Though we are now many years into the “new normal,” with AI-infused tools and the ubiquitous chatbots still dominating conversations in education, it seems as though many resources are still focused on providing educators with tips and tricks for using AI in their own work or teaching students about AI, with only limited use of it on their own.
For me, this seems to be counterintuitive, as the interfaces of many word processing tools have been changing with new AI functions, and some of these tools have even been designed intentionally with AI tools built in as core functions to help writers develop ideas, then expand or condense sentences, add sensory details, or otherwise work with them in the writing process.
To provide a new perspective on how we might introduce AI to our secondary students, my long-time co-author and colleague, Kristen Hawley Turner, and I released Teaching Writing in the Age of AI: Strategies for Teachers of Secondary Students (Solution Tree). With a number of reproducibles from the book available for free — as well as a list of many of the links and tools we explore in the book — available on the book’s companion page, I encourage colleagues to explore the ways that Turner and I position GenAI as a thinking partner, research assistant, and co-writer (both for ourselves as educators, as well as for our students).
We look forward to more conversations about the the ideas in the book as we prepare for NCTE 2025 and a book club study with teachers at the Drew Writing Project. If you want to learn more about the book or invite us to speak with your group, please reach out.