What I’ve Learned About Using AI to Teach Students to Write
And the Question of Whether It Can Be Applied Universally to Revolutionize Writing Instruction
As an AP social studies teacher who, until I retired this past May, was annually tasked with helping the students at my high-performing school master the writing skills needed to score maximum points on the various AP social studies free-response exam questions — and as someone who has built a successful tutoring business largely because of my reputation for teaching grade 6–12 social studies and ELA students — it became clear to me early on that, to help my students learn to write more, better, and faster, I needed to provide them with three critical elements:
- High-quality on-demand writing instruction
- Plenty of targeted practice writing opportunities
- Instant feedback with an accuracy rating of at least 85%.
The problem was, before the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, no matter how hard I worked to master the teaching skills needed to help my students improve their free-response question writing, I simply couldn’t deliver these three things consistently.
Yes, I could provide high-quality instruction during class time, but I was never able to make it available on-demand, when students needed it most. Yes, I could assign practice opportunities, though they were rarely tailored to the unique needs of individual students. And yes, I could provide feedback, though it was neither instant nor consistently accurate. Scoring dozens, sometimes hundreds, of free-response questions inevitably left me fatigued, and, as a result, my feedback accuracy and turn around time naturally declined.
Then came the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, and my decision shortly thereafter to integrate AI into my classroom. By giving my students the opportunity to use AI for writing, I was able to overcome these challenges and, for the first time, consistently deliver:
- High-quality on-demand writing instruction
- Plenty of targeted practice writing opportunities
- Instant feedback with an accuracy rating of at least 85%.
And therefore for the first time, I had what my students needed to learn to write more/better/faster.
So, ya, ChatGPT transformed how I approached writing instruction and assessment. Also, how my students learned.
That said, I can’t help but wonder: does the same hold true elsewhere? Are the successes I’ve attributed to AI universal, or are they more a reflection of the incredible students I’ve been fortunate to work with? Either way, the possibilities for AI when it comes to writing instruction strike me as worth exploring further.”
