What Students Really Think About AI Generated Media In Their Classes: A Teacher’s Observation
Last Wednesday, I was stacking essay packets on my desk after 5th period, when Mia, Javi, and Lila lingered by the door. They had a college counseling meeting in 10 minutes and didn’t want to walk all the way across campus just to come back. I offered them the extra chairs by my desk, pulled out a pack of graham crackers I keep for hungry after-school students, and we ended up chatting about the thing I’ve been asked about at every parent-teacher conference this semester: AI in school.
I asked them straight, what do you actually think about using AI generated content for your classes? Not what I say as your teacher, what do you really think? Mia, who opens the local coffee shop at 6 a.m. every day before school, twisted the frayed blue friendship bracelet on her wrist and went first. “It’s just a shortcut for the work that doesn’t matter,” she said. Last month, I assigned a 10-source outline for our research paper, and she used AI to format her citations and summarize the abstracts of three studies she couldn’t get full access to through the school library. “I spent three extra hours writing the actual argument, because that’s what I care about getting good at. If I had to format 10 citations by hand after closing up shop at 10 p.m., I would’ve gotten three hours of sleep. Is that really helping me learn?”
Javi, who takes digital art and edits the school yearbook, leaned forward and said he hates it. “My art teacher made us do an AI generated comic strip last quarter. I’ve been practicing digital inking for four years, saved up for a $300 drawing tablet working weekends, and some kid who can’t even draw a stick figure turned in a 10-page comic in 15 minutes and got the same A I got. What’s the point of me practicing if AI can do it faster for the same grade?”
Lila, the quiet kid who writes poetry for our school literary magazine, mumbled that she’s scared of it. “I got flagged for AI on my last persuasive essay. I worked on it for two weeks, wrote three drafts, and the teacher’s tool said it was 90% AI. I had to sit after class and rewrite it in front of her to prove I did it. It made me feel like even if I work really hard, no one believes it’s mine. Now I purposely leave grammar mistakes so I don’t get flagged again.”
That conversation stuck with me, so over the past two weeks I asked 20 of my students across 10th, 11th, and 12th grade the same question, off the record. What I found is that most of the panic I see from parents and even other teachers doesn’t match what kids actually feel. It’s not a generational shift where all kids love AI and want to use it for everything. It’s split, a lot like how adults feel, but with priorities most of us don’t stop to notice.
First, most kids turn to AI for the boring, repetitive work we often assign just to check a box. The citation formatting, the rote study guides, the fill-in-the-blank chapter summaries. A lot of them don’t want to use AI for the actual high-stakes assignments that matter for their grades or their long-term skills. That changes how we should approach this, for both teachers and parents.
For teachers, instead of spending hundreds of dollars on AI detection tools and arguing about campus-wide bans, start by auditing your own assignments. If your assignment can be fully completed by AI in 10 minutes, it’s probably not a very good assignment anyway. If it’s busy work you have to assign for coverage, just let kids use AI for it. I stopped requiring hand-formatted citations last semester; I just have kids turn in their reference list formatted by AI, then we spend 10 minutes in class talking about how to check for errors. That’s way more useful than them spending an hour copying commas around, and it cuts down on the stress that makes kids reach for AI in the first place. For parents, instead of opening the conversation with “are you using AI to cheat?” try asking “What do you use AI for in your homework?” It’s a non-accusatory question that gets you a real answer, instead of a defensive shut-down.
From Javi’s experience, I also learned that a lot of schools are jumping to integrate AI into every assignment just because it’s new, and that leaves kids who’ve put time into building creative or technical skills feeling undervalued. The fix here is simple and low-effort: offer choice. If you’re assigning a project, don’t require everyone to use AI. Say “you can use AI to brainstorm or draft, you can do it all by hand, you can use whatever tools work for you.” That doesn’t add any extra work for the teacher, and it lets kids who want to build their skills keep doing that. For parents, if your kid mentions they’re upset about an AI assignment that feels unfair, ask them what they would rather do instead, and encourage them to bring that request to their teacher. Most teachers don’t realize the new assignment is stepping on kids who’ve put years of work into their craft.
The biggest takeaway from Lila’s story is that false AI flags are way more common than most adults realize, and they do real damage to kid’s confidence. The concrete fix I’ve adopted is to stop relying on AI detection tools entirely. If I’m curious about whether a student wrote their own paper, I just ask them to write a three-sentence email explaining how they came up with their main point, or pull them aside for a two-minute chat between classes. That’s 100% more accurate than any tool, and it doesn’t make good students feel like they’re guilty until proven innocent. For parents, if your kid gets flagged for AI, don’t automatically assume they cheated. Ask them to walk you through their process, then help them ask their teacher for a chance to prove their work, instead of just accepting a failing grade.
Last week, Mia turned in her final research paper, and it was one of the best I’ve read all year. Javi just hung his hand-drawn portraits of our school’s cafeteria workers in the front office, after his teacher let him skip the required AI project. Lila still gets a little nervous turning in essays, but she’s stopped adding extra mistakes to avoid detection. We still don’t have all the answers, and every kid feels different about AI in their classes. But the first step is just asking them what they think, instead of assuming we know.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » What Students Really Think About AI Generated Media In Their Classes: A Teacher’s Observation