The I of the Storm
Seconds before the bell rang, students began to pack up their belongings. The room buzzed with subdued conversation, many still processing Mr. Ruff's lesson on personal pronouns.
Actually, Charles was astonished that he’d made it through that class himself. He’d not connected Martin Buber and high school English teaching until this summer as he and two colleagues, Mark and Harold, struggled with the challenges of AI and the upcoming year.
The link to I and Thou in his brain was still somewhat tenuous. But it seemed to hold up if what he heard in the aftermath as the students left class meant anything.
Cecilia lingered, her brow furrowed. She approached Mr. Ruff's desk hesitantly. "Mr. Ruff? I was thinking about what you said about I-You writing and authenticity. Does that mean... well, when I write about my interest in cosmetology, should I be thinking about it differently?"
Mr. Ruff considered her question carefully. "That's an insightful question, Cecilia. When you write about cosmetology, are you treating it as an 'It,’ a set of techniques and facts? Or as a 'You?’ As an art form you're in dialogue with?"
Cecilia's eyes widened slightly. "I... I never thought about it that way before."
Charles credited his students for teaching him everything he knew about learning, and this was a good example. The fact is he had not deeply understood how the subject of a text could be a You unless the subject was human.
Of course, cosmetology could be You inside a writer’s brain on imagination. Cosmetology could be a comb or a hair dryer come alive. Cecilia thanked him for the talk and scurried out into the hall.
Meanwhile, Max was engaged in a heated discussion with Christine near the door.
"But don't you see," Max was saying, "if we always try to write in the I-You mode, we might lose objectivity. Sometimes we need that distance, right?"
Christine shook her head. "I don't think Mr. Ruff was saying we should always write I-You. It's about being aware of how we're approaching our subject and our audience."
Mr. Ruff overheard their debate and smiled to himself.
“You’re both right,” he said. “Limiting yourself to I-You writing would sacrifice objectivity, I think. Sometimes we do need that distance, Max. Think of the scientist studying a rock formation in order to write an article for a science journal. ‘I’ examine ‘it’ and try to become a machine myself. A rock does not have an I. In theory, scientists do their level best to set aside their I.”
As the students filed out, Mr. Ruff noticed a black male student, Michael, hanging back.
"Mr. Ruff," Michael said, his voice low, "I was thinking about what you said about pronouns and categories. Do you think...I mean, when people look at me, do you think they see a 'You' or an 'It'?"
The question hung in the air, heavy with unspoken implications. Mr. Ruff met Michael's eyes, recognizing the weight of the moment. "That's a complex question, Michael, one that goes beyond grammar and writing. What do you think?"
Michael shrugged, but his eyes were keen. "I’m not sure. How do you see me?”
“Oh, Michael, I see you as a brilliant young man with an amazing life ahead of you. I also see you as a student with tremendous potential as a writer.”
“Really?” Michael flashed a huge smile.
“Yes!” Charles put his hand on Michael’s shoulder.
“I need to listen better to my teachers,” he said. “I need to hear those kinds of things.”
“Perhaps you'd like to write about that in your learning log? I think your insight is very important."
As Michael left, nodding thoughtfully, Mr. Ruff turned to erase the white board. He reflected on the day's lesson, pleased with the seeds of critical thinking he'd planted by making use of the personal pronoun system, yet aware of the complex terrain he and his students had ahead of them in a world crowded with language, identity, and now artificial intelligence in this befuddling human condition.
*****
The next morning the class started right on time. Students arrived and settled down quickly. They seemed to have a lot on their minds.
“Today, we will call a consolidation day,” Mr. Ruff announced to his second period English class. “That means we are going to talk to pull together some themes that are floating, and I need to check in with you. I know you’re getting a lot of directions about AI in your other classes. What are you hearing about bots in your other classes?”
Issac rolled his eyes.
“It’s crazy, Mr. Ruff,” Isaac said. “There’s a war going on among the teachers. I have classes where I’m afraid she’s going to explode at the whole class because she thinks we’re cheating. Jasmine is in that class with me.”
“It’s true, Mr. Ruff,” Jasmine said. “She thinks all we care about is somehow trying to deceive her.”
“Other teachers don’t really care,” Simone said. “Like, use it or not, just don’t talk to me about it. Don’t bother me. But then they run everything we write through a bot tester.”
“Then there are the teachers who make us write everything that counts for a grade using a pen and paper in class,” Sarah added.
“Sounds horrible,” said Charles. “How are you holding up?”
Max, leaning back in his chair, said. "I say just use it. It's here, it's not going anywhere. Might as well learn to use it right. I appreciate what you’re doing to give us a better understanding of what is happening.”
Christine, sitting up straight, rebutted Max. "Yeah, but just use it, doesn't that defeat the purpose of being here, I mean, learning? If we're just a machine to do it for us, what are we really learning?"
“What do you think this teacher right in front of us is trying to tell us?” Max asked, frustration in his tone. “People using a machine to do work for them instead of using the machine to help them do their own work, they’re fooling themselves.”
Cecilia broke the silence that followed Max’s thunder.
"I think it depends on what we're writing about. Like, for cosmetology, maybe I could use IT—notice I said IT—to get basic facts, but for how I feel about it... that should come from me, right?"
Michael felt compelled to speak. "I agree, but it’s not just about the writing. It's about thinking. If we rely on AI for our ideas, are we still... us?"
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, Michael. It's just a tool. We use calculators in math, how is this any different?"
Randall, harboring strong feelings on the issue, had been biting his tongue. Coming from the working class, he believed education would be his pathway to owning a welding business someday with his own employees. He spoke with pungency.
"But calculators don't write essays for us. They don't have ideas."
Max parried back. "Neither does AI. The bot is processing old ideas from what humans have already written."
Christine refused to give Max the win. "That's not entirely true. It can generate new ideas based on patterns..."
Mr. Ruff interrupted gently.
"These are all excellent points. Randall, I agree with you. Copying and pasting text from a bot and turning it in as your own work is cheating and is a serious matter. The worst part is this: Such students aren’t cheating the teacher, they’re cheating themselves. They do waste their teacher’s time responding to a fraud. It’s a lose, lose proposition. Does anyone agree with me?”
Charles saw heads nodding and heard utterances in the affirmative.
Michael needed to speak up. "Anybody understands that when a person, an I, is using a machine to do the writing, they are a cheat. I mean, we’re in high school now. As Randall says, if you want to learn to become an expert, you have to do the work yourself. But here’s what worries me. What if we get lazy and let it take over our thinking?”
Max chimed in. “Lazy people don’t get very far.”
Cecilia had an insight. "What if... what we have to explain our decisions to ourselves before we use it? Like, what if we ask ourselves why we want it to do certain things before we do them? What if that becomes a mindset as Mr. Ruff said?”
Mr. Ruff nods. "Thank you, Cecilia. Excellent link to what we’ve been discussing this week. That ties into our discussion about metacognition. Explaining your process and understanding why you did what you did—that’s my rationale for asking you to keep a bot usage log.”
Sarah was frustrated. "This is all so complicated. Can't we just ban it and be done with it?"
Christine laughed. "I’m sorry. I don’t mean to laugh.
“How is that funny?” asked Sarah.
“It exists. Every teacher is talking about it.”
Mr. Ruff laughed: "And that, class, is the crux of our dilemma. How do we keep learning and authenticity safe in this new reality? I’m searching for solutions. This is new to all of us. Randall and Michael hit upon the two greatest risks of misusing the bot.
“Risk one. Randall reminded us that it is possible to cut, paste, and proffer, ask the bot to write a report, cut and paste the output, and proffer the result to a teacher as your own work. That’s being in an I-IT relationship but lying about it. It’s actually a double lie if we count the lie to the teacher. The lies we tell ourselves come back to undermine us.”
“Risk two. Michael reminded us of the reason cutting and pasting and proffering is so dangerous to our future. When we offload our own thinking, we don’t think. If we do that routinely, we surrender our thinking to a machine, and if you intend to become an expert in a field, you will never reach your goal. You will become a success at failing.”
***
Charles Ruff spontaneously prepared a self-assessment prompt for students to write using the remaining ten minutes of class. He knew that giving them time to write about what they heard, what they think, and what they can do would help them through writing as much as it would help him through reading their writing. What ideas did you hear during the discussion that strike you as important? What are your thoughts and feelings about those ideas?
Eight minutes passed.
"All right, class," Mr. Ruff said, glancing at the clock. "We've covered a lot of ground today, and I want to leave you with a challenge."
He wrote on the board: "I-You-AI."
"For homework I want you to reflect on how we can maintain an I-You relationship with our subjects, our writing, and each other, while also using AI as a tool for making the work more efficient and effective. As Christine pointed out, AI doesn’t just regurgitate information from writings already published. It can also discern patterns in information and create ideas that can be helpful. How can we ensure that AI enhances rather than replaces our thinking?"
“I will expect to see this reflection in your Metacognitive Journal when I collect them next. I’ll write down this prompt and post it on the LMS. You can email me or ask in class if you want to talk about it. Sarah, please collect these self-reports from today for me. Make sure everyone turns one in.”
As the students began to pack up, the buzz of conversation filled the room. Mr. Ruff overheard snippets — "Maybe we could use AI to brainstorm, but write our own thoughts?" "What if we use it to fact-check our work?"
He smiled to himself. They were already embracing the challenge, finding ways to make technology work for them rather than the other way around. As they left, he felt a renewed sense of purpose. In this emerging paradox in education, his role wasn't just to teach reading and writing, but to guide his students using the complex interplay between human thought and artificial intelligence to make them more human, not less human.