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?

It's hardly like its difficult to prove, unless the teacher bans them from ever taking any worksheets or teaching materials out of the classroom. It's not that people can't recognise AI a mile off; it's just that they shrug and accept that a lot of people prefer to take the lazy route and outsource their thinking and their job as standard, and there's very little they can do about it.

Just like with botox: people who get it tend to assume that it will make them look fresher, more youthful and more attractive - when the reality is that it just makes you look like somebody of your age who has had botox. People don't say anything, because it's entirely up to you; but don't be fooled into thinking that they actually believe it's how you naturally look.

I've no problem with AI being used as a tool, to deal with monotonous tasks as programmed, instructed, controlled and verified by humans - any more than I object to an Excel spreadsheet adding up hundreds of columns of figures for me as I go, rather than me having to spend hours doing it all manually... but there are so many people now who are using AI as a magical genie, and letting it run massive parts of their lives and jobs, rather than bothering to do any thinking or have any intelligent input themselves.

Bullshit. Exam syllabus is all they (student/teacher/parent) would need in this scenario. Didn’t happen.

I’m an academic and I hate to tell you, if your child goes to uni and into the professional world, it will be awash with AI.

Now on principle, I don’t use it myself, at all. Unless forced to (sometimes the university makes us use platforms or systems that use AI and I don’t have a choice). People in my field with PhDs are using AI to re-organise their course materials, write proposals, even write bloody LinkedIn comments! If you have a PhD and you can’t write your own LinkedIn comments, you really shouldn’t be doing the job you have!

I asked someone for feedback on a piece of writing the other day and they just ran it through AI and sent it back to me. That was their feedback! 😩 I then had to spend half a day re-writing what I originally wrote trying to incorporate the changes I thought they intended to make but taking out all the AI. It’s ridiculous.

You can certainly raise it. But I expect the school is putting pressure on them to utilise AI. As private schools don’t need to hire teachers with any particular subject qualifications, this teacher may have no idea what they’re doing and have quite low confidence. It is a problem, but it’s a much more systemic one that I think you aren’t going to resolve with an email to the school unfortunately.

I was one of those awful unqualified teachers, sorry. After my M.Phil. and Ph.D., and newly married, I rather wanted to earn some money rather than spending another year gaining another qualification. To be fair, I did also apply to a number of state schools, as part of the Graduate Teaching Programme (as I think it was then called) but none of them even called me to interview (one had the decency to explain that I would have to be on a reduced timetable, and they couldn't afford that).

An outdated myth.

Not a myth, someone above you had said they fall into that category

I suppose that "unqualified" is a bit ambiguous; in the context of teaching, it means that the person hasn't completed a particular teaching qualification. That "unqualified" teacher could well still be a subject expert, with experience of teaching in universities, or overseas. (Or not! But the term covers a lot of circumstances.)

I asked someone for feedback on a piece of writing the other day and they just ran it through AI and sent it back to me.

I think one of the scariest things of all about AI is that many people genuinely think that they have properly done something themselves, simply by giving AI a few brief pointers and letting it do its stuff - they honestly believe that they have contributed something valuable and thus deserve the credit for copying and pasting what the robot told them!

Even in the world of MN, leaving aside the theories that some people have about bots starting their own threads for 'learning' purposes, there are still people on 'normal' threads who will say "Hey, OP, I asked ChatGPT for you [by copying and pasting your OP] and this is its response...." and, in so doing, they genuinely think that THEY have really contributed something useful and worthwhile. Like OP couldn't have done the exact same thing if they had wanted a bot-generated answer, rather than to seek out fellow humans and ask for their advice, thoughts and opinions!

How much you pay, how much you cut back, the effects of VAT and the number of holidays you have are irrelevant.
Is your child understanding ? Are the explanations clear? Is the lesson engaging? You say that your child is doing well. So what's the issue?
AI has a place in society today. To make our life easier. If the child is asking questions that the teacher is unable to explain / answer that is not the same thing as them using a pre prepared PowerPoint to save them reinventing the wheel

Its a myth that many or most are unqualified. When I came into the sector from state 20 years ago, it was more prevalent but no-one in the schools I've worked in for the last decade at least have been unqualified or were working.g toward it, much like Teach First type programmes.

So not actually teaching then? Babysitting,? That's what you are describing?

Er no, I said 'teaching content' .

And doing 1 on 1 to discuss topics and jolly them along..I meant in lessons. All of which comes just as much under the heading of teaching as wrangling 9F on a wet Friday, which we can also do if needed.

Teachers use resources e..g Twinkl to print worksheets and this is ok.
Using AI to teach is shoddy and lazy.
Students aren't permitted to run their work through AI before submitting it so why would it be ok for teachers.

Actually that is not what the poster is describing
She is describing knowing the kids as individuals. Offering pastoral care and helping to grow well rounded individuals.

That is is why I pay for private schools too.

This makes you sound very bitter not to mention silly

As a teacher of over 25 years I have to say that even the better paid AI providers are producing things which aren’t of the quality I need. I use them for very specific focussed additional activities for children who have extra needs - maybe for one or two children - to support them. But generally it’s poor.

I would be very unimpressed if a teacher was just using AI.

Adding to my previous post - when I’ve used AI - to get the thing I wanted I had to ask for so many changes I may as well have done it myself anyway.

You do know that private school teachers don’t need any qualifications?
My mum couldn’t get job in the state sector so that’s where she ended up. Private isn’t always better.

Again...largely not the case and hasn't been for some time.

Even if they didn’t/don’t have QTS, they have other relevant skills.

I got my PGCE /QTS at the start of my career, decades ago. Virtually none of the theoretical stuff on the course was of use in the classroom. Good mentoring, observation and CPD is far more effective and so long as a new teacher is getting that, there's absolutely no reason why not having QTS at point of hire is an obvious problem, or means that a teacher is shit. I've seen plenty of PGCE students pushed through and passed by their awarding bodies who are absolute crap, but hey, they're qualified on paper so must be better. 🤔

I don’t know this teacher, but you’re making a lot of assumptions about him/her based on the fact they use what you suspect to be AI homework sheets, and this anecdote from a friend. Teachers are held accountable for their pupils’ progress; if this teacher was that terrible, he/she would’ve been pulled up on it, or they will be soon. Have you met this teacher on parents’ evening? Spoken to them on the phone?

If they are ‘crap’ though, then that’s the awarding bodies’ fault. Also, like any other job being a good teacher takes time. You can’t expect a newly qualified teacher to be the same as one who has been practising for 20 years.