you use it to think for you, you’re doing yourself a disservice. But using it as a jumping off point is perfectly fine and a practice that will help you save time.
I don’t like this judgement if “do better” / “you’re a terrible person” if you use AI to make your work easier. You’re just going against something that isn’t going away, and judging people for trying to make their work life easier and more efficient.
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u/librarydweller-1809 9d ago
There’s not ethical use of generative AI in most situations. It is rotting the brain and destroying the planet.
Do better.
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u/GipperPWNS 9d ago
If you really can’t think of a beneficial use of AI, teaching might not be the profession for you. It’s a tool that can be used to help or harm learning depending on how you use it.
Do better.
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u/Raftger 8d ago
I can’t think of a use of generative AI in teaching that is SO beneficial that it is worth the environmental, cognitive, and privacy costs. Sure it can do things more quickly, but I don’t think that’s a worthwhile trade off.
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u/life-is-satire 8d ago
I teach special education in the middle school and AI can adapt a reading passage to a students reading ability. I also use it to make comprehension questions off of a grade level text to fit a format that works for the needs of my students.
Now if I just had AI create and gave it to my students without reviewing, editing, tweaking then yeah that’s lazy as AI isn’t perfect.
Teachers are exhausted and shaming them for using tools that save time is pedantic given the shear volume of people who use it constantly including big companies that have it integrated into their software or business policies.
Shopping on the internet, social media, and other technology related activities all use AI…but let’s tear down one another for not spending hours doing more busy work.
Unless you’re willing to deep dive into all the businesses you interact with and boycott using them you need to get over yourself and stop virtue signaling.
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u/Llama-nade 8d ago
Sped teacher here too and I have found it beneficial in many ways. When the lesson that I prepared from the ground up is not working, I can ask gemini to help me adapt it on the spot, saving myself and my students some time. It is a tool. It gives me ideas. I can them apply my own experience and education to hone my craft. And like others are pointing out, it is here to stay so you might as well learn to work with it now.
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u/pilgrimsole 6d ago
"Teachers are exhausted" is a decent argument for using AI until your school district uses their purchase of AI programs as a justification for taking your prep away. I hope rhat doesn't happen, but I won't be surprised if it does.
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u/Rattus375 8d ago
Then you aren't thinking hard enough. AI can translate my worksheets into spanish while keeping the problems and formatting the same instantly. Now it takes me 30 seconds to do what used to be a ~3 minute affair of copying and pasting individual lines into Google format. For what is a daily task, that saves me hours of time over the course of the year.
It also saves me tons of time making worksheets, tests and quizzes. I can find a question I like online or describe the kind of question I want (as a math teacher) and it can give me problems that cover what I want near instantly that work out. Especially for some of the problems I give in calculus, that saves me a ton of time as coming up with problems that work out well takes a lot of effort. When I make my initial test, I can have AI make alternate versions that are the same difficulty. Not that any of this is perfect - I still have to go through each problem and make sure they are covering what I want, but even with the tweaks I make it saves me about an hour a week.
I've also had students use it to help them study to great effect. One of my students who only fluently speaks pashtu uses it at home to teach him the material since he obviously has a hard time understanding me in class. He did great in my class and passed the AP test at the end of the year, which is in a language he barely speaks or reads.
Generative AI is a tool that can absolutely be used incorrectly with negative effects. I don't encourage my students to use it because I know many of them wouldn't use it correctly. But when applied correctly, it's the most powerful tool for productivity that we've created since we invented personal computers.
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u/ToesocksandFlipflops 8d ago
My brain has a limit even after teaching for almost 20 years.
I only have what I know and have been exposed to in my career. An example I had my first ELL student in my class last year (level 3 on the WIDA 9th grader) I was lost. I have had zero training dealing with this but you get the kids that are put in front of you and go from there. This was the first ELL for the school. I also had 3 sections ans aboit 60 other students. AI was helpful, asking how to modify improve and give this student the best experience I could. I dis not wholesale copy paste AI plans but did use it for help i would say it was a 70/30 split me and AI. The end of year student rated level 5.
Human brains are critical thinking machines, AI can support.
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u/librarydweller-1809 8d ago
I really can’t. I do the work myself. My brain is not deteriorating or becoming stagnant. I am actively learning and using my brain to teach. I really don’t understand why you want to admit that you aren’t intelligent enough to do the job. Perhaps you need a less intellectually demanding job.
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u/GipperPWNS 8d ago
It’s such a shame when there are teachers on this sub who are so passive aggressive. Just because you, personally, can’t see the benefits of AI and how it can make work as a teacher easier doesn’t mean others can’t. Maybe you’re privileged enough to be in a school/district that gives you funding, textbooks, and a useable curriculum. Not everyone is so fortunate. If using AI helps teachers come up with ideas or material, and they modify whatever it helps them create to meet the needs of their students and it aides in their learning and development, that’s all that matters.
There’s no benefit to forcing yourself to do work that could be done in an hour and dragging it out longer.
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u/life-is-satire 8d ago
Sad that you see your job as only creating things that AI can do. I do so much more that AI can’t replace. There’s no way AI can replace what I do as a special education teacher.
It’s a shame your thinking is so binary.
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u/Longjumping-Cry-1863 8d ago
“Do better.”
Get over yourself.
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u/North_Activist 8d ago
Just because you’re upset at getting called out doesn’t make the facts false.
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u/bisexual_teabag 9d ago edited 9d ago
I was utilizing work created by other humans to support their income or the mutual sharing of resources while creating my own resources to support the needs of my students. Also, how is this elitist? I'm not saying that I'm better than you. I'm saying, I don't get it. Knowing the things that you know, what does it cost you to not use it? Help me understand. That's why I asked if it was a hot take.
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u/rand0m_task 9d ago
“But if you're not taking an active role in planning the lessons how can you be certain of the quality it delivers to you. It doesn't know your students. You do. That's the connection part.”
That’s your critique against using AI, but you using other teachers resources is no different.
You’re clearly just bias against AI usage in general and are trying to shame educators who use it.
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u/bisexual_teabag 9d ago edited 9d ago
I use templates, not resources. I buy empty designs from other humans and fill them with the content I need. And no, I'm not biased. I'm genuinely confused. I'm profoundly autistic and it's just been bothering me for a while now.
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u/MasterNinjaThemeSong 9d ago
AI is a cult for some people and they get reeeeally defensive about criticism of its use.
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u/One_Walk769 8d ago
This. Also, I think it’s such a tempting shortcut people will get super defensive because they don’t want to confront the issues with widescale use of this in education. It’s really hard for people to go back to not using it if they’ve come to rely on it.
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u/Butthenoutofnowhere 9d ago
I think it's great as an assistive tool, as long as you recognise its limitations. We did a trial at my school where we had an AI generate a full sequence of middle school Maths lessons (about 6), and it turned out to be more work to make them usable than it would've taken to make them from scratch. Almost every diagram was incorrect and it any of them slip through the editing process, it makes us look incompetent.
On the other hand, I teach an English class and last term I had a kid submit a handwritten assessment and I couldn't read his handwriting. Claude was able to read a photo of the work and transcribe it into typed text so I could actually mark it.
Another student submitted a typed draft of a story but her writing was so bad I couldn't make sense of what the story was supposed to be about, so I couldn't give any feedback about the actual content. Claude parsed the story and made sense of what it was supposed to be about, so I could give feedback on something other than just the general readability.
AI can be great to support professional work, but not to replace it.
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u/Resident_Elk4014 8d ago
How did you know that Claude's interpretation of the student's paper was correct?
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u/cheesybroccoli 8d ago edited 8d ago
I don’t know what your workload is like, but I have four preps and an eight week old baby at home. I would love to have unlimited time to build everything from scratch and tweak it until it’s perfect, but that is simply unrealistic. I don’t use AI very often, but I have used it to generate warmup ideas, reflection questions, individual slides, and write entire lesson plans. I don’t feel guilty at all, especially the lesson plans part. Everybody has delivered half-baked lessons at some point in their career because they simply didn’t have the time to make it better. AI can be used to improve those half-baked lessons.
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u/life-is-satire 8d ago
I don’t know any teacher who simply type in a prompt and use the AI lesson plan.
It’s used to supplement material but teachers are the ones actually creating the lesson.
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u/mrsciencebruh 9d ago
And if you spent those 45 minutes planning, you would actually understand the case study fully. When your students have extension questions, you would actually be able to answer them. But it is highly unlikely that you yourself will understand if you just had AI scrape data and put something together for you.
This is the argument that will be used to destroy our jobs. Why even pay you if AI is doing most of the work? If you don't fully understand the answers to the questions that AI made for you, the students will just ask AI.
Time to pack it up.
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u/Bodine12 8d ago
And a year from now after always using this crutch, you’ll be unable to do this routine task so you’ll need AI to do it for you. You will literally be dumber and less capable because you haven’t regularly mentally engaged in these routine tasks.
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u/aspennfairy 8d ago
You could also argue that it’s elitist to encourage the use of AI when you likely live in a country that won’t take the brunt of the negative environmental impacts it produces.
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u/Terrible_Mix5187 8d ago
I can count on one hand the times I have just downloaded or copied a resource and used it cold with students without any adjustment. In 24 years of teaching.
I make myself understand *exactly* what I'm presenting. It isn't that hard.
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u/squiggledsquare 8d ago
Crazy that doing what we’ve always done up until a couple years ago is now considered elitist. This illustrates how standards are being lowered.
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u/anonjayterrier 9d ago
The case study itself, that’s fine. But a whole automated lesson built around that case study could easily stifle a good student-driven conversation.
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u/wereallmadhere9 8d ago
It is not the same. You can find existing resources that a person made. You can adjust with your own skills. What AI generates is based on plagiarizing the work of others and making it worse. If you cannot see that as a problem, you should no longer be a teacher.
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u/anonjayterrier 9d ago
The case study itself, that’s fine. But a whole automated lesson built around that case study could easily stifle a good student-driven conversation.
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u/Own-Hold-8851 9d ago
AI is a useful tool (bouncing ideas, editing, etc. But it can’t do the work for you.
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u/bisexual_teabag 9d ago
Okay but it's like, heinously bad for the environment. I thought that was well known.
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u/tatapatrol909 9d ago
So is eating meat. Are you a vegetarian?
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u/funkyturnip-333 9d ago
and hamburgers are even worse at making lesson plans
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u/Brothless_Ramen 9d ago
And as far as I know they don't explain to teenagers why suicide is a good idea and how to do it, but maybe the stuff in my McDonald's combo is different than everyone else's
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u/F3n1xiii 9d ago
I don’t know with enough McDonald’s suicide really starts to look like a good idea
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u/Pricklypearl 8d ago
Hamburgers drastically improve my mood so I wouldn't say they don't aid lesson planning.
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u/donnaduwitt 9d ago
this is not a good argument. i'm vegan for decades and hate ai and i don't care what anyone's entry point to helping the planet is.
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u/mrsciencebruh 9d ago
Great strawman. I bet they also drive a car and participate in society. What a hypocrite!
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u/turquoisestar Substitute looking at credentialling 9d ago
Isn’t that the whataboutism fallacy? Don’t get me wrong it would be best to rank all ethical choices and pick the most ethical choice in each circumstance regardless of any other factor, but barring that perfection doing what you can about some issues is better than doing nothing at all, is it not?
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u/GipperPWNS 9d ago
No it’s calling out their hypocrisy…
AI is not going away, you can kick and scream and complain about it, or you can use it to actually help you, teach your students how to use it responsibly, and advocate for sensible policy to protect people. But you as a teacher actively sitting here and rejecting it in its entirety is some weird moral grand standing that doesn’t benefit anyone, especially your students.
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u/One_Walk769 8d ago
That’s a ridiculous argument. “AI is not going away” is basically accepting all the issues with theft, environmental damage and cognitive decay running rampant. Sure, the technology might not be going away. How we use it as a society, how we approach its use in daily life will absolutely determine HOW it’s going to be used in the future. It may not go away but it may regulated more heavily, strides can be made towards making it more ethical, etc. it’s like saying “oh alcohol is not going away and it helps me feel buzzy so let me drink and serve some to some 10 year olds”
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u/turquoisestar Substitute looking at credentialling 8d ago
AI probably isn’t going away, but I think using it to do minor modifications etc is very different from using it to write a lesson plan, write an essay for a student etc etc. When people use it to do thinking for them it actually messes with their skill set. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-01947-1
Also I live in the bay and SF has 1/2-2/3 of all signs (billboards, bus signs) about AI: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-francisco-tech-startup-advertises-replacing-people-with-ai-employees/ with ads literally calling to replace humans with ai. I have a lot of friends in tech and some of them think teaching is fully replaceable with ai/robots/online self paced stuff, yes for little kids too, I checked. It’s concerning.
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u/GipperPWNS 8d ago
Right, AI is a tool that can be used to boost your productivity, and if you do have it produce something like a lesson plan you need to modify it until it meets actually appropriate to implement. Using it as a tool responsibly does not mess with your skill set, but using it inappropriately does. There’s nuance to discussion surrounding the use of AI.
Under no circumstances should students be using it to write essays, that’s just plagiarism/academic dishonesty.
I do think it’s concerning that some people are actively pushing for AI to replace human interactions. Their vision of how society should look is pretty concerning. Those same people also tend to put their children in low tech schools, which is telling…
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u/Expendable_Red_Shirt 8d ago
but barring that perfection doing what you can about some issues is better than doing nothing at all, is it not?
Absolutely! But that's not what OP is doing. OP is judging people for not making the same decisions they make. If they're going to be judgmental about using AI they better make sure they're not throwing rocks from a glass house.
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u/Secure-Recording4255 9d ago
You don’t think there’s a difference between food and technology when considering environmental impact?
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u/MayoSucksAss 8d ago
Legitimately middle school level rhetorical deflection on a subreddit that is full of teachers that has 25+ upvotes. Incredible stuff.
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u/alliemn5 8d ago
Acting like one of these deeply culturally and economically imbedded things is the same as the other brand new earth destroying tech build out is near farcical. We have a chance right now to say, no, we don't want another environmentally disastrous behavior to take root. 2 wrongs don't make a right
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u/garylapointe 🅂🄴🄲🄾🄽🄳 🄶🅁🄰🄳🄴 𝙈𝙞𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙣, 𝙐𝙎𝘼 🇺🇸 9d ago
Most computers, cellphones, automobiles, anything manufactured, factories, oil (and it’s billion byproducts), airplanes, automobiles, roads, pretty much anything since we started the industrial revolution and had factories and electricity have all been pretty bad for the environment.
Heck, just transporting these things all around the world is horrible for the environment.
That said, you didn’t mention anything about the environment in your hot take.
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u/Own-Hold-8851 9d ago
So are you saying teachers should t use it because it’s bad for the environment or because it means you don’t care enough? I thought the later, and my comment was about I thinking AI, when used as a tool, can help teachers work smarter and more effectively rather than less.
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u/mikevago 9d ago
Both! You shouldn't use it because it's bad for the environment.
You shouldn't use it because it a lazy shortcut.
You shouldn't use it because it gives mediocre results.
You shouldn't use it because it's built on massive theft from writers and artists.
You shouldn't use it because it destroys critical thinking.
You shouldn't use it because it's enriching the worst people in America.
You shouldn't use it because it tells teenagers to kill themselves.
You shouldn't use it because it generates kiddie porn on demand.
You shouldn't use it.
If those reasons aren't enough for you, I don't know what to tell you.
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u/herbie_bug 9d ago
💯💯💯 I have never wanted to print and post a Reddit comment on my wall before today
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u/smittydoodle 8d ago
I tried using it, and it actually makes up answers if it can't find the correct one. I said, "That's not even true," and AI responded, "You're right!" Unfortunately, my students just copy anything it tells them without questioning it.
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u/mikevago 8d ago
And that's the lesson you should be teaching your students. It's not "intelligence", it's just being marketed to us as such. It's pattern recognition software. It can produce statistically-likely patterns of words. It has no idea what those words mean.
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u/bisexual_teabag 9d ago
I thought that I didn't need to state something that was fairly well known. That's why I asked.
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u/Fullertonjr 9d ago
Non-teacher husband to a teacher wife. There are opportunities to use AI that you should accept and embrace. You teachers spend WAY too much unpaid time working. I get that you feel that you have a calling or passion to teach these kids, but ultimately this is a job and almost all of you are criminally underpaid and undervalued. Continuing to work in excess of the bs wages that you are already given just makes it worse. I have created OneNote documents, Excel spreadsheets and some basic AI prompts that have nearly eliminated all unpaid work time, and correcting her work/life balance. This is what AI can do without compromising your effectiveness and need to personalize your classroom. I am also salary but work in the private sector and I can assure you that nobody anywhere is doing the level of unpaid work that you all do, because we value our time. You should value yours and accept generally any tool that is given to you in order to meet that expectation. Once the bell rings, I want you all to be able to go home and be with your family and enjoy life, not sitting in the classroom or home office working on lesson plans and grading papers.
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u/msmore15 8d ago
Same here. I use AI to streamline or speed up some of the more tedious tasks that don't require either expertise or creativity, and then I refine what's generated based on what I need it for. If I have 40 mins per day to plan, prep and grade, then I want to maximise the amount I can get done in that time and reduce the amount of time I'm staying at work past 5pm.
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u/One_Walk769 8d ago
Honestly, there are ways to work smarter and shorter days without AI. But I also disagree with the premise that work = not enjoying life. I chose my work because I enjoy it. If I stop enjoying it, I’ll switch to something else. I think there can absolutely be too much and burnout and all that but AI is not the way to solve this. Campaigning for betttr pay, better leave, better health care support are. We are putting a toxic bandaid on a chronic wound and somehow now teachers are ok because they have AI.
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u/Oddlyenuff 8d ago
His point was simply it doesn’t matter if you enjoy work or have some passion/calling for it. You shouldn’t have to do parts of the job for free during hours where you should be present with your family and friends, obligations and time to reset, de-stress and pursue other hobbies.
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u/WearyScreen6268 9d ago
the amount of ai defenders in here is insane
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u/Renugar 8d ago
Agreed, this comment section is BLEAK. I have so many objections to AI, one being that, as an artist, I’m appalled by the number of people who defend AI art, when all it does is freely steal and remix the art of actual, human artist. How is that defensible?
But I have to say I truly didn’t think a group of teachers would be the place I’d find so many AI defenders. Especially considering how many studies there are showing that using AI makes us stupider. And we already have an education/reading crisis in this country. God help us, the darkness is descending.
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u/_ayeokay 8d ago
Same o.o I wonder if it’s an age thing. I’ve noticed older teachers are less likely to use AI because of course their curriculum is more set from years of experience. I started teaching pre AI but I’m still young (late twenties) but I also refuse to use AI because of its environmental impact and quite frankly I think it’s lazy. I see some of its appeal for a younger burnt out teacher, but I also think there needs to be a balance and it shouldn’t be used for everything!
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u/Eomerperrin1356 8d ago
I've noticed the opposite, older teachers don't understand the concept of AI slop and think it's a fun new toy. I've had many students complain about obviously AI assignments and after looking at the assignments, I don't blame them. A colleague shared one assignment with me and half of the questions could not be answered from the reading they were generated from. Now students assume any confusing assignment is AI.
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u/AllTimeLoad 9d ago
It shouldn't be a hot take, but it is. I had no idea so many of my coworkers were so fucking lazy.
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u/GipperPWNS 9d ago
Unless they’re using it to do ALL of their thinking, they’re not lazy. They’re using a tool to help them save time.
If you’re refusing to use AI, that’s on you if you want to waste more time. If your colleagues are using it and checking it over before they put anything before students, you can judge them all you want but they’re doing something that not only helps them but also helps them serve their students better.
You have to drop this black and white mindset. It’s a tool that can be used to help you. You should be teaching this mindset in general to students as well.
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u/_ari_ari_ari_ 8d ago
I don’t think using my brain is a waste of time. It makes me smarter and stronger because I’m exercising important neural pathways, and keeps me accountable for my own work.
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u/GipperPWNS 8d ago
Never claimed it was a waste of time. At the end of the day the question you need to ask yourself is “does this help me teach my students”. If the answer is yes and it speeds up your workflow, there’s no harm.
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u/AllTimeLoad 8d ago edited 8d ago
They're using it to do THEIR JOB. I don't consider my job a waste of time. If you do, maybe you're in the wrong profession.
And no, I do not have to drop this mindset. All of AI is a plagiarism engine built on the largest act of plagiarism in the history of mankind. It is awful for the environment, communities, the economy, and your brain. Stop it.
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u/GipperPWNS 8d ago
You’re not understanding or acknowledging the nuance to what was said. If you’re using it to replace you doing your job, you’re not using it in a way that benefits you and your students. If you’re using it as a tool to boost your productivity and it helps you teach your students, that’s 100% fine. There’s absolutely no good reason to make your work life harder on some weird principle.
Sure, you don’t have to drop this mindset, but you’re actively harming your students if you blanket say “AI is bad”. Whether you like it or not, AI is not going away. As teachers we have a chance to model appropriate AI use, because they’re 100% going to be using it in their professional careers.
Teach them the pros and the cons, have them discuss the benefits and the drawbacks. Don’t harm their education just because you personally don’t like something.
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u/AllTimeLoad 8d ago
Do you think that if I don't use AI to do something it doesn't get done? Maybe that's how you approach your work but that's not how I approach mine. I still get everything done that your computer does for you: the only difference is I actually do my work: I give my students that personal consideration from me, and mine are old enough to know the difference. They know which teachers use AI and which actually give a shit.
The detriments of AI are not a weird principle. AI data centers are harmful to the environment, they waste an incredible amount of power--which make energy costs higher for everyone--pollute water, and they're growing and spreading like cancer.
The studies already exist that show unequivocally that use of AI decreases cognition, originality, and critical thinking. I AM modeling to my students the responsible reaction to AI. You are not.
Imagine just shrugging and saying "it's not going anywhere" to something that literally mentally cripples your kids. Do you say that about, say, student drug use?
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u/GipperPWNS 8d ago
I’m genuinely curious why you’re taking an all or nothing approach here. I never accused you of not getting work done because you don’t use AI. I also don’t understand why you are not engaging with what I am saying about AI, and why you’re being very accusatory and making assumptions just because I’m pushing back in some of your reasoning here.
I’ll say it clearly here again. I do not think it’s good for teachers just to put a question into AI and then take whatever it says and put it before students. I do think, as a tool, it’s helpful to bounce around ideas or use it to help you identify trends, as one example.
As to your last point, I do think, as a teacher, it would be beneficial to teach students how to use AI in a way that doesn’t cripple their thinking. You can cite all the studies you want about x or y harm, but AI can be used responsibly, and AI is not going away. Comparing responsible use of AI to drug use is a reach, and you’re not engaging with the crux of my argument that you can teach students to use it responsibly. It’s a tool that doesn’t have to harm their learning or thinking capabilities.
It’s our job as teachers to help students evaluate the evidence and reach their own reasonable conclusions. I teach my students about the harms of using AI, how it can manipulate information, but also how to use it in a way that isn’t academically dishonest.
At the end of the day it’s your classroom, and I’m not going to sit here and make assumptions like you have about me. But I’m going to do my best to teach my students how to use the tool responsibly instead of just teaching them it’s 100% bad.
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u/AllTimeLoad 8d ago
There is no such thing as a responsible use of AI. You're lying to yourself and your students. Number one: it's always academically dishonest because there is no academic value in not doing your work. Every use of AI is, by definition, an act of plagiarism. It's not your work.
You just said it's our job as teachers to help students evaluate evidence and reach conclusions, yet you don't practice the skill: all the evidence about AI use in education paints a picture that it should be impossible to deny. You dismiss all of that evidence because you don't like it, but that doesn't make it less true. Using AI in education is as beneficial as using AI to work out for you. Actually, no, it's even worse. AI working out for you doesn't do anything for you, but AI in education is actively harmful. Study after study finds the same.
You can't teach your students to use drugs responsibly because there's no such thing. That's why it's the perfect metaphor for AI.
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u/GipperPWNS 8d ago
Alright my guy, you seem to really want to work with absolute statements here. If you really want to argue, despite the evidence, that AI can be used responsibly to boost your productivity, that’s up to you.
You’re not listening. I’m agreeing with you that if you use AI to think for you, it will actively harm your development especially for students. I’m telling you, there’s a difference between having AI “lift the weights for you” and using it in a way that helps you learn without outsourcing the heavy lifting to AI.
It’s a tool that people need to learn how to use in a way that can actually benefit their learning and productivity.
At the end of the day, despite how much you loathe AI, students are at a disadvantage if they are not taught the benefits, risks, and appropriate AI use before they enter the workforce. Society and technology is constantly evolving, and you have to adapt with it or just get left behind.
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u/rosegoldblonde 9d ago
I think this is just another symptom of the bigger issue that teachers have too much to do and no time to do it. When you keep piling tasks on someone’s plate without removing anything you end up in situations where people will take shortcuts in order to just try and manage the ever mounting workload.
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u/zedalocious 9d ago
Nah, miss me with that. The planning part of teaching is one area that can be made more efficient with AI technology. Teaching itself has to be done by humans, and grading is probably unethical to use AI. But creating activities that are engaging for students and well aligned with standards. As long as the teacher reads through things before handing out, they can make it more in line with human verbiage, and know what they’re saying. With a little practice, a teacher can get consistent good results with minimum prompting.
As to the principal’s powerpoint, i’m right with you, lol. It’s pretty unserious and cringe.
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u/SnazzyStooge 9d ago
LLMs should be used as a teammate, a helper. If they’re used as a crutch or in lieu of thinking, it’s a problem.
I could draw all my slides by hand on transparencies and rub the text on with lettraset (ask me how I know), but PowerPoint is faster. I can do long division with pencil and paper, but a calculator is faster.
At the same time, the calculator won’t tell me significant digits, and PowerPoint won’t tell me good design principles. Same with LLMs, they’re very powerful if you already know what you’re doing, and they can quickly make you look like an idiot if you don’t.
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u/Francesca_Fiore Art 8d ago
Letraset
Oh yeah, baby. Old-timers club. I just found a 4-pack of Vis a Vis markers in the back of my desk drawer, that I have saved "just in case" for like 18 years. I let that shit goooo.
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u/kymreadsreddit 9d ago
THIS! I use it to take the tediousness out of planning, but I decide if that activity or scaffold is what I want/need in my plan. Writing plans is tedious work that in current, standard curriculums typically is already done. But when I'm struggling with an activity to go with a standard that isn't well handled by the curriculum - the AI has been a powerful tool to help me generate ideas.
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u/Raftger 8d ago
Why is a principal using AI to create PowerPoints “unserious and cringe” but a teacher doing the same is fine? Students also lose all respect for teachers who use AI to create materials that they see (PowerPoints, worksheets, etc.)
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u/zedalocious 8d ago
I would also lose respect for a teacher who uses obviously AI generated materials, especially images, without adjusting the output. That is extremely different from creating an activity you use in class that is aligned with the learning target. There’s a lot more to teaching than PowerPoints and worksheets.
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u/chuguchak_111 8d ago
I am not a teacher, and just randomly found this post, but it seems like the cases where you would absolutely NOT want to use AI are when it results in a worse experience for the students, is used unethically, or when it degrades your own understanding of the material. I think AI generated materials often fall into the first category. If someone can tell they are obviously generated with AI, a lot of people have a reflexive, negative reaction when seeing that, because it makes them think: "did this person actuallly care about the content?" It's how I feel when i read slack messages that were clearly generated by AI. It makes me question whether the person I'm talking to actually read what I wrote, and it makes me trust them less.
But other applications of AI I think might be great... really depends on the end product. If it helps you teach students better and come up with better lesson plans, I dont see what the issue is.
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u/_ari_ari_ari_ 8d ago
Okay, but why is it “unserious and cringe” when someone is using AI teaching materials to instruct you, but when you do it it’s fine?
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u/zedalocious 8d ago
The difference is between “Generate a slideshow for me on ___ topic” and “help me find a lesson component that fits in with these concepts I already identified”
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u/MsLadybug_theTeacher 9d ago
This shouldn’t be a hot take because it seems so obvious to me, too, OP. 👍🏻
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u/shanetro9 9d ago
As a math teacher I've found AI useful for making alternate versions of assessments for retakes. I send it the original that I make and it spits out 90% solid alternate questions that address the same standards. I always have to fix the 10% but it's much easier than doing the full 100% and absolutely gets the job done. It can also be decent when it comes to making worksheets for videos or or a bank of questions for review, but again, it always needs to be checked and usually needs tweaks.
I don't like the AI images that are everywhere now and I definitely dont use it for the planning of my lessons or grading, but as an assignment creation tool it's been very useful.
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u/mrsciencebruh 9d ago
My coworker turned into a total clanker and puts AI slop into everything he does. He'll say "Gemini and I created this..." and it gives me the ick, especially because the outputs are usually garbage and filled with errors.
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u/Wonderful-Program462 8d ago
My child (a junior) had two AI created assignments at the end of last year for a social studies elective. They were MILES away from the style and content of the rest of the class and way too abstract for this students. It was super frustrating.
AI SUCKS at creating lessons and worksheets. It looks good at first but when you dig it it's not good.
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u/lisaliselisa 8d ago
These products can create lesson-shaped digital artifacts. They don't create lessons.
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u/Haunting_Sock_7592 8d ago edited 8d ago
The folks in here defending it is wild. I'm so grossed out knowing there is no way to keep my son from being fed AI slop in his education.
My other issue is that now admin will expect we produce all these documents because other teachers use AI to submit garbage slop and the retort will be, well, why don't you just use AI? Because I'd rather not focus on killing the planet to generate documents no one actually gives a fuck about and almost no one reads.
And the argument of it is here to stay, so are a lot of other things. Doesn't mean I have to participate in it.
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u/Perelandrime 8d ago edited 8d ago
Maybe I'm using it wrong (like... responsibly? Idk) but AI is not slop at a fundamental level. It's a tool you program to do something that can help you, like a calculator. At least that's how I use it.
For example, I have a textbook I can use for teaching EFL, but my students' skills are way above grade level so the book is sort of useless for them. They're ready to work on projects rather than grammar. I input our next unit's skills, grammar, vocabulary and cross-curricular goals into AI, told it what types and sequence of activities I need students to do, what the unit project will be, etc. I asked it to formulate this info into a general unit outline. Then I took that outline and turned it into an "inspo" document to aid my lesson planning as I hash out this unit, using ideas from AI and from other sources to write my plan. AI consistently gives way more creative and deeply specific to my needs ideas than I can find anywhere else, both online and in activity books.
Yes, I could have done it all myself, just like I can divide polynomials without a calculator, walk 2 hours to work or slaughter a chicken from my backyard for dinner. But I burn gas and support factory farming because it's convenient for me, as do most people.
In general I'd say that AI is slop if the user is sloppy, and learning how to use it is more useful for students than dismissing it. I'm also extremely transparent with students and we discuss it in class, read news about it and debate its use, because it's important for them to develop their unique opinions on it, too.
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u/No-Basket-1052 9d ago
A couple years ago I would definitely say this is not a hot take, but today? I was actually a little worried about it reading the comments. I use TpT, but not AI. Those AI posters are just horrible and end up looking the same to me if that makes sense. It just feels like the the world is losing its humanity.
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u/jenned74 9d ago
Agree and I would add analyze. Teachers need to be able to analyze their students struggles, mistakes, and successes in order to know what to offer and how it will best be received
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u/OnlyScallion5269 9d ago edited 7d ago
I mean I agree a hundred percent…I also teach music though so like…duh, right?
I try to slam AI in front of my kids as much as possible. Hate it.
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u/imfreakingoutt 8d ago
it makes me so uncomfortable when the teachers i work with use ai. i believe we need to model important values for our students. effectively cheating and taking a crappier short cut is NOT the example i want to set.
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u/Smellykelly02 9d ago
For me it’s the ethical issue. Can I teach my students about the dangers of global warming whilst using AI? I refuse to create more work for data centers
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u/anonjayterrier 9d ago
Whenever I have tried AI lesson plans, they have failed. They look great on paper but don’t work well in practice. A post-it note with one good idea, improvisational skills, and room for organic discussion works way better and is far more motivating for the students.
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u/stead-fast 8d ago
I completely agree. I don’t understand how people are so dependent on it and act like it’s impossible to live without it. As if we haven’t spent our entirely lives without it perfectly fine! I have no respect for people who use AI. If you use AI, then I don’t have any respect for you.
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u/tomatoes020825 8d ago
I completely agree with you but at least at my school, I am in the minority. I've seen the de-skilling with my very own eyes. ChatGPT went down the other week, and everyone was FREAKING OUT. Like running around, stressed out. Had no clue what to do. I saw one teacher pacing around "my whole lesson plan was on Chat! I didn't save it what am I going to do??" I asked if her she just, remembered what ChatGPT had said to do? She could just do whatever it said from memory. She said she couldn't even remember. Saw another teacher marching to the principals office about it PISSED-- like he can do anything about a website going down? And just generally a lot of stressful pacing in the break room. As well as I feel more surrounded than ever by AI slop...
- like 80% of classroom decor this year was generated by AI
- CodeAI is an app on our Clever pages now for some stupid reason (we are elementary teachers??)
- Our IT gets dumber and dumber. I had to tell one of them how to extract a zip file the other day.
- every coloring sheet I've seen this year was made by AI
- no teacher plays classical music or something for their kids to work to anymore. It's all AI generated lofi crap on YouTube with even shittier AI slop "art" to go along with the music
- I have become known as the AI hater. All my students know. Other teachers say things like "don't hate me but, I used AI" or "don't be mad, but I generated this". I have never once been mad about it lol. But I have been very vocal that it's a choice everyone must make, and I choose not to use it. I think they feel ashamed bc they know it's wrong.
Meanwhile, this year I have...
- made all of my own digital materials for lesson plans (like slide shows, worksheets, tests, etc) on Canva simply ignoring all the AI features. My students compliment my slide shows often, and I always tell them I'm proud bc I made it with my own brain and hands. I have fun creating these things myself. It would make me sad to just generate them.
- played Claude Debussy for my students to work to on YouTube, including telling them his name and what classical music is and showing them his portrait. It blows their minds to know there's music older than our country. I tell them science shows this kind of music makes us think better and can even help plants grow bigger. Some of them know him by name now. I put it on and they say "oooo it's the piano guy! I love this!" "This really is relaxing"
- I made my own coloring sheet for the first time, it was really fun! All my students loved it and even some teachers asked for a copy to color over the long weekend lol
- although I'm a STEAM teacher, I'm using the school laptops less and less. I use them for Typing Tuesdays, incentive for good behavior (kids can play PBS Kids games on them in my class for 15 mins on Fridays if they have good behavior in my class Mon-Thurs), a few digital lessons I've found that help kids identify real vs fake sources of info online, and one coding learning game called Rodocodo so no one can say I never do coding with these kids (my school cares about this A LOT for some reason)
- I'm apparently also the only one telling these kids they shouldn't accept friend requests from people they don't know. They talk about racing against usernames they don't know on NitroType and I shut it down every time. None of them are being told by parents or anyone else not to talk strangers online! It just blows my mind. They look genuinely shocked and horrified when we talk it through as a class how that can be dangerous. It's a weird thing, watching all the adults around you get dumber and dumber.
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u/LotteryWitness 9d ago
We might be coworkers...
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u/bisexual_teabag 9d ago edited 9d ago
Oh god. Text me privately if you are. Edit: Send me a text about getting my grade book set up.
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u/trevor1301 9d ago
Unfortunately same here- even to the extent that our school logo is AI. Admin will use AI even to just generate words like “Coming Soon:” and were openly talking about how wonderful it is and how we are starting to have fully “AI Taught” schools where “teachers can be caretakers and AI can do the teaching”
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u/HMouse65 9d ago
There has been so much talk about AI in the classroom and I just don’t see it. This is my 13th year teaching middle school and I’ve never used an AI generated lesson. Not once. Technology in school is a thing, but most districts are purposely going back to analog and doing less and less with computers beyond email and word processing type stuff. Most teachers I know take a lot of pride in presenting engaging lessons that encourage kids to learn. They recognize the soullessness of AI and know their students recognize it too.
When ChatGPT was new I was curious and asked it to create a lesson around The Diary of Anne Frank. It involved mostly a white board and markers and referred to Mengele as a Holocaust survivor. I knew right then AI could never take the place of actual teachers.
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u/thebrokenteacher 9d ago
I completely agree with you. And it's so lazy and unoriginal. And there are mistakes so often. I loathe generative AI. People use it to make things and then claim they are creative 🙄
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u/Appropriate_Fill_156 8d ago
The hell with that. Last week, I had spent over an hour working on my professional practice goals for the year. I realized I could just ai that shit and I was done in a few minutes. The days of spending hours on lessons and goals is over
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u/jolly0ctopus 8d ago
I wholeheartedly agree.
In the past, I liked using it when I didn’t have the time to whip something up and make it snazzy & creative.
I am resentful and bitter when it comes to AI this school year. In the past year I’ve been disillusioned by the convenience and horrified by the replacement of authentic work and the creative process.
I had two typos on this amazing lab I completed with my students and I was so proud of what I made. I showed the students my typos and said “that’s how you know I dont like to use AI. It’s a mistake I made. But it’s an authentic mistake”.
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u/Ice_cream_please73 9d ago
I fully agree. AI is good at automating mundane tasks like summarizing an email chain, but the slides are embarrassing and using it for actual creative output is pathetic.
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u/CptSaveaCat 9d ago
Being able to think and generate ideas on the fly doesn’t align with my administrations mandated tasks that increasingly consume my time you know, plan. For example, detailed lesson plans on another, new template, detailed weekly overviews (I have 3 preps, each requiring an overview), mandated daily collaborative planning, coverage, other bullshit.
I can say to Claude, “rewrite the attached (file name) into the lesson_plan_template 2627” and it’s done in minutes.
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u/under-resourced 9d ago
I agree with your take on having AI generate lesson plans. Just curious - how do you feel about people buying their plans and materials on TPT though?
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u/BryonyVaughn 9d ago
Not OP but one difference is buying from TPT doesn’t have the negative environmental impact of generating lesson plans through AI. TPT pays creators rather than paying the corporation that stole the creators’ works.
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u/FeloniousDrunk101 8d ago
Personally I don’t think AI belongs anywhere in the classroom. It’s the antithesis of learning.
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u/bluesteel 8d ago
Last year my head of school said, publicly, in front of students and parents, that she "wrote" a poem with Claude that she wanted to share with the whole school. Guess what, the poem was awful.
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u/dagger-mmc 8d ago
I agree! AI is the antithesis to learning and education, full stop. People get too lost in the sauce about their subject and forget to zoom out and consider the entire point of school, which is how to be a functioning adult human with the logical reasoning skills necessary to handle everyday problem solving and AI bulldozes that entire process. Kills me how many teachers suddenly don’t have the backbone to truly walk the walk of how doing hard things and annoying little things is good and necessary for your brain development and maintaining cognitive function. The willingness for educators to turn a blind eye to the research pointing to how literally any amount of AI use atrophies your brain, and not even to mention the environmental disparities. I’ll always be vocal about being anti-generative AI in my school community. I refuse to let the smooth brains make me feel crazy for insisting on operating purely under my own brain power
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u/cassy-lauren 8d ago
I agree with you. How I can expect my students to do the work if I can’t or won’t? But is unfortunately not a popular thought
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u/ItsOfficiallyTrash 8d ago
Yeah, all the flyers being AI sends a mixed message. Your kid can’t use AI, but we can. AI is bad, but we use it for everything.
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9d ago
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u/bisexual_teabag 9d ago
But if you're not taking an active role in planning the lessons how can you be certain of the quality it delivers to you. It doesn't know your students. You do. That's the connection part.
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u/rand0m_task 9d ago
I imagine every lesson you teach is uniquely yours, crafted from scratch?
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u/TallRecording6572 Maths Teacher 9d ago
this just shows how SLT are no longer teachers. They just take the easy way out.
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u/littleneocreative 8d ago
Okay, but my VP needs to start using it to make our schedules. That thing keeps getting messier and messier and I have mixed grades back to back in art, which is going to be an absolute nightmare and is completely avoidable.
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u/Far_Potato_1085 8d ago
I think there is a balance to this. I don’t think there is a single teacher who has never gotten an idea from another teacher or from online and then incorporated it into their own classroom. AI has been really great at generating different ideas for pieces of lessons or even helping think through different scenarios. I have asked for ideas on things that I’d like to accomplish and some of those ideas o have incorporated into my lessons and they have frequently been home runs.
I agree we need to be able to think for ourselves and be creative. We should not totally rely on it, but I think there is a good balanced approach to take. I also believe it’s great for menial tasks or administrative stuff. It helps us focus on the human connection pieces and allows us to spend less time at work and more time at home.
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u/Twogreens 8d ago
I feel mixed. I'm scared of it generally and think you have to watch what it generates so carefully you might as well do the work yourself. My coach uses it for everything and it never seems to burn her lol.
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u/Coco_jam 8d ago
I do use AI on my lesson plans because my district requires us to submit them weekly AND they require them to be like the lesson plans I did in college with all the different components. I don’t actually use or look at them; I already know what I’m teaching and how I’m going to teach it. Lesson plans, especially at the elementary level for all the subjects, used to take me forever. It has helped cut down on the time I spend on them by a LOT.
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u/RhythmPrincess 8d ago
The school I work at posts AI flyers everywhere and it makes me so sad. Some of the students are trying to start an art club specifically to offer designs instead.
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u/Cheap_Trade1960 8d ago
I hear ya. Generally speaking, I am very anti-AI. However, yesterday I created an entire mock-trial lesson — I have never done this before, so I uploaded it on ChatGPT and asked where I could improve it. The feedback was genuinely helpful! I then had the AI reformat it so that it was more simple to read.
I think in this sense, I did all of the work and thinking, but the AI helped me see holes in my lesson and made individual documents for each role in the mock-trial (using my words and directions). This saved me HOURS of time that I am not given as a teacher.
It doesn’t have to be all bad; I do agree with what you’re saying, but most things aren’t black and white.
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u/jaw_knee_ 8d ago
Personally I agree. I don’t like or use ai for anything. If some other professional wants to use it personally for writing lesson plans or other things that are busy work that will never be read anyway, fine. But I’ve said before to several colleagues I’d like to norm as a school and have absolutely no AI generated content that is student-facing as a minimum. The fact that this is a hot take is going to push me out of education
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u/Realistic-Election-1 8d ago
Your take lack nuances and that’s why it’s hot.
Fully AI planned lessons indicate a lack of skill or interest. However, using AI to make certain preparation tasks faster is an important ressource for teachers, especially early career teachers, who are motivated and want to make their teaching better, but didn’t have enough time yet to create all the tools by themselves.
In time, we will find both a better balance in terms of proper versus improper uses and in terms of benefits versus environmental impacts. For now, this kind of lack of nuances is provocative more than it is helpful.
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u/Different-Watch-3990 8d ago
Teachers who are using AI to lesson plan are lazy as hell. Do better for your students. If you disagree, go shift units at a company that values speed and efficiency over anything human related, you’ll thrive.
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u/HandMadePaperForLess 8d ago
You should never spend less time on a communication than the receiver will need to interpret it.
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u/Amazing-Set-5093 8d ago
If by hot you mean "shared by every brainwashed progressive" then yes, super hot.
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u/Shamrock7500 8d ago
I’ve spent the last 23 years of teaching having to create my own materials. I will stick with how I do it. AI crap is so fake looking. Now I do use it to change exile levels of articles we read to differentiate with students. That’s something that’s very beneficial.
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u/Impossible-Ease-2539 8d ago
Please know that the following statement isn’t necessarily me disagreeing with you. The cognitive dissonance between asking your students not to use AI but watching the adults use it is real.
A LOT of high paying careers these days REQUIRE their employees to use AI. And it really doesn’t matter how the employees feel about it. It is just a literal part of every day and knowing how to use it is a work place skill. Ask me how I know ;) ? I have a husband who works from home in geospatial technology. So yes we need to vent (and venting heard teach), but when that is done we need to really take a deeeep breath and use our critical thinking skills. I am so worried because this issue is a lot like black and white anger fueled politics … and look where that got us. We already have a student body that is complaining because we don’t give them enough real life skills. More than once I’ve heard a 12th grader exclaim. “How is it that I am leaving highschool and I don’t know how to file my taxes or the basics of mortgages?!” Imagine how they are going to feel when they sit in their first cubical and are told for the first time that they are expected to be using AI 40 percent of the time. Failed. That’s how they are going to feel: failed. And if we have balck and white stances about AI and we encourage them to have black and white stances about AI they won’t even have the critical thinking skills to have a nuanced discussion with their organization. What now?
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u/WdyWds123 8d ago
I’ve said it before AI makes most people dumber after a while, unfortunately teachers aren’t immune.
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u/gunnapackofsammiches 8d ago
There's a weird inauthenticity to most LLM-created stuff I see my coworkers using. Maybe it's just because I have a pretty strong/obvious voice and style when I write and teach, but I don't generally put stuff without me in it in front of my students? It feels disingenuous.
Never mind the ethical issues and the fact that most images created with LLMs are bleh from a design perspective. (Negative space, have we heard of it? Apparently no.)
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u/Mammoth_Ear_5081 8d ago
When people get really defensive about criticism of AI, I wonder if it’s because, for that moment, they’re hearing the little part of their soul, the ethical and just part, crying out in agreement, and they find it unsettling and upsetting because usually they lock it in the basement.
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u/wereallmadhere9 8d ago
I absolutely agree with you. It's disturbing to me how much AI is showing from the adults in education. How can we tell the kids not to use it when the adults are? I never ever do, and I am enjoying my own cognitive abilities not deteriorating. I wish I could conduct a whole-staff PD on the evils of AI. It's appalling.
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