How Artificial Intelligence Is Being Used in the Classroom: As Reported by a Student Journalist

The Proctor’s Dilemma

By Kerrigan Jenkins | March 14, 2026

Editor's Note: This is a student journalism piece from our 2026 Voices of the Next Generation issue.

The sun gleams off the windows of the new $22 million Innovation & Manufacturing Center at Traverse City Central High School, a testament to the district’s commitment to the future. But the most significant technological shift isn’t happening in a high-tech lab: it’s happening in the classrooms, on the screens of student Chromebooks.

Once the stuff of science fiction, generative artificial intelligence (AI) is now as common in student backpacks as a half-eaten granola bar. However, as the rise of AI has no stopping point in sight, the line between an educational aid and an academic shortcut is thinner than ever.

AI from the Teacher’s Perspective

Advanced Placement English teacher at Central High School Susan Roskelley has seen the changes in AI classroom use firsthand. Looking back at the first months of AI coming out to the general public, Roskelley remarks, “I didn’t think that it was going to impact me much. It seemed like a silly tool. As time has gone on, it has gotten to be a lot more prevalent.”

The shift from the initial reaction in the beginning to the present has been a 180. Roskelley has even started to incorporate AI into her own daily tasks to “check” them. She explains, “Sometimes I actually use AI to check things that I write so that I can assess whether or not a student will just kind of take the easy way out.”

When she uses AI, she does so to make her assignments better “and not as easy to cheat from.” However, she admits, “it doesn’t always work.”

To keep students from using AI to write assignments, Roskelley has transitioned to “more things now on paper, and try to use class time well,” as well as incorporating assignments that “are perhaps more meaningful, that students won’t be as tempted to want to use AI for.”

Some students believe that they are being sneaky with their AI usage or that it is not obvious in moderation, but Roskelley believes that nearly any usage will be detrimental to the student’s success. Roskelley says that it is often obvious if a student is using AI tools, as “most students don’t really have a professional or strong range of writing, especially if they’re only partly through high school.” She expresses concern if she sees a student “writing leagues above where they should be—I can tell that right away.”

Roskelley says AI tends to sound “canned” and that it is a lot more meaningful to hear a student’s real voice over an essay that sounds like “how a college professor might sound” and “not like real people” with intentional writing.

As a teacher, Roskelley finds it “alarming” when she sees her students use AI because it makes her feel like “they don’t want to think.” She notices the students “who will naturally be curious, and then those students who kind of use [AI] as a crutch.”

The sad reality is that some students who are struggling with a concept will opt to use the AI “cheat code” without actually trying or learning the material. Roskelley notes that using AI isn’t always done out of laziness, but that “it may be because they don’t think they’re very smart, and that’s their safety net.”

For Roskelley, the danger of AI lies in how it accelerates the “checklist” mentality of modern schooling. She believes “the learning aspect gets lost” and school becomes more like “I just need to get X, Y, Z done,” she explains. When the goal shifts from mere completion to growth, the true purpose of education—opening one’s mind to different experiences and team-building skills—is sacrificed.

Roskelley defends the necessity of traditional literacy by using a “dinner party” metaphor, saying that without a foundation in classic literature or other diverse topics, an adult is left with, as she describes, “that permanent feeling of being left out” during social and intellectual conversations.

AI from the Student’s Perspective

Traverse City Central High School junior Layla Williams spoke on her fear of the future of AI use on her generation. Williams admits that she has used AI and agrees that there are negative aspects to it, as she remarks, “I’m definitely not learning as much, and with the workload that I have, it’s just easier to use it.”

Despite the convenience of the tool, Williams expects it will have a detrimental impact on her employment future. “I feel like people are definitely thinking about it more in the long run because it will probably be more advanced in the future. So people are just more cautious of what they want to get into because AI could take over their job in the future.”

In the meantime, she sees some of the other cons of AI to be that “students aren’t able to think critically. They just write it down to get it over with. They just can’t come up with their own ideas. So, when there’s actual testing or exams, they don’t really know what they’re doing because they don’t have that resource.”

Williams adds that “I feel like if I were an older person, I would be mad that people are using it, because they work so hard to do what they want to do.”

​AI from the Administrator’s Perspective

The superintendent of TCAPS, Dr. John VanWagoner, views AI as both an aid and a hindrance. He says, “I think that AI has tremendous potential and helps create and organize to solve problems at a faster rate.”

However, he also questions, “Are we able to not be so dependent on it yet [and] still have critical thinking skills?”

VanWagoner fears that AI will influence how people interpret their own thoughts and that self-confidence and independence will become foreign concepts in the near future. He is concerned that students will struggle “to be able to rationalize that their values are not necessarily inherent in whatever the AI tool is that they’re using to make a determination of what they feel is right or wrong,” VanWagoner admits.

As the TCAPS Secondary Handbook clearly states, “Students are expected to hold themselves to a high standard of Academic Integrity. This includes, but is not limited to cheating, plagiarism, or misuse of generative Artificial Intelligence” and “falsification of school work are also forms of lying and are not acceptable.”

The transition from the $22 million Innovation & Manufacturing Center to the quiet, internal struggle over a “tool” highlights the true frontier of modern education. As VanWagoner, Roskelley, and students like Layla Williams have observed, the challenge of AI is not merely technical and obvious, but existential.

The ultimate test for Traverse City Central won’t be found in the speed of its network, but in whether its students can maintain their human edge. As the tools change, can the value of an education rooted in critical thinking and community remain?