Is AI a Crutch for Students? What I’ve Learned As a Middle School Math Teacher
Last Tuesday, I collected 7th grade algebra homework from the bin by my door, and the first paper I pulled out was Mia’s. Every step was neat, every answer correct, no eraser smudges – which was odd, because Mia had asked me three times about that exact type of problem after class the day before. I pulled her aside after the bell, the smell of microwave popcorn from the teacher’s lounge still clinging to my lanyard, and asked her to walk me through the third problem. She twisted the Taylor Swift charm on her friendship bracelet around her finger and said, “I didn’t copy the whole thing! I just got stuck and used ChatGPT to see where I went wrong, then I was late for soccer, so I just copied the steps.”
I didn’t give her a detention or mark her paper zero. I just thought back to when I was in 10th grade chemistry, rushing to finish homework before track practice, and copying the last five problems from the answer key in the back of the textbook. No one back then was calling answer keys a crutch that would ruin an entire generation’s ability to do science. We just knew that if you only copied and never learned, you’d fail the test anyway. So why are we panicking so much about AI now?
Two weeks ago, I asked all my classes to write down anonymously if they use AI for school work, and how. 28 out of 32 said yes. Javi, who has dyslexia, uses it to read problem prompts out loud when the text is too small and he gets overwhelmed. Lila uses it to brainstorm topics for cross-curricular writing assignments when she gets stuck staring at a blank page. Three kids admitted they use it to do all their homework so they don’t have to think about it. That’s the full range, right there. It’s not all good, it’s not all bad.
Last month, a mom sat across from me at parent-teacher conferences, wringing her hands, saying her 12-year-old son can’t solve a single multi-step problem without asking AI first. She threatened to take his laptop away completely and ban all AI use. I asked her if he uses it because he doesn’t get the material, or because it’s faster. She paused, then said he’s scared of getting answers wrong, so he just lets AI do it to avoid being embarrassed. That’s when the line between tool and crutch gets clear: AI is a crutch when it’s used to avoid doing the work that builds a skill, not to help you work through the hard parts. If you never practice solving for x because AI does it for you, you’ll never get good at solving for x. That’s not a new problem, it’s just a new tool to do the same avoiding people have always done.
I don’t ban AI in my class, and I tell parents they don’t have to either, as long as they set clear, small expectations that are easy to follow. I just require that every kid writes one short sentence next to any problem or section they used AI for, explaining what they got from it. If it says “I got stuck on the negative sign, AI showed me I flipped it wrong,” that’s full credit. If there’s no note, and I can tell they used AI, we sit down after class and go through it together, no punishment, just practice.
For parents, I tell them to try one small shift instead of a full ban: instead of asking “Did you use AI on this?” which sounds accusatory and shuts down conversation, ask at dinner, “What did AI help you with tonight, and what did you learn from that?” It’s a small change in wording that gets kids talking about their thinking instead of hiding it. I also tell parents to ask for a 2-minute explanation of one problem their kid got help with. You don’t need to be a math genius to tell if they actually understand the work, or if they just copied it.
After I talked to Mia that Tuesday, we sat down and reworked the problem together. She got it right on the second try, and admitted she just didn’t have time to rewrite the whole thing after AI pointed out her mistake. I told her that’s fine next time, just leave the note, and it’s no big deal. Last week, she turned in another homework set with a note in the margin that said “Stuck here, AI helped, I re-did it on my own here” and her work was correct, and she explained it to me no problem.
Of course, it doesn’t always work that smoothly. Leo, another one of my students, was using AI to do all his homework last semester, and by the time midterms rolled around, he couldn’t solve even basic problems on his own. We worked with him and his parents to set a new rule: he does all his homework problems by hand in study hall first, shows his work to the aide, then uses AI to check his answers and fix mistakes. He still gets stuck sometimes, but he’s building the skill back up slowly.
I still don’t have all the answers. Every month there’s a new story about a kid who used AI to cheat on a test, and every month I see another kid who uses AI to keep up when they would otherwise be left behind. I use AI myself to make differentiated worksheets for kids who are behind and kids who are ahead, and it saves me three hours a week that I get to spend sitting with kids like Mia and Leo instead of formatting problems on a computer. Banning AI feels like banning calculators when I was a kid – everyone panicked that we’d never learn to do math by hand, and now we just use calculators for the boring stuff so we can focus on the hard thinking.
Right now, transparency is working for us. We still have slip-ups, we still have kids who overuse it, and we’re still adjusting the rules as we go. No one’s figured out the perfect system yet, and that’s okay. We’re learning right alongside the kids.
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