MYTHBUSTING AI
ARE STUDENTS USING AI TO AVOID DOING THE WORK?
NORMAN ENG, ED.D ● 28TH ANNUAL FACULTY DAY CONFERENCE ● MAY 14, 2025
AI makes students more productive.
To use AI to plan, teach, and assess their students
Outcome 1: Build competency and fluency
Outcome 2: Gain in-demand AI career skills
Outcome 3: Reflect more critically
Phase 1: Introduction & Experimentation
Phase 1: Introduction & Experimentation
Phase 2: Implementation & Documentation
Phase 1: Introduction & Experimentation
Phase 2: Implementation & Documentation
Phase 3: Reflection & Survey
When I was looking over my ELA lesson plan, I found that I didn't love how my lesson objective sounded, as I had a difficult time finding the right way to word it. So, I put into ChatGPT, “Create a learning objective that finds the similarities and differences in a story by using text details and a Venn diagram.” It immediately gave me a response and worded it instead as…
“Students will be able to compare and contrast two characters in a story by identifying text details that highlight similarity and differences, as demonstrated through the completion of a Venn diagram.” I…liked this objective that it curated for me because it really emulated what was going to be done in the lesson and [I] ended up using it in my lesson plan.
Our district has been pushing data analysis, especially in ELA and Math. This process…proved to be extremely time consuming and daunting as they want up-to-date analysis weekly. As a result of [Prof. Eng’s AI assignment] and this demand from the district, we found what is called Zip Grades. Zip Grades is an automatic grading site that does all the data analysis for us and allows for us to create spreadsheets in minutes whereas before it would take us hours just to enter the data from the assessments…
This has helped with our teaching and lesson planning because within minutes, we are able to see what students have mastered on the assessments, what we need to revisit and what the lesson should look like tomorrow. When we see how students performed on a certain skill, my co teacher and I are able to come up with the topic for the next lesson right away. It has help us become more efficient with our own time but also allows for us to provide immediate feedback to the students.
Through my student teaching I’ve really come to realize just how much is asked of teachers. Many of the tasks I feel is useless paperwork so if using AI can help a teachers workload I say absolutely…Oftentimes I know exactly what type of question I want, what I want it to be referencing and what I want the students to be taking away from the question. Putting all of that information into ChatGPT generally spits out a really good response…Using this tool saved me so much time when planning at night. I didn’t have to agonize over the wording of a question, with a tired brain after a long day of teaching.
“…focus the majority of my time…working on developing projects and activities and working with struggling students.”
“Now…doctors can give actual medical care.”
“…led to more opportunities [for lawyers] to take on additional cases.”
AI is the future of productivity.
NORMAN ENG, ED.D�Doctoral Lecturer / Student Teaching Coordinator�Dept. of Childhood, Bilingual & Special Education�School of Education�Brooklyn College, CUNY�NormanEng@brooklyn.cuny.edu
References: Smith, R.A., and Weber, L. (2024, May 8). How AI has already begun to change these workers’ jobs. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-medicine-law-marketing-jobs-a1821672