In January, I attended "AI and the Teaching of Writing," a virtual workshop facilitated by Eric Hudson.

Much of the workshop revolved around how to redesign writing lessons and assignments to retain the essential learning of writing while adding "friction" to AI use. This type of AI-resistant teaching generally looked like adding specific creative components to assignments to show deeper understanding. There is also value in handwritten or teacher-monitored writing in the classroom that restricts AI.

We then discussed some ways AI can be used as a tool in AI-assisted creative writing. For example, students can practice writing and revising by creating clear AI prompts to achieve desired results, or they could use AI to generate a first draft of writing and then edit it to improve the writing without AI. As a sixth grade teacher, I wouldn't allow students to use AI themselves because of age restrictions, but I do find value in intentionally modeling how to appropriately and effectively use generative AI programs. Many apps already have generative AI components embedded in them.

Overall, my takeaway was that AI writing tools are not going anywhere, and there are also many benefits to the integration of more advanced AI tools; however, we must hold tightly to what is at the core of teaching writing. At the end of the day, what cognitive, social-emotional, and civic skills do our students need to learn from writing? There is a way to balance traditional AI-resistant learning and innovative AI-assisted learning.