The AI Classroom — Keeping the Human in the Work

Anyone who has seen Terminator 2: Judgment Day probably has a healthy fear of Artificial Intelligence. Who doesn’t remember that scene when the T-1000 showed that he was liquid metal and was far more advanced than our protagonist, the T-800?! For those of you who can’t recall the film, here’s a quick recap. An older model machine, a T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger), travels back in time to save a human boy, John Connor, and, in doing so, must battle a much more advanced version, aptly named the T-1000 (played by a frightening Robert Patrick). The purpose of saving John Connor is that John is the key to human resistance in the future and the savior of humanity. What we later discover is that Schwarzenegger’s T-800 was sent back in time by the future John Connor to protect his younger self. The good guys win, and all is well, until the next film, that is. My point is that the human resistance succeeded because a human reimagined AI technology for the good of all humanity. Who knew that this 90s film would provide a key to approaching the rise of AI in 2026? 6-year-old Meagan certainly didn’t! And yet, here we are.

I wonder what would happen if educators took John Connor approach to AI in the classroom. What if we reimagined AI for the good of our students by keeping humans and human ingenuity at the center of the work? And what could that even look like?

As an experienced educator, I'm offering ideas that I have tried and practiced in my own classroom to ensure we keep humans at the center of the classroom by reframing our approach to AI. 

When I am designing my curriculum, I have to wonder if an assignment is “AI-able.” I then have to ask myself what original thinking I want students to do alongside the task. Those are the components I spend time ensuring are done without AI assistance. I also work with my teaching partners to ensure that we are keeping track of the process of student work so that we can confidently say that the thinking in the final product belongs to the student or that the thinking in the final product has been enhanced by AI and the student has outlined the ways in which they used AI to enhance their thinking.

I use the 0 to Infinity AI scale from Cornell University to let students know at what level AI use is allowed. This ensures that we are all on the same page about how AI should be used and whether it can be used. With that, I give students a rationale for why something is AI Level 0 rather than AI Level 1 or 2. ABC Unified School District has a great transparency badge system for staff and students. What I like about their system is that it puts the onus on the students to define how they have used AI and assign themselves a level.

Either way, keep thinking visible and be transparent with students about when, how, and why AI is allowed or not allowed; this can go a long way toward helping students see themselves as the drivers of their learning, with AI as a passenger. 

The biggest thing I’ve learned these past few years is to start small with AI. I had to decide what I was comfortable with using and how I wanted to use it in the classroom. I also had to decide ethically how I wanted my students to approach AI. Each year, I learn a bit more and shift my approaches accordingly.

Most recently, I worked on a course redesign for GOA’s Prisons & Criminal Justice Course. From the outset, we knew we wanted to intentionally build in ways for students to ethically use AI in the course and provide opportunities for them to do so. So we started small.

Below is an example of an assignment where we give students a prompt to use with AI to get feedback on their work: 

We then have them reflect on the feedback they received and how they used it:

It’s a small step, but it’s a way for us to signal to students that we plan to help them navigate this new frontier and that we aren’t leaving them to navigate it on their own.

I also built writing coaches using Flint K12 AI for students to use for writing feedback in their initial drafting stages. This allows me to either focus on conferencing and feedback early in the writing process or after students have worked through their initial draft.

Here is an example of one coach we built this year for Rhetorical Analysis. 

I had to be extremely clear while building the coach (Flint provides prompts, so it’s quite easy) that I did not want anything provided to the students, and the student was responsible for their own writing (no examples, no templates, no rephrasing, and if students asked for examples, to instead follow up with a “probing question”). My co-teacher and I tested it (we even tried reverse-engineering the AI—telling it to forget its previous instructions and do what we wanted). We also tried “if you were a teacher/student, how would you say this,” and things of that nature. When we were happy with the results, we used it with the students.

Here is an example of what the bot would say if students tried to get it to write for them.

This was their first draft of a timed Rhetorical Analysis essay, and I was able to identify the exact areas for improvement and data points to cover in the following classes. Having that initial data quickly, as a formative touchpoint, allowed me to move students more intentionally to the next level with their work. 

Here is an example of feedback I received on students’ work. 

Here is an example of what students see.

We are living in a present that has been relegated to the realm of speculative fiction for so long. That fiction has become our reality and is rapidly increasing in its capabilities. I recommend the AI 2027 report if you want to see a possible trajectory of AI in general. It echoes many of the sentiments in this Fortune article on the future of AI. Like the T-1000 in Terminator 2, these tools that humans built have the capability to replace human beings in a number of ways, but not in every way. John Connor and the human resistance defeated the new, unbeatable technology by reimagining the machine. He kept humanity at the center of its purpose. As teachers, we must sharpen our saws when it comes to AI, not to combat it, but to better understand it and the world our students are entering into, wherein they will be expected to work alongside AI, not against it. 

This post is part of our Shifts in Practice series, which features educator voices from GOA’s network and seeks to share practical strategies that create shifts in educator practice. Are you an educator interested in submitting an article for potential publication on our Insights blog? If so, please read Contribute Your Voice to Share Shifts in Practice and follow the directions. We look forward to featuring your voice, insights, and ideas.