A Central Bucks teacher has stepped into a national debate over AI’s role in the classroom playing out in statehouses and universities, and down to local school boards.
A veteran English teacher in Central Bucks, Brett Vogelsinger had the same fears as many of his colleagues when ChatGPT was released more than three years ago.
“Oh no, is this going to be a cheat machine?” Vogelsinger recalled thinking of the artificial intelligence tool.
But rather than bemoaning the decline of students’ writing as inevitable, Vogelsinger decided to keep an open mind. He incorporated new lessons into his classes at Central Bucks South High School, discussing ways AI could be used while writing, and which would be cheating. Vogelsinger doesn’t consider it cheating, for instance, if a student isn’t satisfied with a particular sentence and asks an AI tool for three suggestions to improve it.
In his AP Literature and Composition class, Vogelsinger has given students AI-produced essays in response to a prompt — like “What are the main features of an epic, and how does that show up in modern stories people read?” — and asked them to write versions that go beyond points made by the robot.
And when Vogelsinger’s students turn in papers, he has them fill out transparency surveys disclosing if, and how, they used AI while writing.
“There’s a spot on there for them to say, ‘Do I feel this is my work? Have I maintained my voice?’” Vogelsinger said. What he’s found, he said, is “few of them end up using it that much.”
The advent of free AI tools available to spit out essays on demand has caused angst among many educators, who say kids are increasingly relying on technology and foregoing the thinking required to write.
Nationally, English teachers have moved away from assigning take-home essays — instead having students write during class to prevent cheating, the New York Times reported last month. Parents have also been pushing back against technology in schools, demanding more analog learning amid fears of diminished attention spans.
Vogelsinger, who has taught English for 23 years in Central Bucks, knows that some kids are using AI to cheat. But he doesn’t blame the technology.
“If all you value is check boxes and get out, those students have always existed,” Vogelsinger said. He sees “plenty of motivated students that don’t want AI to take over their learning.”
Vogelsinger — who has written a book called Artful AI in Writing Instruction — has stepped into a national debate over AI’s role in the classroom playing out in statehouses and universities, and down to local school boards. At a recent meeting in Lower Merion, students from Harriton High School said an AI checker was inaccurately characterizing student work as AI-generated.
“The default policy in higher education, and mostly through K-12, is that individual faculty can develop their own AI policy,” said Marc Watkins, director of the Mississippi AI Institute for Teachers, who conducts workshops for teachers on the topic.
Educators have increasingly siloed themselves in pro- or anti-AI camps, Watkins said — “mirroring our society right now.”
Only seven states require schools to have policies on AI, according to Education Week; Pennsylvania is not one of them.
The National Council of Teachers of English this month released a working framework on AI for English language arts teachers, emphasizing “the intrinsic value of the writing process” while suggesting ways teachers in grades 6-12 could incorporate and ask students to reflect on AI.
Antero Garcia, NCTE’s president and a professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, noted some “debate and concern” around the framework, which was funded by Google’s philanthropic arm, but designed by teachers.
While it may seem like a “full embrace” of AI, Garcia said, that’s not the intent. “Our intention is to meet teachers where they are right now,” he said, noting that teachers “run the gamut” from AI-free classrooms to embracing the technology.
In Central Bucks, a draft artificial intelligence policy calls for “age-appropriate instruction which may include, but not be limited to, the proper use of AI, encompassing fundamental principles such as the necessity of human supervision, critical thinking, and evaluation of accuracy.”
The draft policy, which was reviewed at a committee meeting in May, also says that “unless otherwise specifically directed by a teacher, no AI may be used for student assignments, homework, classwork, exams, or projects.”
Central Bucks also launched an “intentionally limited” AI pilot program earlier this year, said spokesperson Michael Petitti. The program, which included five high school teachers — Vogelsinger among them — uses Microsoft’s Copilot AI tool “within the district’s secure environment and is focused on exploring responsible, teacher-guided classroom use of AI tools,” Petitti said, noting that parents also gave approval for students to participate.
Vogelsinger — who said he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the district — doesn’t consider himself an evangelist for AI, and says he doesn’t push kids to use it. He doesn’t allow AI in his creative writing class, feeling that using the tools inherently involves giving up some creativity.
And like other English teachers, Vogelsinger has also pivoted to provide more class time for writing to ensure kids aren’t relying on AI. Now, when he assigns an essay, he’ll give students the bulk of a class period to start writing, on paper; those handwritten starters get turned in with students’ final versions.
“I always tell kids, you have to start with yourself, not the AI,” Vogelsinger said. He isn’t opposed to students brainstorming ideas, then asking an AI tool if they missed any topics.
Vogelsinger doesn’t run kids’ work through AI checkers to try to verify whether AI did the writing: He doesn’t think they’re reliable and doesn’t want to damage his relationship with students by accusing them.
If Vogelsinger thinks a student has cheated, “one of the first things I say is, ‘I don’t really like this piece, do you?’” he said. He also asks students where their voice is reflected in the piece.
Most times, students admit to using AI, but even if they don’t, “the message is still the same: ‘This isn’t good,’” Vogelsinger said.
He believes AI cheating hasn’t been as much of a problem for him as some peers, because students are “aware I have complicated thoughts and feelings about it that aren’t one-dimensional.”
Whether teachers resist or embrace AI, the technology has added to their workload, said Watkins, who is also a writing professor at the University of Mississippi.
For higher education faculty teaching four to five classes, bringing back handwritten work in blue books “just doesn’t translate or scale to meet the demand of the problem as it is now,” Watkins said.
But allowing AI also requires teachers to figure out how to implement appropriate guardrails, said Watkins, who advocates some of the same approaches as Vogelsinger, like disclosure forms for AI use in student work.
Vogelsinger, who is part of a cohort of teachers working on the NCTE framework, said he finds students have more of a conscience about AI than adults might expect. When he recently showed his 10th graders a slide that used an AI-generated image, it sparked a discussion about the ethics and environmental demands of data centers. One student asked him, “‘Why did you do that, if it uses so much water?’”
Kids using AI to complete assignments are making judgments about which are meaningful and which are pointless, Vogelsinger said.
“It’s a bit of a reckoning for schools, about what we’re asking kids to do in the first place,” he said.
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