AI Innovation Coordinator Published in NY Times

As an eighth grade English teacher, my thoughts about A.I. keep returning to the increasing discomfort the average adolescent has with vulnerability. Students have been sharing the ways that they use generative A.I. to smooth the rough edges of adolescence. They ask it to refine their text messages, solve fights with friends, explain their math, explain their reading and give them workout advice. They are driven into interacting with generative A.I. at the precise time when they should be reaching out to others. Adolescence is the stage of life where we learn who we are through trial and error. It is when our voice cracks in the classroom, and we want the world to swallow us up. But it is also when we realize that everyone is going through it, and no one remembers that voice crack two weeks later.

Students now make their mistakes in private, with a sycophantic parrot that squawks empty encouragement. They are offloading the rough edges of life into LLM’s — and OpenAI appreciates the engagement.

In the classroom, this translates into vulnerability avoidance. When my eighth graders came up with their classroom norms this year, “Don’t judge,” or some variation, was the most-repeated standard. They fear making mistakes in front of each other. So, I decided to harness the sycophantic parrot in a classroom celebration of mistakes. Students interviewed a partner on a past mistake of their choosing. Partners then wrote song lyrics about that mistake (from scratch or with A.I. assistance). They asked their partner for a musical style that they enjoy before handing all of the information back to me. Finally, I used Suno to create a mixtape of mistakes.

Students laughed together instead of at each other. Their songs have become a part of our classroom community celebration of mishaps. It is an audio record of an important lesson of adolescence: It can suck, but you can make it, and it sucks less when you make it together. At the same time, it allows me to model an approach to A.I. that spotlights using the tool to push us toward one another in the common space of the classroom rather than getting dragged into the pit of solo engagement and dependency.

A David Brooks quote I have taped to my desk states, “A key job of a school is to give students new things to love.” As A.I. continues to rapidly influence education, I think that we will also begin to give students old things to love. And, while I don’t think any eighth grader will leave my class loving vulnerability, my hope is that they leave appreciating its importance in shaping our minds and our hearts.