Recent data suggests that educators may embrace AI more than shun it, as Bond did. Roughly 60 percent of teachers surveyed said they use AI at least a little in their classroom, according to the July 2025 survey by EdWeek Research Center.
Initially, Bond says she tried to incorporate AI into her teaching. She had the students read and comment on the poem I’m still rising by Maya Angelou and then let them use AI to write a literary analysis thesis statement.
“It was terrible,” she says, adding that it was clear that the students who used the AI weren’t really engaged with the text.
“They didn’t know the material because they had assigned that level of thinking, and they didn’t have to come to a conclusion or argument on their own about the text they were studying.”
She realized that her students couldn’t always tell whether what AI generated was valuable or not, and they still needed to build basic skills like how to write a thesis statement and construct an argument.
“Where will these skills be built if not here?” Bond asks.
What learning looks like without AI
Bond says journaling by hand at the beginning of each class gives her students practice writing and builds their confidence to write longer pieces. It also allows Bond to learn their writing voices.
“I know I have a lot of students who don’t believe their voices sound academic enough,” Bond says. “I like to give them low-stakes opportunities to start cultivating what they want to say and how they want to say it.”
And rather than just grading the final essay or presentation, Bond grades the various parts of the process, including the thesis, plan, bibliography, and manuscript draft.
“The steps matter to the cumulative total score because that’s how I know the thinking is happening,” says Bond. “I think a student would be less likely to hand in something that was written by an AI if they had to show me the beginning, middle, and end, and the different parts that go into it.”
When students reach the final stages of this process, Bond has them write their essays. Unless they have accessibility features, Bond says that’s the only time students use computers in her class.
Students’ response
Meia Alvarez, Jr., was initially confused by Bond’s approach. She says that at the beginning of the school year, she turned in a typed plan for a poetry analysis podcast and Bond told her to redo it by hand because it would help her think and write better.
“It was different, but now I like it,” Alvarez says. “I feel like it really makes my brain think.”
Literature classes weren’t always Alvarez’s favorite, but she says she loves Bond’s lessons. She likes the interactive nature of her assignments and that Bond gives students the opportunity to write about their opinions and experiences.
“Ms. Bond’s approach is very good. Like, she gets to the point where AI can’t even really help you at this point,” says Alvarez.
Several of Bond’s students told NPR that they appreciate Bond’s ban on AI because they oppose technology for the environment and ethical reasons. But almost all of them say that the use of AI in schoolwork is widespread among their peers.
“Maybe some of us don’t want to admit that we use it because it’s kind of a cultural taboo,” says sophomore Elig Ellison.
Ellison says he has used AI to help him with schoolwork in the past and to think of character names for the stories he writes. But he supports banning Bond’s AI. He says her class is an opportunity to find out what he thinks – not what the AI thinks.
“I think artificial intelligence does have a time and a place, but especially since it’s still developing and many of us haven’t formed solid opinions yet, we’re standing on shaky ground.”
Even students who were caught using AI in Bond’s class say they learned from the experience.
T, a junior, says he turned to AI after waiting until the last minute to complete a bibliography on his chosen research topic: adult children. His family requested that we only use his first initial so he could speak freely without it affecting his college application.
“It probably wasn’t smart, but I had other work to do. So I ran it through the AI. I had it write it for me.”
Bond says she knew right away that T used an AI. She was disappointed but tried not to take it personally.
“He really felt overwhelmed and it got to a point where he felt really scared of giving something away, so he gave something away,” says Bond.
I reworked the task from scratch using Bond.
He says he now has this advice for students who might be tempted to use AI to do their schoolwork for them: “Take a second and think about it. Would you rather really grow from the experience of actually doing some work and thinking critically about the things you write or say, or just not take any of that and just use a robot?”
How others perceive technology
Not every teacher agrees with Bond’s approach — including her friend Brett Vogelsinger, who teaches English at Central Bucks High School South outside Philadelphia.
He says he tries to model responsible use of AI to his students by showing them the difference between using the technology to cheat and using it to advance their learning.
Vogelsinger says he wants his students to be able to “determine that this particular use is shortening and changing my thinking, and this use is pushing me and actually making me think more.”
And it allows the use of AI in some assignments — as long as students are transparent how they used it.
But even Vogelsinger, who wrote a book on the use of AI in written instruction, says he’s still figuring out how and when to incorporate AI into teaching: “We’re very much in the experimental phase of all of this.”
And while Bond and many of her students see the value of an AI-free classroom, the federal government, some states and some school districts are embracing the technology.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools, one of the largest districts in the nation, gives high school students access to Google’s Gemini chatbot.
“The future is now,” said Miami-Dade Superintendent Jose Dotres, in a video posted on the Google Education YouTube account. “We need to embrace the fact that AI is becoming an important tool not only for learning but also for teaching.”
New Jersey set aside over one million dollars in grants last year to advance the use of AI in the classroom. Governor at the time Phil Murphy said it was an effort to invest in “the next generation of technology leaders.”
Last spring, the Trump administration issued an executive order to expand AI education in K-12 schools through public-private partnerships and grants to train AI teachers. Guidelines from the US Department of Education also support the “responsible adoption of AI” in schools.
Bond says she’s open to changing her mind, but right now she doesn’t see much value in AI for her students.
“It’s less harmful to me to make sure they can do things without AI than to try to push AI into my classroom knowing that at least for some of them, it’s going to mean they’re not going to get the skills they need,” Bond says.
