2 Reasons to Write in an AI World

If students understood experientially, deep in their bones, that writing accomplishes these 2 purposes, all worry about inappropriate assistance from artificial intelligence would be laid to rest:   

1. Writing makes my thinking better. I can clarify, connect, develop, evaluate, and apply my thinking.
2. Writing communicates my better thinking so others can benefit. 

I thought about ChatGPT when it first exploded across the public, what it might mean to me as an English teacher, and what it might mean to me as a writer. I decided my first classroom response would be to experiment with explicitly teaching 6th and 7th graders those 2 purposes for writing. 

If students could experience the deep satisfaction of wrestling their thoughts into words and onto paper, of looking at it and saying, “Yes! THAT is what I think!” and if they could then share those words with someone else and see their impact—that would be a good foundation for beginning a conversation about how AI can facilitate or undermine those purposes of writing.   

The writing came after a lot of reading, processing, and discussion had already taken place. This is essential—that students have stuff they want to say. We started with book clubs on novels with resilient protagonists. We learned about resilience, took an assessment for ourselves and for a character in our novels, and set a personal goal for increasing resilience. We did a novel-based hexagonal thinking project in pairs (see below) and a one-pager as individuals (see bottom of page). Then it was time to see how students would pull together all the thinking they’d been doing. 

The prompt was this: "Why is resilience important and how can you increase your resilience? Use resources on resilience, illustrate with examples from your book club book, and apply it to your life." Students wrote a thesis, filled in a graphic organizer, hand wrote a rough draft, got peer feedback (using a rubric-based protocol), incorporated that feedback into a typed revision which I edited (first 10 comments), and finally produced a final draft. Once the final draft was submitted, they self-assessed (using the same rubric we’ve been using all along) and reflected on their learning (using 3 specific questions).

I’m really pleased to see how students were able to make the connections between the concept of resilience, specific examples in the novel they read, and applications to their own lives. This is the kind of reading and thinking and writing that is real and powerful right now and will continue to be throughout their lives. If students understand experientially the power of writing to make their own thinking better and communicate that better thinking to others so they can benefit, the appropriate role of AI falls into place.  

How does it fall into place for me? I used ChatGPT to originate a list of 10 suggestions for improving each of the 6 skills of resilient people, according to the Mayo Clinic website. Then I revised the lists to be sure they fit my students’ contexts and had one or two explicitly faith-based suggestions in each list.

How about you? What do you think students need to understand about writing in order to see AI in an appropriate role? What do you do to help students own that understanding?