How to Fail at Teaching, Tip #3: Keep Calm and Carry On

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One of my favorite things to teach when I get the chance is creative writing. I love reading what my students come up with, the characters they invent in their heads, the silly dialogue, the scenes they incorporate just to make one another laugh. So, it was with reluctance that I left my students on their own in September to work on their short stories while I drove up to Northern California from San Diego to drop off my son for his freshman year of college. I was even more frustrated when I had to miss an extra day after getting sick on my trip. In all, I missed three days of school--three days in which students were supposed to be developing a short story about honor.

I’d taught this short story writing lesson plenty of times, so I had prepared the kids with multiple graphic organizer that they had to fill out before they could start their stories - a plot graph, character outline, and a setting brainstorm sheet. These had to be turned in with their stories. Or rather before their stories. Only because I was absent, I wasn’t there to collect them. I’d left that to the substitute teacher to supervise them. Rookie mistake. 

Yes, in many ways I was a veteran teacher. I’d spent 17 years in a classroom setting, either in my own class, as an aide for special needs students, or as a substitute teacher. I had taught in classes all the way from 3-year-olds on the autism spectrum to adults learning English. On the other hand, I had been out of the classroom between 2018 to 2024. Five school years. So, there were areas in which I was a little bit rusty. One new development I hadn’t taken into consideration yet, that I would be confronted with immediately upon beginning to read my students’ stories, was the maturation of AI, in particular Large Language Models like ChatGPT and DeepSeek, the former favored by my English-speaking students, the latter favored by my Chinese-born students. 

First of all, anyone who thinks that a teacher can’t tell the difference between a seventh or tenth grader's story about honor and a computer-generated story has never experienced the wonderful beauty of teenagers telling stories. There is a frankness, an imagination, a chaos to it, that puts the reader in the kid’s head, that shines a little flashlight into what makes that kid tick. A story about honor generated from a prompt looks pretty much the same - a boy or man in a town or village or in a school does something wrong, say steals a fish or cheats on a test, his misdeed is discovered, a wise man gives him advice, he learns his lesson and makes amends for his misdeed. There is a tightness to it, a dullness, a morality that feels like watching a family friendly sitcom with a laugh track that makes you want to gag. Yes, writing follows a formula. Yes, I teach rising action and climax and falling action. I teach archetypes. However, in human writing, no matter how much it follows a formula, it reveals something about the person writing in the way they shape the heroes and the bad guys, in the way they set up the story, that just isn’t replicated when a personality-less language model spits out a story. 

For instance, one of the of the most memorable stories I got that year was the work of TJ. I knew he had gone over it with his tutor and squeezed in the literary devices I’d asked for, but ultimately the work was his own and he’d worked hard on it. I know this because reading it was a little like watching Quentin Tarantino’s from Dusk Til Dawn in that it started out seeming like one story and turned into a completely surprising story that was wonderfully if slightly ickily rooted in the cultural phenomena of the moment. In TJ’s story, it starts off as a soldier home from the military deciding to go to a party at a creepy-seeming house. I thought it was going to be a ghost story, but instead it ends up with the soldier realizing he was at a Diddy party with underage girls. Sean “Puffy” Combs had just been indicted for sex trafficking, and the boys thought the idea of these P. Diddy sex parties particularly hilarious. I mean they were 15 and 16-year-old adolescents - need I say more?  It was an awkward story, but I appreciated the student’s originality and nod to pop culture and told him so. 

Unfortunately, this originality and humor seemed to be the exception rather than the norm. Instead of focusing on grading the stories based on the criteria and giving feedback to my students on how to improve their creative writing, I found myself with over a dozen stories that had been copied and pasted into a google doc and were obviously AI generated. I was so disappointed. I took the case to the Dean of Academics and she said I had to call all of the parents to inform them why their child was getting a zero. When I talked to my fellow English teachers however, they said it happened all the time and to give them zeros, refer them to Honor Council and move on. So that’s what I did. Most of the kids didn’t even react. They knew what they did and they accepted their zero and moved on.

However, there were two cases that stood out as unique. In the one case, when I looked at the history of the student’s work, the student had actually started a story on his own about a football player. It started out as a unique story that reflected the student’s real interests and personality. However, a day in, he’d wiped out the entire story and replaced it with a copy and paste that was obviously AI generated. I pulled Dally aside on this one. I told him I’d started reading his original story and that it was good and I would give him a chance to continue that story and turn it in for full credit. “Nah,” he said. “I’d rather go to football practice.” His priorities were clear to him, he’d made his choice, and I respected his honesty in this situation.

As the technology has developed that has made cheating easier - back in the days before OpenAI, the kids would google essays or stories on the internet and then turn them in - teachers have sought technology to make catching the cheating less time consuming. 

Excuse this brief digression into how cheating has evolved. Back, back, back in my days of high school in the 1990s kids would just copy off one another or from other’s written word. One incident burned into my memory for life - one of the reasons I never wanted to become a teacher actually - was when a friend of mine copied a poem - allegedly from a notebook of his mom’s - and turned it in as his own work. Unbeknownst to our English teacher and perhaps my friend, the poem was actually the lyrics to a popular song, but they didn’t find out until it was published in the student literary magazine. To this day, I remember the disappointment and frustration of my English teacher. Imagine trying to inspire kids to be creative, to explore their inner workings, to find their voices and express themselves, and instead they just -  copy down someone else’s words. Nowadays, it’s not even someone else’s words - it’s some THING’s interpretation of a conglomeration of data spit out as a story. 

By the time I started teaching in 2003, students had started using Google to search for essays and stories on the internet, so developers had created TurnItIn.com to help teachers quickly evaluate works for plagiarism. This was a helpful tool for students to also see how much of their work was copied without citations and they could correct their writing. Even without TurnItIn.com which my school in Togo could not afford, I could pop an essay into Google’s search engine, translate into French and voila - there was the original work. It was always obvious by the misuse of pronouns in the submitted paper when it had originated in French rather than English. 

The challenge with AI I soon discovered was not that it wasn’t obviously not the student’s work, but that in one sense the work was original in that you could copy and paste my assignment prompt for the short story into ChatGPT a dozen times and get a dozen different stories. The red flags I looked for were the cutting and pasting into the google doc. A story written in 30 seconds was clearly not the student’s work. Another was that the student would copy and paste the story as they found it with subheadings clearly delineating the Introduction, Rising Action, Climax, etc. just as they had requested from ChatGPT. Some of the kids made the effort to delete these subtitles, some did not. Another way to check the work was to scan it through an AI checker. Different AI checkers work at different levels. So one AI checker might come back with 50% likely to be AI and another might come back with less than 10% AI. The technology is still very much developing and only so reliable. Plus, the intelligent kids who are more willing to put in effort into covering up their cheating rather than expending that creative energy on actually writing creative stories (you know who you are), have found a way to work this technology to their advantage. 

One of my honors students had obviously run his AI work through an AI scanner, because the first scanner showed low probability of being AI. However, when I looked back at his “writing” process I saw how he worked the system and tried to outsmart the AI detector and me. After cutting and pasting his story, he went back and changed words here and there - taking more sophisticated vocabulary and dumbing it down to a less sophisticated synonym. In this way, certain AI no longer recognized the work as its own. Other detectors had him at a 30% probability. I however could see the process for myself and knew immediately. My suspicions were confirmed when I told the student he was getting a zero for not turning in his own work and he asked if I used an AI detector. The “writing” and cover up process was in the Google doc history, which I sent to him, his mother, and the Dean of Academics. 

I should add that the student hadn’t filled out any of the pre-writing packet I had mandated until after he had turned in the story. The pre-writing packet was intended to show the work and effort and originality that went into the story, of course. He also claimed that the reason it had been copied and pasted into the document was that he wrote it on his own computer. I gave him the benefit of the doubt on this and said, “Great, show me the document on your Mac.” He was after all one of my students in my advanced class. I had higher expectations for these students. He was unable to show me the document on his personal computer.

So, there I was on a weekday night in my classroom for tutorial that ran from 6:30-8 pm. I’d been teaching at this new, all boys’ school for about a month by this time. With the exception of this whole plagiarism thing, I’d been enjoying myself. I wasn't expecting what happened next. I was working on grading papers when the kid from my advanced class walked in with another kid who had used ChatGPT to write his story from another class. We’ll call them Beavis and Butthead, because one was blonde and the other was brunette and they both were skinny, but tall dudes. Wiry. They were clearly egging one another on when they popped their bodies into the room and hovered right near the door and began shouting at me. Yes, shouting.

“You need to grade our stories. You need to do your job!” 

You didn’t write your stories. They have been graded.

“Did you run it through an AI checker?”

Yes. I ran it through an AI checker and frankly I’m smarter than the AI.

“I ran it through the AI checker and it is not AI!”

Now, if it isn’t AI, why would you have to run it through an AI checker? I am sure you ran it through the AI checker, and then changed words here and there to trick the AI checker. You too are smarter than AI. That’s why you should do your own work.

“You need to grade our stories. You need to do your JOB!!”

Our conversation here is done.

I pick up the walkie-talkie and call the cadet leadership and inform them I have two students in my room yelling at me. The boys disappear. When the TAC shows up - I feel stupid. There’s nothing to be done at this point. The threat is gone, but I’m shaken up. I feel helpless and vulnerable and ganged up on. 

I don’t really know how to explain to someone what that moment feels like as a woman to be cornered in a room and yelled at by two teenage boys. You feel like a raccoon trapped in a dumpster, maybe. I can tell you my flight, fight or freeze instincts kicked in heavy. Well, rather, my fight instincts kicked in and I was using my full self-control and calm, rational mind to not pick up the heaviest object near me and go at them screaming, “Get the fuck out of my classroom, before I bash in your fucking brains.” Which was what my instincts were telling me to do. But I was a teacher. And they were kids. I was a professional. 

Whenever I think about that scene, I think of a conversation between Bruce Banner’s Hulk and Jennifer Walter’s She-Hulk in the tv series She-Hulk. “I’m great at controlling my anger. I do it all the time. When I’m cat-called in the street. When incompetent men explain my own area of expertise to me. I do it pretty much every day, because if I don’t I will be called emotional or difficult or I might just literally get murdered. So I’m an expert at controlling my anger…” 

I don’t know if every woman has a She-Hulk in her, but I do. I discussed this with my therapist after the incident. The fight mode I went into at that moment wasn’t just about that moment, at least according to my therapist. It’s a learned defense mechanism. For me sitting alone in that classroom in an otherwise dark school, being confronted by these two young men, teenagers, kids - they were all of those things in that moment - I didn’t consciously think - oh I’ve been here before. But as the book is titled - The Body Keeps the Score. 

So what was my body remembering when it wanted to jump into super defense mode? I’ll tell you. 

Age 12, standing in line at church for a Christmas dinner, my 13-year-old brother cuts in front of me, I tell him to go wait at the back of the line. He turns and POW! Punches me right in the face. That’s right. In church. He had to walk home. When he got there he broke the first place soccer trophy I’d just earned, cut up my favorite, brand new pajamas, and smeared oranges in my bed. Yep. I’m the one who got sucker punched, but he saw himself as the affronted party. 

Same year? Maybe a year earlier? We’re both newly teenagers. I was sitting at the kitchen table next to my brother. I don’t remember what preceded it, but I playfully pinch his nose doing the “I got your nose” bit, with my thumb pretending to be his nose between my fingers. BAM! Crack. An upper cut to the chin, my tooth chipped.

A year later, my eldest brother, upset because I talked back to him, he’s sitting on my chest pinning me to the floor with his hands over my mouth. I’m crying and I can’t breathe. I break free or he lets me go and I run crying and barefoot into the backyard of my dad’s house where I step on a rusty nail and now I’m crying even harder.

Age 16, I’ve been forced to go camping with my mother’s new husband. My mother drives me up the mountain and leaves me with him. I’m in a tent in the middle of nowhere. He slides his hands between my legs and tells me to open them. I’ve been quiet long enough. She-Hulk takes over, she starts kicking and hitting and biting and tries to get away. He holds a taser to her head and tells her if she doesn’t stop he’ll kill her. She doesn’t care about dying at that point, but her inner She-Hulk keeps her safe for the night.

I’m in a small Muslim village in Macedonia. The walls of the houses are high here for privacy to keep men away from their daughters. I am friendly, open, chatting in Albanian as I climb out of the van with the other Peace Corps volunteers dispersing to our respective homes. Suddenly, I’m in the middle of a laughing pack of teenage village boys, surrounded. Someone grabs my ass. She-Hulk flares up. The Peace Corps van stops, the driver checks on me. I’m making a beeline for my host family, for safety. 

It’s Halloween in Togo, I’m eight months pregnant. My partner has borrowed a car so we can drive to the club. As the sober one, I’m behind the wheel, exhausted, glad to be out of the smoke, tired of trying to be the cool girl, the woman who can do everything. My windows are rolled down and I am enjoying the night air when man in a military police uniform pulls his motorcycle in front of the car waving us over. He rifles through my wallet, pulling out my money; I look at his footwear, this is a fake cop. I reach for my phone to call the embassy. He tells me to get out of the car. I refuse. She-Hulk is ready to run this dude’s motorcycle over. My partner waves the fake cop over to his side of the car. I am furious not frightened when he pulls a hand gun out of his pocket and sets it on the windowsill of the passenger seat pointed at my pregnant belly. I am ready to fight. My partner steps out of the car with him, joking, jovial, bribing. We set off towards home. I am seeing red. He is relieved I did not get myself shot. I write down every detail and send it to the embassy. The next time the man tries it, he’s arrested.

I’m sitting at my desk working from home. A woman is screaming. People in this apartment complex are always screaming. This is different. There is something in her wail. I walk barefoot to my door. “My baby, my baby!” she is distraught. She-Hulk in action. I cross the street, open the first door. A purple baby lies draped in a woman’s arms. I take the baby, her skin gray, lie her flat on the floor and start performing CPR. She begins to breathe again. It’s only when she is whisked off into an ambulance that I begin to cry.

Midnight. I’m doing school work at my desk. The rain on my window distorts the light from the backyard security lights. Sounds are muffled, but I still hear him sneaking over my balcony wall. The scrape of my son’s bicycle against the stucco. I pull open my blinds, catch him in the act of theft. She-Hulk bangs on the window to get his attention, accidentally shattering it. A string of curse words escapes from her mouth like one of Samuel Jackson’s characters has taken over her body. “Drop the fucking bike and get the fuck out of here before I call the cops on your fucking ass!” He disappears into the night and he’s long gone by the time the cops roll around. She saved the bike, but fixing the window costs more than the bike.

When those two boys enter into my classroom after dark and start shouting at me, it is not lost on me that nearly two-thirds of school shooters are under the age of 17 and the majority of them are male. 

When those two teenage boys step into my classroom and start yelling at me and pointing at me, two against one. They don’t know who the fuck they are messing with. That I’m not afraid to fuck them up. At least that is my first thought. Those are the thoughts running through my head.

But then I pause. I think, oh wait. Except that I’m the teacher. I’m the responsible adult. And they’re children. Teenagers. In young men’s bodies. Sure, they’re two years short of being able to sign up for the military. Ain’t that something? But they’re kids and I’m the adult. So I pick up the walkie talkie and they take off and I feel like an idiot, but also a bit shaken.

I keep calm and carry on.

*

*

*

Eventually, the Dean would run the kid’s short story through an AI detector. The 30% was more than 0% AI allowed and he’d come to accept his zero. Months later, both those kids would be gone from the school. Before he’s kicked out, the brunette would end up stealing my teacher’s copy of Of Mice and Men in hopes of some other short cut to learning. The blonde would scrawl “faggot” across my classroom door in permanent marker, which I thought was confusing. If it was aimed at me, “cunt” would have been more gender appropriate. He didn’t get kicked out for that either,  I believe it took him getting involved in an incident of shoplifting or something or other.

For brief moments though, we would connect. Beavis, the blonde, while running a lit. circle for A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier asked me if I’d ever been shot at and I told him the story of being pulled over by the fake cop and the gun pointed at my pregnant belly. One day he asked the class what we’d do if there was ever a school shooting - he said he’d run and escape as fast as he could. I said, I’d do whatever I could to take the shooter down to prevent him from hurting my students. “Even ones you don’t like?” he asked. All my students, I told him.