When I started teaching AI in June 2023, teachers were frequent students in my classes.
Common questions at the time centered on how to detect when a student was using ChatGPT and how to prevent students from using it on assignments.
An honorable mention: are there any tools that can tell when work was done with AI?
(That last one has an easy answer. Nope.)
Anyhow, I’ve long believed they were asking the wrong questions. The best solution: teach students how to use AI effectively.
But, believe me, I get the frustration.
I taught high school for a bit in a time when ChatGPT didn’t exist. There was nothing more frustrating than when the dumbest kid in class turned in a perfectly written essay.
You knew immediately it was bullshit, but was it really worth the effort to open that can of worms? (Especially when it was almost guaranteed his otherwise incommunicado parents would take his side if you called him out on cheating.)
Believe me, teachers, I’m not judging you for asking the wrong questions. But I do want to help you find a more productive way to navigate this AI thing. First:
Stop trying to stop them from using it.
You’re not going to.
Children know more about technology than most adults.
For us Gen Xers and Millennials, technology was something we “learned.” With younger generations, it’s built into their DNA.
They’ll never know a world where the Internet doesn’t exist. Any obstacle you come up with, they’ll eventually find their way around.
Technology is a language they learn from the time they’re old enough to walk, and no matter how far ahead you are, they will catch up and surpass you.
So, instead of preventing them from using it, teach them the when and the how.
To do that effectively, you have to do one thing that has nothing to do with ChatGPT or any other genAI tool.
You have to teach students to think critically.
You have to teach students to think critically.
Not how to prompt. Not how to catch cheats. Not how to write around detection tools. Critical thinking is the one skill that makes every other skill work. If they can notice what’s being said, question the logic, and decide what’s worth keeping, they’ll be fine—whether the tool in front of them is a textbook, TikTok, or ChatGPT 12.0.
The irony, of course, is that teaching critical thinking has nothing to do with technology at all.
You don’t need an app, a Chrome extension, or a fancy AI policy.
You need habits. Repetition. The steady push to ask, What’s the claim here? What’s the proof? What’s missing? And you need the patience to sit with the blank stares until those questions start coming naturally.
When I taught high school, I used to ask kids to take any piece of writing—a news article, a campaign flyer, even a Nike ad—and boil it down to one sentence: What are they really saying? Once they had that, the follow-ups came fast. What evidence do they give? Does it hold water? Who benefits if you believe it? It didn’t take long for students to realize most messages, even the slickest ones, weren’t built on much.
That’s the muscle AI threatens to weaken.
Not because it’s inherently evil, but because it makes polished text so cheap and so fast. If students never learn to press pause and look under the hood, they’ll mistake fluency for truth. That’s the danger—not plagiarism, not “kids taking shortcuts.” Confusing smooth words for sound thinking.
So the best way to “teach AI” in the classroom is to stop obsessing over AI itself. Forget the arms race of detection tools and new rules. Focus on what you’ve always had the power to do: teach kids how to question. Teach them how to spot gaps. Teach them how to change their minds when the evidence demands it.
Do that, and they’ll be ready for whatever tools come next. And you won’t have to waste another minute trying to outsmart teenagers with AI access at every corner.
I hope today’s piece helped you in some way.
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