Another ChatGPT Rant
I teach 11th and 12th grade ELA and AP Lit. ChatGPT and other AI writing tools are ruining my ability to do my job. I have tried making every writing assignment in class only, but sometimes that’s not feasible due to time constraints. Even when assignments are in-class, kids still manage to cheat on their phones (which are banned) in the bathroom. I’ve made all essays hand-written, but that seems worse because they just copy it from the screen and then there is no version history to check. Even the kids who don’t plagiarize their whole essay use it to “get ideas.” I really don’t know where the future of English education is going. There is no protocol in place and no way to prove it; a kid will turn in 3 paragraphs on diction, but when I ask them to explain diction to me in their own words, they cannot. Even when I catch them in their inability to orally defend their writing, they deny it until they’re blue in the face. I’ve had kids go to admin complaining that I’ve wrongly accused them. It’s to the point where I dread assigning essays due to the inevitable percentage that will be AI generated.