J.E.B. Mungall

Tag: chatgpt

A Better Way to Teach Writing in the Age of AI

April 14th, 2025
Process-Based Checkpoints That Work

Let’s be honest: the writing landscape has changed. AI tools like ChatGPT aren’t just looming on the horizon—they’re already in your students’ browsers.

And while some educators are still scrambling for the perfect AI detector (spoiler: it doesn’t exist), others are asking a better question:

How do we teach writing in a world where students can outsource the whole thing?

The answer? Go back to something that’s always worked—but with a few smart updates.

🔁 The Checkpoint Writing Model

Instead of policing the final draft, start engaging students throughout the writing process. Here’s a structure I’ve used in my classroom (and it’s fully adaptable for middle school, high school, or college instruction):

✅ Checkpoint 1: Brainstorming or Topic Proposal

Students generate ideas (with or without AI help), but must also explain their thinking. If they use an AI prompt, they submit both the AI response and a 2–3 sentence summary of what inspired them.

Bonus: This gives you an early read on their voice and originality.

✅ Checkpoint 2: Outline or Planning Page

Before drafting, students submit a basic outline or mind map. You can provide a template or let them use AI to help structure their argument—but again, they have to explain what they kept, modified, or rejected.

This stage reinforces organization, voice, and accountability.

✅ Checkpoint 3: First Draft (Ungraded)

This isn’t a final product. It’s a progress check. Use peer review, AI-assisted feedback, or conference check-ins to help them revise—and coach them through improving, not just submitting.

✅ Checkpoint 4: Final Draft + Reflection

Students turn in their final draft with a short written reflection:
- What changed since your outline?
- Did you use any tools or suggestions (AI or otherwise)?
- What are you most proud of?
Why This Works:

✔️ It builds trust and transparency.
✔️ It makes writing more process-focused, not product-obsessed.
✔️ It gives students permission to use AI—but in a way that develops skill, not shortcuts it.
✔️ And most importantly? It helps you sleep at night.

📘 Want more like this?

This is just one of the many real-world strategies I share in my new book,
AI for Good, Not Evil: A Language Arts Teacher’s Handbook.

If you’re looking for practical tools, smart prompts, and ethical frameworks for teaching writing with AI—not in spite of it—this book is for you.

👀 Grab a copy here
🎙 Or book a virtual PD for your team
Digital Witch Hunts: Academic Dishonesty with AI

February 27th, 2025
Artificial Intelligence is rapidly changing education, but not always for the better. One of the most troubling developments is the reliance on AI detection tools to assess whether students have used AI to complete their assignments. The problem? These tools are often wildly inaccurate, inconsistent, and, ironically, create the very environment they seek to prevent—one where students and educators alike must cater their work to the whims of an unthinking algorithm.

A Real-World Example of AI Detector Failures

Recently, my assistant principal (AP), who is working on another degree, called me for advice after being falsely accused of using AI to write a paper. His professor informed him that their institution’s third-party AI detection software flagged his submission as 68% AI-generated.

The issue? My AP is not only a principled educator but also a talented writer. He knew with certainty that he had not used AI to generate any portion of the paper. What he had done, however, was follow the exemplar report given to the class and had accepted a few grammatical suggestions from Microsoft’s built-in tools—like replacing “in spite of” with “despite.” That was the extent of the so-called “AI generation.”

Out of curiosity, he asked if I could run the same paper through my school’s AI detector. The result? It flagged his paper as only 8% AI-generated. For comparison, the exemplar report from his professor’s institution scored 13% AI-generated—a higher percentage than his own paper!

How is it possible that two separate AI detection tools produced such drastically different results? The answer is simple: these tools are not reliable.

A Flawed Approach to Academic Integrity

Given the discrepancy, the professor had a few options. She chose to allow my AP to resubmit his paper with a 15% penalty, provided that it passed another AI detection scan. He refused. To do so would be an admission of wrongdoing when none had occurred.

Ultimately, since the paper was part of a multi-stage assignment, the professor decided to “let it go,” with the caveat that if future submissions were flagged, further action would be taken.

So, let’s get this straight: the professor was comfortable relying entirely on an AI algorithm to do her job because she suspected a student had used an AI algorithm to do his. The irony is staggering.

The Harmful Effects of AI Detection Overreliance

This situation highlights the growing problem with AI detectors in education:
- They shift the focus away from learning. Instead of focusing on improving his work, my AP is now more concerned about avoiding AI detection flags.
- They encourage poor writing. One way to avoid being flagged is to write less fluently and more mechanically—an absurd incentive in an educational setting.
- They force students to cater their writing to flawed algorithms. If one AI detector flags a paper at 68% AI-generated and another at 8%, which one should students trust? The obvious answer is neither.
What Should Educators Do Instead?

Some suggest comparing flagged assignments to prior student writing samples to verify authenticity. This is a reasonable approach—but it requires effort on the part of the professor. The reality is that as AI-assisted writing becomes more ubiquitous, educators may not have purely student-generated samples for comparison.

Instead of relying solely on flawed AI detection software, educators must rethink how they assess student writing. Some effective strategies include:
1. Process-Based Writing Assignments – Requiring drafts, revisions, and in-class writing samples makes it easier to verify authentic student work.
2. Oral Defenses & Discussions – Having students verbally explain their arguments can confirm whether they understand their own writing.
3. Updated Academic Integrity Policies – Institutions must recognize that AI is here to stay and shift the conversation from detection to ethical use of AI tools.
A Final Thought

The reliance on AI detection tools to catch academic dishonesty is not just impractical—it is counterproductive. These tools lack consistency, produce false positives, and ultimately create an adversarial dynamic between students and educators. If we do not address this issue now, we risk creating a system where students are forced to write not for their professors, but for the approval of an algorithm.

And that is not education.
Ceding an Arsenal to Your Ideological Opponents: ChatGPT

March 14th, 2023

I’ve been a big proponent of AI-language generation tools like ChatGPT and AI-art generation tools like PhotoLeap. I find myself often at odds with fellow English teachers, authors, and artists in this. They argue that these tools can undermine the creativity, nuance, and originality that are essential to artistic and literary expression. I likewise find myself discussing ChatGPT with more conservative friends, who express concerns about the Left-leaning programming inherent in the AI. They argue that use of the tool is too limited and designed to support Leftist political agendas. However, I think that it’s foolish to cede such a powerful tool to ideological opponents and likewise foolish to pretend that such a tool is going to go away.

English teachers, authors, and artists argue that AI-generated writing or art lacks the emotional depth and human touch that is necessary for truly meaningful work. Others worry that the use of AI language generation tools can lead to a homogenization of language and culture, where all writing and speech sounds the same, and individual expression is lost. Some also express concern that the use of AI-art generation tools can lead to a devaluation of human labor and talent as the creation of art becomes increasingly automated and less reliant on human skill and creativity. These critics caution against relying too heavily on AI-generated content and encourage a continued emphasis on human creativity and expression. I can’t say that these arguments lack merit. Further, the idea that as automation increases, making production-type jobs fewer and fewer, that we will be moved towards more artistic endeavors becomes problematic as AI-created artforms flood the world.

I’ve discussed this at length with other teachers at my school (which is fully remote online school), and there is significant concern about cheating and plagiarism. When I first came to ChatGPT, I spent three weeks in a daze trying to figure out how I could address this in my courses. I could input my detailed prompt for my students’ essay exam on Beowulf and get quite good responses that differed each time I put it in. Gone were the days where I could easily pick out plagiarized work based on certain phrases I’ve seen across multiple papers. But the more I considered it, the more I realized this tool would not be going away, and as good as it is now, the technology will only ever get better. What I should be doing then, is teaching my students how to use the tool responsibly to put their own thoughts and understanding into well-written text rather than just let my students find it and figure it out on their own. To ignore this tool would be a disservice to my students. Does this mean to discourage my students from writing? By no means! In fact, it can actually facilitate writing among students who would otherwise NEVER write any text longer than an email beyond their academic career.

Of course, that ChatGPT facilitates MORE people from sharing their thoughts in a more coherent fashion than ever known in human civilization. This can create a flood of information—which is already an issue with the Internet. But right now, content-creators of various ideological perspectives are widely available. However, if tools like ChatGPT are wholesale eschewed by any prominent political party you run into a number of problems. Conservatives or those of any political ideology should not ignore AI language generating tools like ChatGPT or cede such tools to their ideological opponents because these tools have the potential to shape public discourse and opinion in significant ways. As AI-generators become more sophisticated and widely used, they have the potential to influence public policy, shape public perception, and impact social and political outcomes.

By ignoring or ceding AI language generating tools to their ideological opponents, conservatives risk losing the ability to shape public opinion and influence public policy. As AI language models become more prevalent in the public sphere, they will increasingly shape public perception and discourse, and it is essential for conservatives to engage with these tools in order to ensure that their perspectives and beliefs are represented and considered. Moreover, ignoring or ceding AI language generating tools to their ideological opponents may also reinforce existing biases and echo chambers in public discourse. If only one side of the political spectrum is using AI language generating tools to shape public opinion and discourse, then the perspectives and beliefs of the other side may be excluded or marginalized, leading to an even more polarized and divided public discourse.
An excerpt from the my work-in-progress on Teaching Writing with ChatGPT:

March 7th, 2023
The development of ChatGPT marks a significant milestone in the history of information and communication technologies. Much like the invention of the printing press revolutionized the dissemination of knowledge and information in the 15th century, ChatGPT represents a new frontier in the field of natural language processing. Just as the typewriter and word processor transformed the way in which written documents were produced and edited, ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with computers and access information. ChatGPT, with its ability to generate human-like responses to text input, has the potential to transform the way we communicate and collaborate, much like these previous technological advancements.

ChatGPT can be useful for a variety of writing-based tasks, including:
1. Content Generation: it can generate coherent and coherently written articles, stories, summaries, and more on a wide range of topics.
2. Text Completion: it can complete partially written sentences, paragraphs, and even entire articles.
3. Summarization: it can generate concise summaries of long documents or articles, helping to condense information into more manageable chunks.
4. Question Answering: it can respond to questions by generating relevant and informative answers.
5. Translation: it can translate text from one language to another, making it a useful tool for multilingual writing tasks.
6. Proofreading and Editing: it can identify and suggest corrections for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors in written text.
In general, ChatGPT is a powerful tool for automating and improving various aspects of writing, making it a valuable asset for individuals and organizations that rely on written communication.

Challenges in the English Classroom

AI tools, like the impressive ChatGPT, have the potential to significantly impact the field of education, including the teaching of English. However, they also present new challenges that English teachers must address. One of these challenges is academic dishonesty, including plagiarism.

Using these tools, students now have access to an unlimited source of information and can generate high-quality written content with ease. This has the potential to make academic dishonesty even more prevalent than tools like Google already made it—and also much more challenging to catch (and prove).

Another challenge posed by AI tools like ChatGPT is the potential for students to rely too heavily on these tools for their writing assignments. While AI tools can be useful for generating ideas and providing support, students must still develop their own writing skills and critical thinking abilities. Teachers must educate students on responsible use of AI tools and emphasize the importance of developing their own writing skills.

AI tools also raise questions about the role of the teacher in the classroom. While these tools have the potential to make the teaching process more efficient, they also raise concerns about job loss and the future of teaching. Teachers must continue to demonstrate their value and importance in the classroom, by providing personalized attention, guidance, and support to their students.