What Students Really Think About AI Generated Media In Their Courses: A Teacher’s Observation
I was wiping stray poetry lines off my whiteboard last Wednesday, after my 11th grade creative writing class, my third coffee of the day was down to a lukewarm sip at the bottom of the mug, when I noticed Mia still hanging by my desk, twisting the strap of her canvas backpack, her chipped sky-blue nail polish catching the fluorescent light. She’d turned in her draft of a personal poem that morning, and I thought she was going to ask about the extension I’d offered. Instead, she blurted out, “I used AI to come up with the title. Are you gonna mark me down for that?”
I asked her to pull up the extra chair by my desk, and we talked for 10 minutes before the bell rang for lunch. She told me she and her friends argue about AI every day in the cafeteria: some say any use is cheating, some say it’s no different than looking up a synonym on Google. I told her I’d thought about this a lot, but I was more interested in what the whole class really thought, instead of the handful of loud takes I get during whole-class discussions. The next day, I passed out leftover half-sheets from the last vocabulary quiz, asked two anonymous questions: How do you use AI generated content for this class? How do you feel about teachers allowing or banning it?
Out of 72 students across my three classes, only 8 said they never use AI at all. Half said they use it for brainstorming or fixing repetitive grammar mistakes, 14 said they use it to turn messy bullet point notes into organized outlines, and 10 admitted they’d used it to finish an assignment they were too stressed or too tired to complete the night before it was due. The feelings they shared were way more nuanced than the hot takes I see on the evening news.
Javi, who has ADHD and always wears his faded state soccer hoodie, wrote, “It’s not cheating for me. I can do the analysis, I just can’t get my jumbled notes into a structure that makes sense. AI does that in 2 minutes, and then I can actually write the paper my way. If I couldn’t use it, I’d get a D just for being messy.” Lila, a straight-A student who sits in the front row and always brings extra granola bars to share, wrote that she hates AI with a passion: “My last group project for AP Bio, the other two people just had AI write the whole 10 page paper. I did all the lab work and they got the same A as me. It’s unfair that people can slack off that easily and no one notices.” One junior wrote, “I’d never let AI write my college essay. That’s supposed to be me. If I let it do that, what’s the point of even going to college? They might as well just admit the AI.” Mia wrote, “I use it when I’m stuck. If I can’t think of the next line, I ask it for ideas, but I never use those ideas exactly. It’s just a jump start. I don’t get why adults act like that’s the same as me letting it write my whole poem.”
After reading all those responses, I realized most parents and teachers (myself included, up until that week) have been approaching this wrong. We’re either panicking that AI is going to turn an entire generation into cheaters, or celebrating it as the fix for overworked teachers and overwhelmed kids. But the students don’t see it that way. They see it as a tool, just like the spell check we all used 15 years ago, or the SparkNotes we snuck to when we didn’t finish the reading. It’s not good or bad inherently, it’s how you use it, and most of them are way clearer on that line than we give them credit for.
The first small change I made in my class is that I stopped asking “did you use AI?” and started asking “what part of this assignment did AI help you with?” That’s a tiny shift in wording that changes the whole conversation. Instead of putting kids on the defense before they even speak, it invites them to be honest about what they’re doing. I also wrote clear, specific rules for each assignment instead of a blanket ban. For example: if we’re writing a personal poem, AI can help you brainstorm titles or fix typos, but it can’t write any of the verses. I also tell you why that rule exists: the point of this assignment is to practice putting your own voice and your own feelings into words, not just turn in a polished piece of writing. If we’re working on a research project focused on analyzing data, AI can help you organize your citations and your notes, because the skill we’re building is data analysis, not note sorting. That works perfectly for kids like Javi, who can focus on the part they need to learn instead of fighting the organizational barrier that ADHD throws at them.
For parents, the same small shift works at home. Instead of snapping “did you use AI to write that essay?” when your kid is working on homework at the kitchen table, ask “how is AI helping you finish this assignment?” You might be surprised to learn they’re using it to work through tricky math problems step by step, not just get the answer. If your kid is frustrated by AI slacking in group projects, like Lila was, encourage them to ask their teacher to split grading into individual and group scores, a small change that cuts down on most free-riding. I made that switch this semester, and my number of AI-related complaints has dropped by more than half.
There’s still plenty that’s not solved. Last week I caught a kid turn in a full AI-generated essay, and we worked through it together, he admitted he was just so overwhelmed with three midterms and his 20-hour a week part-time job that he panicked. It’s not a black and white issue, even for the kids. Mia turned in her final poem last week, the one she used AI to title “Waiting For The Bus In November.” It was about waiting for the bus with her grandma, who can’t remember her name anymore, and the line “the cold smells like her peppermint candy” still sticks with me. When she picked it up after class, she said, “I just wish adults would stop acting like AI is gonna end school or save it. It’s just… something we use sometimes.” She’s right. We’re all still figuring this out, one assignment at a time.
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