The Camel and the AI of the Needle

In an increasingly polarized educational climate dominated by AI, there are precious few weeks before the next school year is upon us. I offer a flexible, snap on, snap off, assignment template building on the objective to teach students to exercise uniquely human inductive and deductive analytic intelligence while acknowledging technology's presence as an exploratory tool.

The Rhetorical Puzzler does exactly this—creating a learning experience where students use AI strategically while developing their own critical thinking abilities or whatever term that resonates with you. Who said these things. Who made these statements? Why? That is the question.

This assignment will teach and offer an opportunity to learn how to use an AI search tool to gain deep understanding of how well-known and influential figures used language rhetorically to position themselves for accomplishing their goals.

Try your hand at it later with these quotes.

· Quote 1: “There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.”

· Quote 2: “Dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery. We have built a model for the structure of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA)... Now we believe that the DNA is a helix with two chains coiled round each other.”

Quote 3: “It is not easy to convey, unless one has experienced it, the dramatic feeling of sudden enlightenment that floods the mind when the right idea finally clicks into place. One immediately sees how many previously puzzling facts are neatly explained by the new hypothesis. One could kick oneself for not having the idea earlier, it now seems so obvious. Yet before, everything was in a fog.”

· Quote 4: “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.”

Why This Matters to Educators and Decision-Makers

For Administrators & Board Members: This assignment demonstrates responsible AI integration that enhances rather than replaces human thinking. It offers a prototype for an introductory, balanced mini-unit plan that addresses both parent concerns about AI dependency and future-oriented demands for digital literacy.

For Teachers: The Puzzler provides a turnkey, adaptable template that works across subjects and grades. It is suitable for substitute teachers, cross-disciplinary projects, or ongoing skill development with minimal prep time.

For Students: Unlike traditional assignments that either ignore AI or invite shortcuts, this approach acknowledges technology while creating incentives for developing authentic analytical skills that AI cannot replicate.

For Parents: This assignment teaches students to use AI as a research assistant rather than a replacement for thinking. The goal is preparing them for a future where understanding how to work alongside AI will be essential for career success.

The Data Shows It Works

What's remarkable about my original Rhetorical Puzzler post, which was dense and badly in need of refinement using time I don’t have right now, isn't just who's reading it, but how they're engaging with it. While total views are modest (it’s not the most exciting post), the analytics reveal something fascinating: readers are returning multiple times, suggesting they're actively working through the puzzles rather than passively consuming content. I think it’s being shared. Yay!

This data pattern validates what teachers have long known: The belief that learners voluntarily engage deeply when given meaningful intellectual challenges that balance structure with autonomy.

The Framework: Simple Yet Powerful

1. Focus on a single public figure's rhetorical fingerprint across multiple contexts

2. Provide 3-4 carefully selected quotes that reveal consistent patterns

3. Guide analysis through four key lenses: Context, Strategy, Function, and Pattern

4. Explicitly teach when AI use is appropriate (for factual research) and when it isn't (for analysis)

5. Assess based on pattern recognition and synthesis rather than memory work

The beauty of this approach, if I dare say use the word, is that it simultaneously teaches rhetorical analysis, critical thinking, responsible AI use, and media literacy, all while being adaptable across disciplines.

Ready to Transform Your Classroom or School?

Whether you're looking to create an AI-savvy substitute teacher plan, design a pre-reading activity that activates prior knowledge, builds assumed knowledge, or deepens engagement, or simply develop an assignment that meaningfully integrates technology, the Rhetorical Puzzler provides a template you can implement immediately.

The full framework, including sample assignments, assessment criteria, and guides for both teachers and students on responsible AI use, is detailed below. What makes this approach helpful, in my view, is that it doesn't just preach the gospel of AI evangelism, which appears frequently in the form of the Protector of Literature and Lofty Thought or as Captain James T. Kirk discussing the thrusters with Scotty—AI as the Death Star or as the USS Enterprise. It acknowledges a potential threat to learning from AI while attending to those potentials of the tool for developing the very human skills our students will need most in their future.

Structure for Creating a Rhetorical Puzzler Assignment

1. Focus on a Single Public Figure with a Documented Public Rhetoric

Focus on analyzing quotes said or written over time or emerging from an occasion from a single well-known public figure. This focus creates coherence and reduces the research time needed. It also illustrates that rhetoric isn’t just speech-making. Our rhetorical toolkit takes time to develop but lasts forever. Our rhetorical profile becomes enacted almost instinctively.

2. Quote Selection Process

1. Select 3-4 short, representative quotes.

2. Choose quotes that clearly demonstrate the speaker's signature rhetorical public voice or patterns.

3. Ensure quotes span different contexts to show consistency in rhetorical approach even as surface forms might change.

4. Include minimal clues with each quote sufficient to afford identification. Finding the name unlocks the picture of the finished puzzle.

5. Example of Four Quotes:

The Revolutionary Thinker

Quote 1: "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." (1955)

Quote 2: "When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour. That's relativity." (1938)

Quote 3: "The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion." (1952)

Quote 4: "I never think of the future. It comes soon enough." (1930)

Students would identify Albert Einstein and analyze his distinctive ability to translate complex scientific concepts into accessible metaphors and his rhetorical technique of using apparent paradoxes to illuminate scientific principles. This puzzler helps students understand how scientific communication relies on rhetorical strategies to bridge expert and public understanding.

3. Simplified Analysis Framework (to be applied in 4)

Direct students to attend to these four key components as they work their way through the quotes. Ask them to use a paper log to take written notes in step 4.2:

• Context: When and where was this statement made? By whom? To whom?

• Strategy: What specific rhetorical tool or technique is being illustrated? How is the speaker using words to represent themselves to the listener in style and substance?

• Function: What is this statement trying to accomplish in this rhetorical space? Express in your own words.

• Pattern: How does this fit into the speaker's broader rhetorical profile?

4. Structured Student Task

1. Identification: Students identify the speaker through an AI search engine. Identification requires a brief biography with a statement of the significance of the individual.

2. Analysis: Students apply the simplified analysis framework to each quote.

3. Synthesis: Students identify 2-3 distinctive rhetorical aspects across all quotes.

4. Extension: Students find one additional quote from the same speaker that shows the same patterns

5. AI Tool Integration

1. Teach use of high-quality AI search tools through direct instruction, modeling, and guided practice.

2. Guide students to explore factual background rather than analysis, interpretation or argument.

3. Emphasize using AI for gathering background information only. Prompts exploring background and circumstances are fair. Prompts asking for analysis are out of bounds.

4. Hold frequent status-of-the-class discussions during the AI work to troubleshoot metacognitively.

6. Mini-Lecture:

Before introducing this assignment to your students or when appropriate, discuss three reasons why they should resist the temptation to replace their own analysis and interpretation with AI analysis and output during this and the bulk of their academic writing work.

6.1 Developing Your Own Rhetorical Voice

Rhetorical competence requires you as the writer to consider how elements of the rhetorical situation interact and influence one another. When you write your own analysis of these quotes, you're not just looking for what other people have said about them. You're developing your own views of these quotes, what they mean to you. The choices you make about words, sentence structure, when to write what, and logical flow become part of your unique rhetorical fingerprint. If you delegate this work to AI, you forfeit the opportunity to exercise and develop your distinctive voice and persuasive capabilities that will serve you in academic, professional, and civic contexts throughout your life. If you habitually offload your analysis and writing, you forfeit the opportunity to develop higher-level thinking abilities that have implications for the kinds of work available to you as an adult and your ability to participate in social and civic life.

6.2 Building Pattern Recognition Through Cognitive Effort

There is always your brain to consider, a marvel of biology which has a plasticity and potential to learn that dwarfs AI. The mental effort required to identify rhetorical patterns across multiple texts strengthens neural pathways that improve your ability to detect persuasive strategies in all communication. This pattern recognition skill doesn't develop through passive observation of a machine doing the work of analyzing. It requires the strain of your own wrestling with texts, finding and making connections, using your own words to express those discoveries. The struggle is precisely what builds your analytical muscles just as you won't develop physical strength by watching someone else lift weights.

6.3 Gaining Authentic Intellectual Confidence

There's a profound difference between understanding something well enough to read someone else's explanation and pass a test on it versus understanding it well enough to explain it yourself. Any teacher understands this. The best way to learn something is to teach it. Writing your own analysis forces you to test the depth of your comprehension and refine your thinking when you discover bad assumptions, false analogies, and blatant bias. Writing in your own words is a form of teaching others what you think. Writing in your own words builds confidence that transfers to other challenging tasks. The satisfaction and self-assurance that come from successfully completing difficult analytical work cannot be replicated when the work is done for you.

Assignment Approach

For this assignment, students will submit a 500-750 word written rhetorical analysis that:

1. Introduces the speaker biographically and rhetorically based on what was learned and documented from AI exploration

2. Analyzes how specific linguistic choices, structures, and expressions create an identifiable voice across all quotes.

3. Discusses how the language structures function to achieve the speaker's goals and what those goals are.

4. EXTRA CREDIT: Includes one additional quote you've found that demonstrates the same patterns

5. Concludes with a reflection on what this speaker's rhetorical profile reveals about participating in public discourse

ADVICE: Five Ways Teachers Can Spot AI Writing (That Could Get You in Trouble)

When your teachers read your writing, these five signs might make them think you used AI instead of writing it yourself. It makes no sense because it often takes more time and effort to rewrite AI output than it would take you to write your own paper.

1. Too Perfect and Predictable Structure

This tell is the time-consuming one if you intend to rewrite an AI paper to pass off as your own. . To transform a perfect and predictable structure into a human text means rewriting the entire thing. AI writing looks like someone followed a strict template to the t. Every paragraph might have the exact same number of sentences and follow the same pattern. Check it out for yourself. Real human writing is messier. You might spend more time on points you find interesting and less on others. If your writing looks too perfectly balanced, your teacher might get suspicious.

2. Playing It Safe Without Personal Thoughts

AI tends to write "textbook answers" that don't take any risks or share unique perspectives. Your advantage as a human is that you can connect the rhetorical analysis to your own experiences or things you've learned in other classes. If your analysis could have been written by just anyone and doesn't include any of your own insights or connections, it might look AI-generated.

3. Trying to Cover Everything Without Going Deep

This one is the high school equivalent of throwing in the kitchen sink. AI tries to mention every possible rhetorical device it can think of without focusing on what's important to the you. Real analysis involves making choices about what matters most to you. Teachers care about what you think. If your paper lists tons of techniques but doesn't explore why any of them are significant, your teacher might think AI wrote it.

4. Professorial Vocabulary That Doesn't Match Your Style

If parts of your paper suddenly use complex words and sentence structures that you don't normally use, it stands out. Your writing usually has a consistent voice that sounds like you as it should. When some sentences sound like a college professor while others sound like you, teachers notice this mismatch as a sign of AI help. Your vocabulary is perfect for you. To make it even stronger and to develop your own rhetorical voice and profile, use your words.

5. Technically Perfect But Missing Real Insights

AI can write grammatically perfect sentences and textbook definitions of rhetorical concepts but has a really hard time explaining why these things matter, especially to you. Teachers want you to explain why ideas matter—to you, not to AI. If your analysis correctly identifies techniques but doesn't explore what they mean to you or why we should care about them, it suggests you might have used AI instead of developing your own thoughts.

Important Note on AI Usage: While students can use AI tools like Perplexity, Claude, or ChatGPT to find basic information about the quotes, they are expected to write the actual analysis themselves:

✓ OKAY TO USE AI FOR:

• Finding out when and where quotes were spoken

• Getting background info about events mentioned

• Following up on interesting leads that bring the rhetorical situation to life

• Exploring how people at the time received the quotation

• Confirming who said the quotes

• Finding other quotes by the same person on the theme or another theme that surfaced

✗ NOT OKAY TO USE AI FOR:

• Identifying rhetorical devices in the quotes

• Analyzing how the rhetorical techniques work

• Writing any part of your analysis

• Editing or "improving" your writing

The point of this assignment is to develop student’s own thinking and writing skills. Writing and revising the paper with peer and teacher feedback is the primary setting in which tudents get better at critical thinking and understanding how persuasive communication works.

7. Assessment Focus (Student will…)

• Identifies patterns across multiple quotes (20%)

• Critically analyzes rhetorical functions the speaker relies on (20%)

• Chooses quality biographical evidence to support claims about the speaker in the rhetorical profile of the speaker with citations (10%)

• Synthesizes findings into a coherent profile (10%)

• Provides a labeled and organized set of artifacts from the work process, including an AI log, handwritten notes, and assigned formal and informal reflective comments. (40%)

Benefits of This Streamlined Approach

1. Time-efficient: Focus on a single speaker reduces research time.

2. Depth over breadth: Analyzing patterns across quotes encourages deeper thinking

3. Scaffolded analysis: The framework guides students without overwhelming them

4. Clear assessment: Focused criteria make grading more straightforward

5. AI integration: Uses AI as a research tool while keeping critical analysis and writing as student work

Building Tomorrow's Thinkers One Brain at a Time

As we navigate uncharted territory where AI and classrooms intersect, we need practical approaches that neither demonize technology nor surrender to it. The Rhetorical Puzzler represents one such path forward and provides at least a tangible way to help students develop their analytical capacity while teaching them to use AI as a research assistant rather than a replacement for thinking. At a minimum, Rhetorical Puzzler approach is a stable target to argue against.

What makes this approach potentially useful is its adaptability. Whether exploring Frederick Douglass's use of metaphor to illuminate the struggle for freedom, Einstein's ability to translate complex physics into accessible analogies, or Fauci's rhetorical strategies during a public health crisis, the framework remains consistent while opening doors to cross-disciplinary insights.

This isn't about teaching rhetorical analysis. There are far more compelling lesson designs for such work. It is about truly appreciating the human brain’s pattern-seeking drive, our inclination for critical evaluation, and awareness of rhetorical voice that will remain valuable regardless of how AI evolves.

We understand that the brain is embodied and enacted as a part of a whole body, but we also understand that we must eventually meet AI, brain to simulated brain. By focusing on a single speaker's rhetorical voiceprint, students learn to see beyond what is said to understand how language shapes our perception of reality, a skill that transcends any specific content area, and a skill that puts AI in its proper place. Nobody in the future is going to be searching for AI quotes.

I'd love to hear how this approach might work in your context. Are there particular public figures whose rhetorical profiles would make compelling puzzlers for your students? Can you think of ways to adapt this abstract structure using other objects than quotes? What modifications would make this template more effective for your specific teaching environment?

The comment section below is open for sharing your experiences, suggestions, ruminations, questions, frustrations, insights. Let's collaborate on preparing students not just to detente with AI but to develop the distinctly human capacities that will allow them to thrive alongside it.