Teacher in private school using AI for everything.

[ShakespeareSallo]

As the title says really.

My now teenage child has attended a private school since 11, they are now in Year 10. It has been a great experience for them and worth the money. We aren’t rich by any means but afford it by making cut backs, we haven’t been on holiday for 5 years. VAT has hugely impacted us.

My child now has a teacher for a core subject which they haven’t had before. They bring their book home every week, and it is very obvious that the whole scheme of work and all of the worksheets and homework are AI generated. I am not a dinosaur, and I do use AI myself. However, this level of usage coming from my child’s teacher seems excessive, and I am not sure how much actual teaching is going on? My child has also said all of the PowerPoints used in lessons are obviously AI generated, and even that it has appeared as though the things on the PowerPoints the teacher is seeing for the first time alongside the students?!

Less of an issue, but I’ve also had some suspiciously AI looking and sounding emails from other members of staff in the school.

WIBU to arrange a meeting with the Head of Year to raise these concerns, or is this just the modern era of teaching?

Using a calculator too early in the learning process does make you worse at maths.

in the uk sats (age 11 tests) are deliberately non calculator, in other countries this is done until much later.

the longer students are learning maths without a calculator the better their maths is.

This makes no sense to me at all - and I'm a teacher who teaches A Level at a state school and I also use AI.

The topic is decided by the exam board spec. Like let's say it's Geography, then (depending on exam board) it'll look something like this
1: Dynamic Landscapes
2: Dynamic Places
3: Physical Systems and Sustainability
4: Human Systems and Geopolitics

I don't understand how a teacher, student or parent wouldn't know what topic is being covered. In terms of information about the topics, just scroll down the spec. I rather suspect that the teacher is saying they don't know exactly what they'll be covering minute by minute in a particular lesson - occasionally, I'm asked for these details by a parent whose young adult will be missing the lesson (and note, I'm under no obligation to provide learning for anyone outside of my classroom as I'm their teacher not their tutor). It's not 100% possible for me to pinpoint as teaching isn't the same as presenting or delivering content, instead it's a lot more dynamic than that.

Short answer, if parents want to know what topic is being covered and what information that will likely include, simply download the relevant spec and ask the school where they are in the curriculum. Not hard.

My BIL uses AI to individualise work and homework and tests to each student - which is a fantastic use - but he (and I - although I'm not a teacher) strongly believes in 'Human in the Loop' and so everything is looked over by him too.

I wouldn't be happy with unchecked AI - it does make mistakes, but the right use - like tailoring a test to a student, and then feeding the results back to give them specific homework is exactly what it's good for.

My experience is that young people hate AI. My teens are all vehemently against it and absolutely lose respect for a teacher who is using it. So I would be concerned about as much as anything else. Also letters from school should absolutely not be AI generated. I would be complaining, especially in the scenario of paying for education.

Also, like re: AI. The amount of weird pushback. Would you rather they were using textbooks? Would you rather have textbook photocopies? I use AI, and my professional judgement, to adapt knowledge and practice. I'll use the spec combined with bits from my own head, bits from the textbooks, bits from what I've observed in the young peoples' work, and knit it all together, using AI as a tool. This is pretty much what a lot of teachers do. I'm not simply pumping a title into an engine and asking it to produce the lesson / series of lessons. I literally don't know anyone who does that. And in terms of worksheets, yes, I could do it with lettraset and a banda machine, but that would be a serious waste of time, and time is a resource best spent elsewhere, e.g. providing bespoke feedback on students' work.

All this moral panic about AI (which isn't even AI, it's LLMs that everyone's calling by the wrong name) is somewhat reminiscent of the church and government when the printing press was invented. In other words, it's a battle for control, not a fight over good -v- evil.

It entirely depends on the teaching around the AI generated content. Teacher workloads are massive - with AI giving a helping hand it means they have more time for the human side of the job such as relationship building, wider enrichment experiences, training etc. Any competent teacher uses the powerpoint and worksheets as a prompt for the deeper teaching and class discussions. However, the teacher seeing it for the first time whilst delivering is poor practice.

Piss off. Honestly piss off. If by 'shit' you mean we prefer to spend our time actually teaching content and not crowd control, yes sure. If by 'shit' you mean covering boarding duties, working on site til gone 6 many nights, sometimes Saturdays for sometimes less pay than state then yes. If by 'shit' you mean actually habing often post grad degrees in our subjects then yes. If by 'shit' you mean knowing every single child on site by name, knowing their family background, interests, what will jolly them on on a bad day, yes. If by shit you mean being able to engage with students 1 to 1 because we have fewer of them so can meet individually to discuss x topic then yes.
OP I'm not a fan of AI generally but there is no harm in using pre made resources provided the actual teaching around it is knowledgeable, effective and accurate.

I agree with you. Although I would say there is a difference between using AI to pull together information onto a slide pack than using it to ‘think’ for us.

I also think you are right that it’s a specific challenge for kids who could feasibly skip a lot of developmental steps through using AI when this is less of an issue as a grown up who has been through eduction.

I think more broadly though, AI is here to stay so thinking about how it can be used ‘safely’ in school, ie not to negatively impact the process of learning and developing the ability to think and reason, is probably the approach we need to take.

I’m not a teacher so I have no idea but I assumed that working in a private school you get paid better and have fewer kids to teach in each class?

That makes it a better job, doesn’t it? Usually better jobs are in high demand so why would it end up being the shit teachers who work in private schools?

lol no

A year 10 telling tales on his teacher and you believing him. Perhaps he is not doing very well and you are looking to blame the teacher. All teachers use AI. It is a quick way to produce a resource and saves time. As for complaining to the school. They will politely listen to you and then laugh about it in the staffroom.

I’m genuinely interested - why not?

Like I said, I’m not a teacher, I have no skin in this game. I also don’t have a kid in private school.

helps with the rage bait

Of course it is! I ignore posts like that; you can spot them a mile off with the bolding and emojis.

Maybe because paying for education you’d expect better?

🤭

Probably saves them a lot of time. If curriculum is met does it matter

A lot of very good teachers don’t want to work in private schools. For some it’s because they don’t agree with private education at all, or because they want less privileged children to be able to benefit from their skills. (I’m not saying there aren’t any good teachers in private schools, of course there are, but there are also some who couldn’t cope in state schools or never got a handle on behaviour management).

This.

You are not necessarily better paid. Dd is on just less than state rates, but has same teachers pension, free food, (emphasis on healthy as kids are boarding) free gym, swimming, healthcare, theatre tickets, support for her sport and shorter term times.
She does work longer hours, 08.15 to 18.00 and can earn extra supporting boarding duties (she does 1 night per week til 22.00)

You do often end up with much smaller classes and more resources available for teaching. If there are behaviour issues, it is a lot easier to deal with - call parents - child is removed or told to buck their ideas up.

She uses AI, but generally for gathering content from the school learning resources, and to put the "corporate" skin on to everything.

(The AI used is bespoke. Not chatgpt with possible security of personal info issues.)

Isn't that what teaching is and actually, they may be using AI to mark the work.
Lots of AI is junk and there needs to be an ethical approach to it's use. Considering the government are grappling with the regulatory scrutiny that needs to be applied then I don't see how schools are using it responsibily. Equally, how do schools square their environmental responsibilities towards the next generation with the water guzzling needs of AI?

As somebody who could never afford private school, but wouldn't consider it even if we could, I do have sympathy with people who have been led to believe that they're paying a very high premium for a much better service/experience, but then they find that they're getting the same as people who don't pay the premium.

If you went to the Ivy and ordered a tender breaded beef dish described with lots of flowery French adjectives designed to assure you of its premium provenance, quality, expert care in cooking and preparing - with a very high price to match - and they brought you out a Big Mac, still in its branded wrapper, how happy would you be? By contrast, if you went to McDonald's, ordered a Big Mac, paid the menu price for a Big Mac and received a Big Mac... well, that was the whole deal, nothing to see or complain about there.

I've been frustrated enough at pub quizzes, where a clearly, provably correct answer has been marked as wrong, because the question sheet that the organiser downloaded from the internet has a glaring error on it... and no amount of protest will move them from "That's the answer that I was given" and refusing to countenance anything else.

A pub quiz is just a bit of entertainment on a night out, and doesn't actually matter in the scheme of things; on the other hand, it my child's formal education was being marked along the same lines, I would be furious. I get that, for the quizmaster, their main focus is selling drinks, and the quiz is just a small ephemeral distraction to drum up a bit of extra custom. This is categorically not the case when it comes to a teacher, who is meant to be educating children for all of their adult lives.

A lot of private schools employ unqualified teachers, this could by why.