How teachers are remaking classrooms for the AI age

In the AI capital of the United States, a sixth-grade humanities teacher named Tristen Chang is revolutionizing her classroom to prevent students from relying on AI chatbots. Last year, Chang abandoned take-home essays and started using oral exams to assess her students' knowledge of character, plot, theme, and metaphor. These questions are answered in a matter of minutes, as Chang believes that the advent of AI has fundamentally altered teaching methods.

As generative AI becomes increasingly prevalent, middle and high school teachers across the country are reevaluating their assessment strategies. Many educators are assigning less take-home work, increasing in-class writing and discussion, and redesigning assignments to gauge students' critical thinking abilities rather than solely focusing on their answers. This shift is driven by the recognition that AI is a game-changer, and many schools remain divided over its integration into classrooms.

Interviews with a dozen teachers and education experts reveal that some educators welcome AI's presence in classrooms, while others advocate for its restricted use. Antero Garcia, an education professor at Stanford University, emphasizes that teachers are still grappling with the implications of AI's integration in education. He notes that while adults utilize AI for various purposes at work, there is still a lack of understanding of how it should be utilized in educational settings.

In response to the growing accessibility of AI chatbots on students' personal devices, teachers are adopting more in-class writing, instruction, and face-to-face assessment. Middle school English teacher Rusty Shabe in San Francisco, for instance, encourages students to spend a month working on an essay together, aiming to combat the tendency to use AI when feeling overwhelmed.

Bobson Wong, a high school math teacher in New York, is assigning fewer homework questions and focusing more on in-class practice to ensure better monitoring of students' learning progress.

AI's impact on learning remains a topic of debate. A 2025 Harvard randomized trial found that a custom AI tutor improved learning outcomes and student engagement, while a small 2025 MIT Media Lab study discovered that individuals using ChatGPT to write essays accomplished tasks more quickly but demonstrated less critical thinking.

Despite these findings, AI is becoming an integral part of education, as evidenced by a 2025 RAND survey indicating that the majority of US students and teachers in English, math, and science utilize AI for schoolwork.

To counter AI's potential to undermine critical thinking, educators are devising new assessment methods. Meghan Hyland, a high school English teacher in a New York City suburb, has barred students from bringing their phones to school, requiring them to leave them in lockers instead. Hyland has also shifted her grading system, placing greater emphasis on in-class work and reducing the importance of homework assignments.

She now assesses students' critical thinking skills through live, hands-on activities like a cooking demonstration to illustrate themes from "A Tale of Two Cities."

Some teachers are embracing AI as a teaching aid, using it to locate relevant articles, design classroom materials, and create graphics for presentations. Michael Zagari, a high school social studies teacher in a New York City suburb, employs AI to adapt the vocabulary of historical documents for diverse reading levels and to summarize articles, enabling him to cover more content in class.

He also encourages students to harness AI's capabilities to initiate research projects, emphasizing the development of critical thinking skills in prompting AI effectively.