AI in the Classroom: Not If, But How
Before the school year ended, I asked students across different year groups to take a short survey on their use of AI. I asked questions like:
Where did you learn to use AI?
How would you rate your ability to use AI?
How are you using it right now?
The vast majority considered themselves “adequate” users of AI, and over 75% said they learned these skills not in school, but from social media, friends, and good old-fashioned trial and error. Most strikingly, 93% said AI literacy will be critical in their future and that they want schools to proactively teach it across subjects (except Art, where only 2% thought it would be useful).
But the most thought-provoking question was this: How can we maintain academic honesty and integrity if AI is fully accepted in classrooms?
Without paraphrasing, here are the top five raw student responses:
“Learning how to use AI to help you and not to think for you”
“Assessments to be done on paper”
“Being required to share the history of AI use”
“Incorporating proof of the stages taken to complete an assignment into the grading”
“Teachers should learn how their students write and be able to know if it’s AI generated. Students can also be asked to explain their work.”
The message is clear: students want to use AI and they understand both its potential and its dangers. If they’re using it already on their own, then let’s shift the conversation toward why learning matters. Let’s show them practically why Task A or Assignment B can’t be done meaningfully with AI. Not because they’re forbidden, but because they lose their purpose. On the opposite side of that coin, we also show them how powerful AI can be when we use it to enhance our learning, when we use it for research, feedback, tutoring, and more.
In my experience, when I have open conversations and walk them through why it works or doesn’t work, students often say, “Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”
Now, I’m not saying we should throw open the floodgates and allow unrestricted AI use in every assignment. But the truth is, students are already using it, whether we’re ready or not. And many of them are asking us for guidance - not just rules.
We already have fantastic tools like Brisk Teaching and MagicSchool ,which are AI platforms built by teachers, for teachers that can help us model what responsible, ethical AI use looks like.
At the end of the day, when we as teachers decide to use AI with our students, we are not trying to replace teaching, we are reclaiming the narrative.
If we want our students to be ready for the world they’re walking into, we have to move beyond fear and start helping them develop the judgment, creativity, and curiosity that AI can’t replicate.
And our students? They’re more ready for that conversation than we think.
