The Current - Teachers, students grapple with what AI means in highschools

Episode Date: September 12, 2025

Is asking chatGPT to give you an idea for your high school assignment cheating? Is teaching AI prompts in an English class a good use of time? These are the questions students and teachers are wrestling with as generative AI becomes a part of learning. But without clear guidelines in many school boards across the country, many are left trying to figure it out as they go, begging the question, what is the role of AI at school? 

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The class of 2039 just entered junior kindergarten. When those kids graduate high school, probably safe to say that the world will be a very different place, and a lot of people are betting that artificial intelligence will be the driving force behind much of that change. Today is part of our series Learning Curve on the State of Public Education in Canada. We're looking at the rise of AI in schools, the challenges, and the opportunities faced by both students and teachers. We'll hear from those teachers in just a moment,

but first I'm joined by two students. Grace Kim is a grade 12 student in Toronto. He's with me in our Toronto studio. And Rohan Gillis is a grade 10 student in Ottawa. He's in our Ottawa studio. Good morning to you both. Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for being here. Grace, how are you using AI in school? I think mostly I try to stay away from it, but there always is moments where you're reaching for it for like study tools or guides when you're focused on, like, how am I studying properly and stuff like that? But, like, other than that, I'm not really using it. Trying to stay away from it.

I'm going to come back to the trying part. Rohan, what about for you? How are you using AI? Yeah, sort of, like Gray said, I do try to stay away from it. I've used it for studying, you know? Our teacher gives us, like, a study sheet with the topics we cover on the test or the quiz, and I can kind of copy and paste that into chat, GPT, and then it'll, recount that back to me in a quiz form, you know.

And does that help? Yeah, I think so. You know, and it gives a variety of like formats too, multiple choice, you know, true or false. If I want to do a written answer, that works too. How else have you used it? I've used it once, me and my friend, you know, in tech class. We had to come up with like an innovation, a product that would sort of help people in their everyday life and we were kind of throwing ideas back and forth and none of them were

really landing. None of them were really like, you know, sounding too good. And so I was kind of just bored and I went on chat GPT and it gave us this idea for a sleep mask that had, you know, that kind of premium features had like, it was massaging your face and that kind of thing. And this is something that you couldn't have come up with on your own. You had a blank sheet of paper and it kind of gave you that that jump start. Yeah, and then we, you know, it was kind of the skeleton that we built around, and we made it our own. Grace, you said that you're trying to stay away from it. When you take a look at who else is in your classroom, if you peer around and take a look at your fellow students, what are they doing?

Are they using it? I think when you look around a class, you can see about five screens with chat TVT pulled up at any given time. Really? Yes, and I think especially in like English classes and like writing classes when you need to put more effort into like creating ideas and stuff like that. And so I think it can be discouraging when you're looking around the room and your peers kind of have an upper hand in like how they're getting their information so fast and getting ideas so fast.

Are you tempted to use it more? I mean, Rohan was talking about that idea. And we know it's like people call it the tyranny, the blank page, right? You have to create something. It's really hard. But maybe this thing, it's not going to, maybe it'll make it all for you. But it might not use all of it. It might just give you a bit of a jump start.

Do you tempted to use that? Yeah, of course. I mean, it's always there as like a way to just. start, even if you're just writing an essay, like, you can ask for, like, a thesis or, like, how to word a sentence properly that you're stuck on. I think it can be very helpful, but it also does take away the thought process and the challenges that come with, like, learning. Tell me more about that. What are you wrestling with? Because it could be a tool. You said you're trying not to use it, but it's got to be tempting. Yeah, I mean, I think for me, it's my last

year of high school. I'm going into university where there's so many guidelines surrounding AI, and it's not really going to help me if I become reliant on it. And I think it's a slippery slope of like using it just as a tool and then falling into a pattern of it being kind of like a crutch. And I think the best thing about learning in education is the fact that it challenges you. And you really need to figure out a way to get through hurdles and to go through obstacles. And I think AI kind of takes away all of that. Do you worry about that, Rohan? I'm not saying that you're using it to your advantage in an unethical way or anything like that.

But that by using it maybe you aren't learning what. what you're meant to learn and learning is hard yeah i think you know it's it can over time the repeated use sort of of a i like in place of coming up with your own ideas it can kind of you know dull that creativity and problem solving like innovation you know that you might need in real world situations and you know when you're not at a computer do you see your friends struggling with that as well? Or are people, I'm not trying to get you to rat people out or anything like that, but are there people that you know that they aren't really struggling with that? They see this as an opportunity to get a jump start and they have no problem with using it. Yeah, maybe the kids

who would, you know, just naturally be less kind of motivated, you know, to try hard in school. You know, they just see it as getting a grade. You know, they don't really see the, the learning part and that this is a means to an end to get a better grade yeah and you know in reality there's there's a lot more than that actual grade how have your teachers rohan how have they talked about using AI in school it's a thing and it's here now whether teachers want it in the classroom or not so how are they talking to you about about how to use it uh this year somewhat surprisingly i notice uh none of my teachers have mentioned the use of AI in the classroom. None of them. Yeah. So, uh, I think that might be a little bit of a problem.

Like teachers should try to, you know, ignore, I mean, obviously it's here, so you need to acknowledge it. But, uh, you know, it can be used for, for positive ways and like, in learning and, uh, academic ways like I was studying, but then, you know, it can also be used for plagiarism and cheating. What would you want to hear from your teachers in? terms of guidance? Just maybe like, you know, a slideshow or a lesson on tools we can use it for, you know, like ways to use it to enhance and assist our academic journey rather than like doing it for us. What about for you, Grace?

I mean, what would you want to hear from teachers? Again, it's here. And whether people are comfortable with that or not, that, Genies out of the bottle. So what would you want to hear from teachers about this? I think it depends because I've heard a lot about my teacher's policies on how they find out if you have written with AI or any of that stuff. That they might use AI themselves. Yeah.

And all of these things. And I think it's a hard line to draw because a lot of teachers I'm finding out this year are running our essays and all of our work through an AI detector. And I think if you're promoting the use of it in classes and being like, this is how you can use it as a tool and all this stuff. inevitably there's going to be moments where students work is flagged when they're not supposed to be. And I think because we don't have currently the proper tools of like detecting it and how to make sure that kids are only using it for like grammar or like study guides and all the stuff instead of writing the entire thing, I think we don't necessarily have a concrete plan on how to detect whether somebody has used it for their entire project or just like a little bit using the guidelines. And so I think for me, I would like a little more clarity on where teachers stand with that, what their process is, and how they, like, really narrow it down to, like, which students are using it for everything and which students are using the guidelines that they've provided. We're going to let you guys go. But you're going to go into university next year.

Yeah. Do you think this is changing education? I think it is. I mean, there's so much, I've looked online. There's so much about students in university now, and they're saying, like, that their work is constantly being questioned. whether it's AI and all this stuff. And it's never was a question before. Like now, it's if you use an M-Dash more than once, you're now attached you to the entire thing.

That people are flagging. Nobody uses an M-Dash except for AI. Exactly. So I think it has become a problem where we don't know enough about it to like really decide where we stand on it. And I think universities have really taken the side of like not at all. If you use it, you're plagiarizing. You're going to have like your credibility taken away. And so I think it is something to navigate because it's such.

a harsh difference from high school. You both are really thoughtful in terms of how you're approaching this. Thank you both for speaking with us. Thank you. Grace Kim is a grade 12 student in Toronto. Rohan Gillis is a grade 10 student in Ottawa. If you want to hear daily news that doesn't hurt your soul and might even be good for your soul, check out as it happens.

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but their teachers are doing the same. Daniel Guy Tremblay is a high school English teacher in Toronto. He's with me in studio. And Simon Worley is a high school business technology and economics teacher in North Vancouver. Good morning to you both. Hey, good morning. Daniel Guy, how familiar is what you just heard? I mean, in terms of how students are using AI, you teach English.

Is that what you see? Is the laptop open? And if you were to wander around, maybe you'd find chat GPT there? I would, for sure. I also teach media. And I think that my media studies sort of practice has informed how I teach English. And so there are occasions frequently, I think, in my classroom where students are encouraged to use AI for any number of things. I would say that, as Grace mentioned, I think so thoughtfully, that there is like a

structural disconnect between what we are expecting students to do in high school and then what they will be expected to do in university. That really begs the question of what is the purpose of education. So if it's the case that English courses are coded in Ontario as they are as pathways to post-secondary education, we feel obligated to prepare students for university if they're taking a four-you course. So if universities are asking that students write with pen and paper, we also need to ask students to do that in Ontario high schools. I'm going to come back to that big question. what is education for um Simon for you I mean you have you just did it an AI literacy course earlier this week is that right yeah so first of all I'd love both of those

students to move to Vancouver that would be wonderful um but they're great answers and I think that's like thoughtful answers and I think that's it and so what I'm having with my students is before I even start using tools before anything we have a multi-class AI literacy we go through everything we talk about the ethics of using this how to talk to other teachers about what their system is right it's not a default to use it everywhere the default is to not use it and actually to speak to the teacher in what each classroom you know permits we talk about bias um sourcing how do you source these things that that is being said obviously we all know about the hallucinations going on right and so environmental impacts that's something that students often don't even think about right

And so these things are really important. Learning the language, I think, is really important. It's like understanding math, but not knowing where the equation came from. So understanding what a large language model is, what neural networks are, right? What prompt engineering is. I actually had a few students talk earlier right when we started the year and they were saying the AI is thinking. I was like, actually, we've got to pair that back. We've got to really understand that it's actually doing math and probability to get the answers.

Does that help the students understand? I mean, again, both of the students that we, spoke with see this as possibly a tool that it may not be for some it could be a means to an end for some but they're looking at it maybe as a tool one of the tools that they use if you explain what the thing is does that help students understand how they could use it perhaps as a tool well not only that it's and now we break it into and i actually have in my class what are we doing this year and so how can we apply it directly for instance in business we're doing senior level business we're doing market trading so stock trading and we're going to create a trading bot together

and then we are going to have it make trades on our simulation but the students will also be making trades and so we're either competing with the bot but we're also adding to it so we're creating this bot and understanding everything we learn we put it in the bot and see what it comes out with and then ask it to justify its choices daniel gee teaching english would seem to be a real mind field when it comes to AI because we talked about this. Writing is hard and coming up with something on a blank page is really difficult. You have a prop in your classroom. I do. What is the prop? So I found a crutch in the back of my classroom. It's an old school. I found a crutch and I taped a sign that said chat GPT to it for a nice video, visual metaphor. And it, I, you know,

for most students that this is on the radio, so you can't see that I'm doing like the head under the hand thing. Yeah. But for the students you understand the metaphor, It's a great conversation piece. And if I could fit like a bulldozer in my classroom, I would also take GPT to it. It makes sense to me. If you are a kind of, like, if you need a tool, you should use the tool.

But nobody likes it when able-bodied people are screwing around on crutches. So if there is work that you can do that you're trying to avoid because it's difficult, I say, what are you trying to avoid really? Because I think a part of education is difficulty. It's discomfort. It's pushing through and persevered.

You laughed, though, when Grace talked about how chat GPT that the teachers, or the AI that the teachers used to look for chat GPT generated text might flag the M-Dash. How do you assess work that's handed into you in the era of AI? I also hate the M-Dash. So that's why I laughed. So the English curriculum in Ontario, I think, will need to change. It's from 2007, which is the a year I graduated high school. And the way that the strands are sort of set out, they've kind of devalued oral communication in practice. So one thing that I've done in my classroom is to return to students having to demonstrate their learning and express opinions orally quickly and on the spot to supplement the kind of writing that we suspect might be helped along.

So do you change then in terms of the ratio, how things are evaluated? So maybe what is written is not as much in terms of people's grade as other forms of presenting their knowledge. That's right. Yeah. I think it'd be interesting to see, you know, you said that the students in junior kindergarten are going to graduate in 2039, is that what I said, yeah. Will the essay be, isn't it? Will the essay be a dead medium by then? Is it a dead a dead medium now? That's a great question. So I think that sort of like taking the written word off of its pedestal and returning to oral communication, it's very interesting. The Socrates, I think, had a problem with writing things down, right?

We'll have chat GPT if that quote is real. That's true. Yeah, but I think he scored Plato for writing things down and now we're turning, returning, I think, to a world where oral communication is going to be valued or privileged a lot more than written communication. Simon, if a student turns in work that you suspect was completed with artificial intelligence, how do you address that? Yeah, absolutely.

This happens, right? Actually, I spin it a little bit into a, I think, a pretty wholesome discussion. So I'll chat with that student and it might take as little as five minutes. And we sort of break down, I first ask, right? And as he was saying, you know, having that verbal communication, speak to the student about it, break it down. Obviously, okay, this might not be their work. Great. What was their idea?

And then we start back and forthing, what's that idea? How do we build it out? Right. And instead of this being a punitive, you know, I'm angry at you. How could you do this? Let's actually take that idea. Let's rework it. You go back.

You work on something. Come back and chat with me again. What I've ended up doing is having a five to ten minute conversation with a student. As any teacher in the world knows, that's the most important thing you can do. And typically, that's a student that doesn't have that kind of connection you typically would with a teacher. And so now I can maybe break through a wall. How common do you think that approach is, though? I mean, the other approach is you run it through the AI.

It says that this thing, the work was generated in part or in whole through artificial intelligence. And the student, you know, gets their marked doctor or gets a zero. Yeah, I can only speak to my own, you know, professional experience. And I think I value those times with those students. But I can understand, I bet there's a thousand teachers listening to right now saying, I have 200 students, I can never do that. And I agree. but it only happens a few times in which you'll notice, right?

And there are, absolutely there are tools. The problem is these tools are not infallible, right? So you can't hold kids to the coals over a tool that isn't 100%. And so you can use it as a backup, but typically that conversation is where you get the answers and also where you can actually help develop, okay, what is the idea that they wanted to attack? Daniel Ghee, last couple of minutes,

you floated this idea of what does this mean in terms of the purpose of education. You can imagine that there are people who are listening who worry that if you open the door at all to this tool being used, it strips away the ability for critical thinking. It strips away the ability for anybody to write anything without that prompt. What does this say about what we're trying to do in the classroom, what the purpose of education is? I think that for the longest time, the purpose of education, and this is not what I believe, but I think the way that these structures that we've invented work with one another is to still create people to do jobs. So keeping AI out of the classroom, I think, is a bad choice if we have decided as a community, as a society, as a country, as a province, whatever, that what we're doing is preparing people for that next step on their road to gain full employment so they can be consumers or citizens, whatever you want to say. I think ultimately we need to reevaluate what we're doing at a local level.

And I love the answer, the 15-minute conversation, or the five-minute conversation or whatever it is. But I also don't think that the critical thinking needs to stop if we allow. AI into the classroom. I think, for instance, if it were the case that a student presented me with something that seemed, you know, real M-Dash heavy, and I might ask about it, you could do something simple, which still exercises critical thinking and ask them, why is this essay not as good as it could be? You know, you think about the output of chat GPT in a critical way, and I think that you're still exercising the same muscles as you would if you were to come up with the ideas yourself. Your students are lucky to have you both as teachers. It's a real pleasure to talk to

about this. This is something, I mean, it's not just in classrooms that people are trying to wrap their heads around, and I appreciate you both being here. Thank you. Thank you so much. No problem. Thanks. Daniel Guy Tremblay is a high school English teacher in Toronto. Simon Worley is a high school business and technology and economics teacher in North Vancouver. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.