We are seeing this with the iReady lawsuit. AI is even worse!

Yup. I wish more districts honored this idea.

Brought in Alan Gratz's latest book today (War Games) and the kids are practically fighting over the order of the borrow list. They are comparing their favorite Gratz titles and arguing over which one is the best.

If I was in school I would want to have a say in whether my writing was uploaded to an AI tool for feedback, etc. I haven't seen many districts informing parents or students about how their work is being used, who has access to it, what models it trains, etc.

Still angry about AI use being forced on students and educators at the K-12 level. Why aren't schools disclosing to parents how the district is using AI (ie what tools teachers have access to and how they will be used on student work).

Generative AI is not a calculator. Calculators can’t hallucinate Even if you want to make the comparison, we don’t give graphing calculators to kids until they’ve reached more advanced math. No K-12 student needs to use genAI in humanities class. If they do, we’ve thrown in the towel re: learning.

Plenty of students are “saving time” reading by uploading their reading materials to an LLM and asking for a summary. Plenty of students are then asking the LLM to write their outline or paper or discussion post. In what universe is this a net positive?

As Meyer points out, saving time isn’t always a good thing. If we are using AI to help students save time while writing and to help teachers save time giving grades/feedback, why not just save all the time by not assigning writing at all?

I Don’t Believe This Finding That AI Is Saving Teachers Six Weeks per Year It's hard to figure out what's going on right now but this is not what's going on right now.

Dan Meyer has a great essay about AI and teachers. I highly recommend reading his criticism of a recent study showing teachers can save time using AI. danmeyer.substack.com/p/i-dont-bel...

I’d also argue that some students would tell you that they are saving time by using AI and their teachers would tell you that’s not a good thing. No one is learning when they use AI. It’s detrimental to our ability to think and is in direct opposition to most ELA standards.

And teachers do not need to use AI to be better at their jobs! Stop telling educators to use AI under the guise of saving time. We don’t even know if AI does save time- all evidence is anecdotal and humans are notoriously bad at judging whether or not a task takes less time when changes are made.

There are absolutely uses for AI in the workplace- large-scale data analysis, for example- but that doesn’t mean there’s a place for LLMs in classrooms. Let major classes in college or employers train students to use the AI necessary in a particular industry.

The same students rarely read written feedback, and when they do they are easily overwhelmed. “Use AI to provide feedback” kills any relationship a teacher has built with that student and builds a wall between that student and future educators.

Using AI in humanities classes is putting the cart before the horse. Today’s students lack focus, disengage from productive struggle, and have difficulty building reading and writing stamina. The answer is not “let them use genAI!”

We are at a crossroads with genAI and schools. I am going to lose my mind thanks to people not in the classroom constantly pushing teachers, especially in the humanities, to use AI.

What a day. I’ve teared up so many times watching NASA’s coverage- the Carroll crater, mae the friendship bracelets and 🫶, poetry and photography alongside science, so many women in Mission Control, the science, and so much more.

Please listen to teachers. Underdeveloped frontal lobes are not capable of using AI to automate tasks they’ve already learned. All they do is hand off assignments to AI. They ask AI to serve as a search engine, reader, writer, and teacher. We are raising a generation that will not be able to think.

I’ve had students argue with me because our resources have a different answer than the Google AI summary. The resources are correct but they refuse to believe that. “But Google says this!” How do they check for accuracy, if at all? They ask Chat-GPT or Claude. 😩

Adults using AI can and should check the response for accuracy because they leaned the task and can recognize incorrect information. Students, however, offload reading and writing to AI without the ability to check the info for accuracy.

Tools change. The underlying cognitive ability, however, is with that student forever. Allowing students to use AI to outline, brainstorm, edit, etc isn’t helping them. All we are doing is churning out worker bees less capable of reading + writing critically, less capable of coding and debugging.

Virtually every industry uses something like Salesforce. Some jobs require driving a forklift. Others require employees to understand OSHA-specific safety procedures. Virtually every working adult encounters something like this; no one argues schools must teach them.

“Used in the workforce" doesn't automatically mean "must be taught in K-12”. Employers have always been expected to provide onboard training; K-12 education is tasked with teaching critical thinking and cognitive skills.

“But AI is here to stay so schools must teach students how to use it!” Why? There are lots of specialized tools and software used in various careers that we don’t explicitly teach in most K-12 classes: GIS/CAD software, industrial robotics, Quickbooks, Google Ads manager, etc.

Every study has shown that adults lose skills when they offload cognitive tasks to AI. Those skills may atrophy, but it looks like they can be regained. Students, however, are never learning those skills at all. Cognitive offloading is detrimental to development.

Adults Lose Skills to AI. Children Never Build Them. | Psychology Today Discussions of cognitive offloading often miss a critical distinction: What AI does to a 45-year-old's brain is categorically different from what it does to a 14-year-old's.

THIS THIS THIS. Districts need to stop pushing AI into the curriculum. There is no good pedagogical or developmental reason to give K-12 students access to AI tools.

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-...

Audible exclusives should be illegal. The only way to access a particular format of a book, especially one that makes a book more accessible to all readers, should not be behind a paywall for years.

(This complaint right to you by the second half of the Throne of Glass series).

Secondary Section Office Hour. Tuesday, March 31, 7pm ET. Members will 4eflect on ways that NCTE and its programs have helped their teaching careers, ask questions and provide feedback related to NCTE’s support of Secondary members, learn about NCTE resources and upcoming opportunities for Secondary members, and share professional needs that NCTE could address with future programming.

What are you up to Tuesday, March 31 at 7pm ET?

Join @ncte.org's Secondary Section (7-12 ELA teachers!) for Zoom space to chat, connect, and explore NCTE. How can NCTE support you? What has worked? Come meet other secondary ELA teachers who are members of NCTE.

ncte.org/secondary-of...

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Ludacris performing the soundtrack of my college years is exactly what I needed this week. #iheartradioawards

Is this an AI response? Lol

Yup! And it’s clear even the pilots weren’t enough to give us a true picture because cell phones evolved so quickly. The difference between “we can use cell phones!” in 2026 and 2010 is mind-blowing. In 2010 photo/video was awful, many kids had limited data, and the classroom use was small!