Tool or Threat

How Is Artificial Intelligence Impacting RAHS English Classes?

By Aubrey Mathews, Reedsburg Features Contributor

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly evolving in seemingly all areas of life, but the last two years have marked a major turning point for education, and particularly, those classrooms where the written word is front and center. Since late 2022, high school English teachers here at Reedsburg Area High School and beyond have watched as AI moved from a trend and source of student fascination to a daily presence.

The temptation is constant and undeniable: students can now use AI to draft entire essays or answer complex prompts in seconds rather than hours. This shift has left educators at Reedsburg Area High School and beyond grappling with a difficult choice: Is AI a threat to be fought, or a tool to be embraced?

“Obviously, kids are in two camps,” says Mrs. Heather Anstett, an English teacher at RAHS with 14 years of teaching experience. “There are students who don’t want to do the thinking themselves, so they use AI to create the entire product. But then I think there are students who realize there is a tool out there that can make their writing more organized, or even sound better.”

The shift in student work was almost overnight once AI became a mainstay in the lives of students and in the wider culture. Anstett recalls first spotting the change in the spring of 2023 during a unit on Romeo and Juliet. “I immediately noticed the vocabulary,” she says. “It wasn’t consistent with what that student had been producing earlier in the year.”

This inconsistency in output between a student’s demonstrated capabilities in things like discussions and things turned in with pen and paper versus a paper that is, say, given as homework or over a longer term assignment period, is a tell-tale sign that many teachers are now trained to see. At RAHS, English teacher Mr. Michael Vander Zee says he can spot AI usage because the software tends to recycle the same "voice" repeatedly. During a poem comparison assignment on The Passionate Shepherd to His Love, he noted that the AI-generated responses used almost identical language every single time.

This robotic predictability was recently highlighted by The Wall Street Journal, which asked the major AI models—ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—to describe their own writing styles. The article notes that while assessing itself, Google’s Gemini confessed to writing like “a painfully neutral Midwestern news anchor reading off a perfectly formatted teleprompter.”

But the issues go deeper than just repetitive vocabulary; they touch on the very core of why students are in the classroom to begin with. Mrs. Theresa Carey, who teaches English 9, 10, and 11, believes students are often using AI for a shortcut. “Instead of seeking out help and asking questions, I think for some kids it just seems like an easy way out,” Carey says.

Beyond the ethics and policies regarding plagiarism, a new challenge of AI and tech in classrooms is also emerging: the erosion of the human connection. According to a report by the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology, 86% of students admitted to using AI during the 2024-2025 school year. Perhaps more concerningly, half of those students agreed that using AI has led to less of a connection with their teachers. Furthermore, 70% of teachers believe that AI is actively weakening their students' critical thinking skills.

Despite these warnings, some see a path toward a "middle ground" where AI serves as a tutor rather than a ghostwriter. In the International Journal on Studies in Education, researcher Ivan P. Bueno suggests that creativity and critical thinking can actually be enhanced if AI is used to provide direction and feedback.

Even Carey sees potential for specific types of assistance. “I wish they could use Grammarly,” she says, referring to the popular AI-driven editing tool. “I have some students who really struggle with punctuation, grammar, and spelling. I use Grammarly myself, and it really is nice to have some direction.”

As AI continues to evolve, it is becoming more difficult to detect and even harder for schools to ignore. The English department at RAHS, and departments like it at every level of education, therefore finds itself at a crossroads, trying to determine if these algorithms are an end to traditional learning or the beginning of a new kind of literacy.

Ultimately, the debate boils down to the difference between a generated product and a genuine thought. Mr. Vander Zee notes that the "identical language" of AI is what often gives it away. As long as students rely on a "perfectly formatted teleprompter" to speak for them, he says, they risk losing the one thing an algorithm can't replicate: their own unique, human voice.