The A.I.-Resistant Classroom, Part II: Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Voice

Did you miss Part I? It is here.

Every case starts with a mystery–or in our case, a question: Why do we teach writing? Is it because students will need to know how to write in college? So they can get a good job? Or is it something deeper?”

The reason I teach writing–and why I enjoy reading my students’ writing–is because it is an expression of their thoughts. It’s a glimpse into their mind. Their soul. When my students write, I can hear their words expressing their ideas.

Is it perfect? No, but even when writing is broken and flawed, it is still their voice–and that voice is what I want to hear. I want to cultivate it, teach them its importance, and amplify it through their writing skills.

But what happens when that voice is missing?

The voice goes missing

It was over two years ago, back in 2023, when I first read about the new capabilities of ChatGPT. My seniors had just turned in their biggest paper of the year, and a thought was nagging me:  If I knew about this brand new technology, did they?

Out of curiosity more than anything else, I ran the student papers through one of the first rudimentary A.I.-checkers. (This is back when they were somewhat accurate.) Two student papers were flagged for A.I. use. I couldn’t believe it!

I looked back over the two papers in question, and I could see some worrisome signs. There were absolutely no typos. The wording flowed with precision, and all the arguments were advanced–possibly beyond average high-school level. These were outstanding papers. But they were missing a key ingredient: student voice.

When I questioned the students about these findings, they confessed immediately. Yes, they had used this technology–technology that I had just learned about–to write their papers. Since they confessed, I gave them another chance to write the paper for themselves–on a different topic, so I could hear their thoughts and their words. I think they learned an important lesson. 

I also learned a lesson:  My job was suddenly going to be so much harder.

The game’s afoot!

From that day on, I went into Sherlock Holmes mode. Whenever students submitted writing, I began running it through an A.I. checker. Even at that, I could tell that the process wasn’t perfect. Although it had caught those first two students, it began flagging student work that I knew was authentic. I even ran some of my old college papers through it, and it flagged them for A.I. use. 

But still I persisted: There had to be some way to outwit the machines!

Since A.I. checkers were failing to detect A.I., I found another approach. Our school is 1:1, and I require students to draft their papers in Google Docs, which shows me the entire document history, where I can see the various stages of the paper’s development. I also found a Chromebook add-on called “Revision History,” which alerts you to large copy/pastes that students have made. (I will link it here if you are interested.) You can even have Revision History “play back” the student’s writing process like a video to see when and if large chunks of text were inserted at any point. I finally had a way to spot A.I. plagiarism, but it was exhausting going through all that information for every single paper. 

Then I hit another setback. Whenever students used their Chromebooks offline, whatever text they typed during that time would appear as a large copy/paste when they hooked back up to the internet. How was I going to differentiate between students who typed their papers offline and those who were truly trying to cheat? Sherlock had another setback in the case.

It was a nightmare. I accused innocent students of cheating. Honest students began self-checking their papers and would bring me the results with a horrified look on their faces. “It says I copy/pasted, but I swear I didn’t.”

It was becoming painfully obvious that there was no longer any surefire way to know if a students’ writing was their own. This is the point where many teachers just give up. They say, “Let them use it!” There’s no way to detect A.I., so teach them to “use it responsibly.” 

But what are we losing when we do this? We are losing student voice. We are losing their original thoughts. We are depriving our students of the productive struggle of writing a paper. Is it easy? Of course not. But there is so much thinking that occurs in that slow process of drafting a paper.

I recently heard a Science of Learning quote that relates to this:  “Memory is the residue of thought.” If we want our students to remember information, we have to make them think. I am going to extend that thought:  If we want our students to have a voice of their own, they have to participate in the process of developing, refining, and demonstrating that voice.

Sidenote:  One of the worst excuses for letting students use A.I. to write their papers is “They will need to know how to use it in their future jobs. So instead of teaching students to write on their own, teach them to craft the perfect prompt to enter into the A.I.” Hmmm. So one day, writing will be nothing more than crafting the perfect prompt? That’s it? And if this is key to your future job, why does the A.I. need you? Why can’t it craft its own prompt? If human thought is no longer necessary, won’t most jobs go away? So that argument is deeply flawed. 

I knew I wasn’t going to give up on students thinking and expressing themselves. But I didn’t know how I was going to solve my problem.

There was one simple solution I had been avoiding simply because I did not want to do it.

The solution

For about eight years, there had been a sweet spot, where technology had made my job much easier yet did not give students an easy means to outsource their thinking. That sweet spot was gone. 

The only solution? Go old school. Back to pencil and paper, deciphering sloppy student writing, and handwriting my comments. (long sigh) It was a hard truth.

So that is what I have done. Almost all writing–with just a few exceptions–is done by hand in my classroom. Yes, that means essays (with and without sources) are now in-class essays.

Is it easy? No. Is it worlds better than Sherlock Holmes-ing student essays? Absolutely!

Let me go back to something I mentioned earlier: the missing voice. A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of hearing a woman tell her amazing life story to a group of about forty people. She had written out the entire hour-long story, so she would not skip any of the details. As she read, I could hear her voice. She wrote like she speaks, and her story had such an impact because it was written with her words–explaining her intimate thoughts and feelings. As I listened, I realized this is what I am fighting for. I want my students to be able to do that. No chatbot could ever replicate her thoughts. No prompt could ever produce something so beautiful, honest, and personal. She has a voice, and somewhere along the way, a teacher taught her to use it.

The human voice is worth fighting for.

In my next blog post on this subject, I will explain the techniques my colleagues and I use when students write in class and how we balance this in a 1:1 school. We still give our students plenty of time to pre-plan their writing, and I’ll tell you how we set that up. I will also provide some free materials if you want to try it yourself. 

In the meantime, if you’d like to weigh in on this discussion, either in the comments below or on our Facebook page, I’d love to hear your input! And if you happen to see a typo here or there in this post, please excuse those. I wrote this myself.

Until next time, stay creative!

Zachary