Title: NYC Teachers' Union Embraces AI

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll look at a perhaps surprising collaboration taking place in New York City Public Schools between Big Tech and labor. Last week, the American Federation of Teachers Union announced a $23-million initiative with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic to bring artificial intelligence training and membership to its rank and file. This includes a new AI training space in the headquarters of the New York City local chapter, the UFT, that's being called the National Center for AI.

As you might imagine, teachers have mixed feelings about this partnership. Is this a responsible way to integrate technological innovation into our schools, or is this a Trojan horse that threatens the teaching profession as we know it, not to mention students' ability to learn and to think? We did a segment about that on last week's show. With us now to talk about the teachers on both sides of this debate is WNYC and Gothamist education reporter Jessica Gould. Hey, Jess.

Jessica Gould: Hi.

Brian Lehrer: Many listeners have not heard the basics of this deal between the AFT and AI. I just gave a little of that. Can you give us some more details of the deal, like who's paying the $23 million to bring AI to schools?

Jessica Gould: Well, the tech companies are paying the $23 million, and as you said, it's a deal with the AFT, which is the national union, but the UFT is playing a prominent role in housing this brick-and-mortar training center, which will be offering trainings for members across the country as well as in New York City, and what the tech companies and the union said in a press conference last week was that they are going to be offering trainings on how to use software, lesson planning, and making worksheets, the kinds of things that can differentiate lessons for a variety of learners, and they're talking about it also as a way for teachers to inform the continued development of these products, they said, as a way to make it safe and responsible, and ethical.

Brian Lehrer: If the tech companies are paying for this, what do they hope to gain from working with the union, and why would the union want to encourage a technology that has the potential to replace some of them?

Jessica Gould: The tech companies said explicitly that they believe it's a helpful tool, and they also want feedback, and so they're hoping that it's going to be a benefit to the teachers and to the students, but critics and skeptics, as you can imagine, you said before Trojan horse, pick your own metaphor, whether it's a beachhead for corporate products to be integrated into classrooms and students' lives, or one teacher I talked to said it's a fox in the hen house situation, there are people who see it both as an optimistic possibility and as a dystopian possibility.

Brian Lehrer: The AFT is a national union, as you said, but this is happening in New York City Public Schools. What does the rollout look like, or what's it going to look like, and why is it happening here first?

Jessica Gould: I don't know what the rollout is going to look like yet. I think that they're using this training center to train cohorts of teachers. What that training is going to look like, I don't have details on that at the moment, but I think that it's going to be how to use software to help with this backend element of teaching. The planning, the materials, and the view that the tech companies were promoting was that this will open up time, it'll be more efficient, and it'll open up time for teachers to focus on students.

Boosters for AI say that it's not going to put teachers out of work, it's not going to put labor out of work, but improve their work by allowing them more time to focus on the things that matter, but a lot of people have contrary views to that.

Brian Lehrer: Well, what would a contrary view be? For a listener who might think, "Well, AI can't replace a teacher standing at the head of the class," what would some critics say?

Jessica Gould: Well, I think a lot of critics are worried about the intrusion of AI further, the technology intrusion into students' learning, breaking down their ability to write, as your segment last week talked about, critical thinking skills. I was with some friends this weekend, a mix of moms and teachers, teacher moms, and one of the teachers was talking about how much time she has to spend rooting out cheating because of kids using AI at home.

If teachers are spearheading AI and supporting it, does that open up more opportunity for that kind of cheating and influence? That teacher is actually changing her entire plan for one of her grades this year to do all writing in class so that it's not at home at all.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, here we are in mid-July. Do we have any teachers listening while on summer vacation? How do you feel about, if you're a UFT member, your union teaming up with Big Tech to bring AI to the classroom? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, call or text. Are you using AI already to help with lesson planning or grading students' work? Funny enough, in the segment we did last week on the use of AI by college students diminishing their ability to write, or at least their experience of actual writing, one of the listeners objected to the fact that teachers, one of her professors, was using AI to grade her papers and said, "I don't want that. I want a teacher putting their eyes on my paper and giving me a human critique of what I'm writing."

Teachers, are you already using AI to help with lesson planning or grading students' work? Do you notice your students are increasingly using AI for assignments for good, better, mixed? Maybe you've already experienced an AI training at the UFT's headquarters. Tell us a story about that. Help Jessica Gould report that story. What excites you or concerns you about this latest move from your union?

UFT members, first priority, but anybody in education can call 212-433-WNYC or text, same number, 212-433-9692. Let's jump in right away with, actually, a parent. Obviously, parents have a stake in this, too. Michael in Flatbush, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Michael: Hi, Brian, thank you for taking my call. I really appreciate it. This is a hugely important topic. I have children that are going to 3-K. Thank you, Bill de Blasio, and thank you, all the teachers who make that possible. I can't wait for September, but I'm really freaked out about this. It's obviously a data-mining operation. There's nothing free. The old cliche is, if it's free, whatever the platform is, social media, whatever, you are the product.

I'm disturbed at what is going on here. I think that having the automation of lesson planning and differentiation, that's the work of teaching. That's why we want to limit the amount of kids in each teacher's classroom so they can focus on each kid. You think by writing. You do it by doing the work of the lesson and the sequence of lessons, and all that. That can't be automated away.

All they're doing is trying to increase productivity so they can jam more kids into smaller classrooms and use less teachers, and it's crazy that the unions are going for this, the bureaucracy is. I'm sure rank-and-file have a totally different opinion on this. Thanks for letting me rant a little bit. This is crazy to me, and I hope the kids actually continue to make their voices heard.

I know a few years ago, there were kids in Brooklyn, in Park Slope, that walked out of their classroom because Microsoft education materials were also data-mining. This is just a continuation of that, and yes, I appreciate the time. Thanks.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, thank you very much. Well, let's go to a couple of those actual rank-and-file teachers. Here's Jacob, a chemistry teacher in Queens. You're on WNYC. Hi, Jacob.

Jacob: Hey, good morning. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What you got?

Jacob: I use AI when it comes to grading, and I know dozens of other teachers who use AI when it comes to grading. There's just such a massive amount to grade, and it would be impossible to do it without it. The flip side is I don't want children using AI because it doesn't teach them how to think. It doesn't teach them how to actually do any work. I know that's a double standard, but I think the teachers should be allowed to use it and not the children.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Jacob, thank you very much. Here's a UFT member receiving AI training, apparently. Angela, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Angela: Hi, how are you? I did a UFT training last November, and the training was on five different AI platforms. The one that I really like to use is Magic School. I use it to create rubrics for my assignments, and I use it to clarify the expectations of an assignment for my students, so that if I'm struggling with how to phrase something, I use this tool to help me clarify the assignment details.

I think that what UFT members, I speak for myself, but I think that what would be really helpful is not training for ourselves, but training on how we could help students use AI in more ethical ways, in ways that are helpful so that they're not entering a research question into ChatGPT and then it hallucinates sources, and they submit a research paper that's completely off-topic. If we could help them use the tools in ways that force them to ask more questions, and then they do their own research, I think that's a better use of everyone's time.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think that's possible? Because I think a lot of people think of this in all-or-nothing terms.

Angela: No.

Brian Lehrer: Either there's AI and it replaces thinking and writing, or you say no AI, but you're saying maybe it can be used in ways to enhance students' learning. Do you have examples of that?

Angela: I teach a class called AP Seminar, and my students struggle with writing a research question. They don't know exactly how to capture nuance of the topic, and I've not found that AI is necessarily excellent at doing that, but I think that it's a starting point, and I think that what our training should do is train us and the students how to create that nuance in our writing, because I think anyone who's gone to a master's program to become a teacher knows how to differentiate.

The AI tools make it easier for us, make it quicker for us, but I don't know, we just need to-- It's around. We need to make sure our students are using it in ways that could be helpful. I don't have those answers. I think that the companies might.

Brian Lehrer: That's the question. You also used the phrase "ethical use of AI." Do you have anything more to say about that, like what you do consider ethical use of AI as opposed to what is not?

Angela: I think that when students copy and paste what ChatGPT tells them without even giving it a once over and just adding it to their paper, that's a problem, but if they had ChatGPT write a paragraph and then they're taking an idea from that paragraph and then expanding on it independently, that's the exercise, I think, that could make AI helpful. AI is all about what you tell it to do.

If we are able to come up with better ways to tell it what to do, the kids use it as Google. They just write in the question, take the answer, and submit it as their homework. Actually, something you said before, I don't give homework anymore. They do all writing in class.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, really interesting. That's a really interesting workaround. I wonder how many other teachers out there right now do that. Jess, what are you sitting there thinking, as we took that set of phone calls?

Jessica Gould: I'm glad you asked because I was taking a bunch of notes. I was thinking about--

Brian Lehrer: Like a good student, who has turned into a good education reporter. Go ahead.

Jessica Gould: Thank you. One, the talk about data safety, that's something that I heard a lot, and the DOE has had multiple data breaches in recent years where student data has gotten out, and of course, we saw the hack at Columbia recently. We know this is a risk. Now, what Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, said, one of the purposes here and the tech companies said this, too, is to make sure that there are protections in place and that now the AFT and the UFT will have, she said, a direct line to Seattle to inform what's working, what's not, and compare that to a generation ago when social media was coming into play.

I think that the feeling now is that educators and parents, maybe all of us, were on their back feet responding to this, and so there's a proactive quality, ideally that she was trying to communicate, but of course, these things, we have seen these breaches happen. I also was thinking about what a teacher told me in regards to how the teacher, I think it was Angela, was saying that it's been helpful for her in her lesson planning.

I talked to a teacher who said that she was just trying it out for the first time, and she was trying to put together an article for fourth graders about the American Revolution, and something that would have taken her maybe hours to do it, it was able to spit it out in a few seconds, and then she was able to iterate on it based on students' language capacities or their disabilities, and that being able to do that is the benefit that the proponents of this are hoping this will have.

Then I also heard this theme of like, "It's here, and it's inevitable." Now, some people feel like we should be pushing back against that and walling off developing brains, and the school is the one place where we can protect kids from that. We've been seeing that with the debate over phones in schools, and maybe AI is similar, or is it where you have to start teaching kids how to write the prompts and how to use this so that you can get the information you need, similar to Google?

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another teacher call. Christy in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Christy.

Christy: Oh, hi. Thanks so much for having me on. I love talking about this because I've been using it quite frequently for curriculum planning and to support teachers that I work with, specifically in third and fourth grade as we are trying to implement structured literacy practices into the literacy curriculum, and something I mentioned before the call was taken was that some teachers don't always have all of the training or the background or the information necessary to make some of the leaps in the curriculum planning.

I don't know how much you've been following the changes to New York City literacy regarding dyslexia and dysgraphia, et cetera, but as teachers catch up, and I work in an independent school, but I also work with a number of students in DOE schools and as schools are trying to catch up their teacher training, the AI can really leverage the creativity and knowledge that teachers already have to develop and differentiate.

I know that teachers know how to differentiate, as the previous caller said, but it's actually quite hard when you have 20 to 25 students in the class at all different ranges. That does take hours of time, especially if you are using small reading groups, for example. While I am really nervous about the environmental impacts, it really does further support education in this time and place. I've seen really positive impacts.

Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on one thing. Did you say that you're using AI in class by showing them how to critique ChatGPT's essays, getting them to put a critical eye on the answers that they would get from AI, rather than just being tempted to copy and paste?

Christy: Yes, with older students, because I work cross-divisionally between a lower school, middle school, and I also know our upper school is very proactive in plugging in. Teachers are actually working with students to plug in the writing prompt, seeing what AI gives you, and then looking at that and seeing what could be missing. Where's the author's voice? There's a class that the students take on voice and style, and that type of exercise has been really supportive in getting students to see, "Oh, the human side still matters."

Brian Lehrer: Right? And that maybe-

Christy: Yes, it's been interesting.

Brian Lehrer: -the human gets the last word if you apply it that way, and don't make yourself a subject of AI, a slave of AI. Christy, thank you. Very thoughtful call. Anything on that, and I'll note just that we're also getting a number of texts regarding the previous caller from other teachers who say, "Yes, I have my students do all their writing in class now, too, rather than give them homework that involves writing."

Of course, the reason for homework, there could be all kinds of debates about how much homework is too much and all of that, but the reason for a lot of writing at home is so you can use class time to impart the information that they then go home and write about, but apparently, this is something that a lot of teachers are doing now to get around students failing to learn how to write by using AI so much. Your writing is done in class.

Jessica Gould: Right. That's what my teacher friend was telling me this weekend, and I think that the downside is there's less class time for other activities, as you mentioned. Are we shrinking the amount that we're teaching students? On the other hand, you can use that time to critique students' writing in person. There could be a benefit there, but these are the calculations that teachers are making right now.

Brian Lehrer: Lauren in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren: Hi, Vernon. Thanks for taking my call.

Jessica Gould: How are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. You're an English language arts teacher, I see, in Brooklyn.

Jessica Gould: Yes, yes.

Lauren: Excuse me, I teach English to students who are learning English as a new language as well. I guess, forgive me, because I'm a WNYC nerd, so I'm going to quote something else that I heard on the radio this week.

Brian Lehrer: Uh-oh, we better have gotten it right. Got it.

Lauren: Okay, maybe not quote, but reference. Reference.

Brian Lehrer: Okay.

Lauren: The whole discussion on "Is reading an audiobook really reading?" The point I wanted to make because I teach in East New York, Brooklyn, a lot of my students are coming into sixth and seventh grade, on average, three years behind grade level in reading and writing. I really am concerned when I hear that we're going to be leaning more on AI because I really feel like they need to actually put their eyes on the page.

They need to actually go through a lot of the mechanics to reinforce their foundational skills. I understand if people are in high school or people are talking about students who are already performing at grade level, maybe this could be some sort of asset, but I really just think, especially for our students who are already operating at lower levels for whatever reason and disenfranchised in the system, I don't think this is actually going to help them.

On a similar note, I feel like I am going into my 13th year now, probably, and I feel like so much of this job, probably like any other job, you learn to work smarter, not harder, right? I understand that a lot of certain things that I could be doing in the classroom from a teacher standpoint might be alleviated by AI, but ultimately, I think it makes me a better teacher to put in the time.

I think it makes the quality of my instruction better. Like other callers were saying, I do try to have my students do a lot of their actual critical thinking, writing stuff like that in the classroom, and I work really hard to set that up so that I'm not doing the work, that I'm facilitating them doing the work, if that makes sense, and differentiating, and that is really time-consuming, but I don't know.

It's like things like them having the audio text recorded in my voice, I think that makes a difference, you know what I mean? Anyway, I just think that we need to consider all of the students that the DOE services, not just students that might be already performing at grade level. I don't know that that's necessarily going to help.

Brian Lehrer: Lauren, that's such an important point. Thank you for highlighting that duality. Jess, I wonder if this came up in your reporting, the exact duality that Lauren is talking about. Maybe it can help students who are already reading at grade level, for example, to use reading as an example of a topic, whereas so much of the challenge for the New York City Public Schools is a lot of kids who don't even read at grade level.

Maybe you have the percentage at your fingertips of the number of students who don't read or do math at grade level, and for them, using AI would be more of an impediment to learning and less of an enhancement.

Jessica Gould: Yes, I think it was 50% on the recent screeners that we reported on, and state tests haven't come out for this year yet, and then it's even less for Black and brown students, students with disabilities, and English Language Learners. It's interesting because I had talked to a teacher of English Language Learners who was saying that they could see AI helping because it will translate, and there's such a diversity of languages in the New York City Public Schools.

I wish I had the exact number at my fingertips because it's always astounding to me, and they just added a few more that they're translating everything into, because the languages are always growing from immigration. The idea was that you might be able to get through to more students, particularly students who are newcomers, migrant students who are plopped into classes and often lost.

I think if you're supplementing them, you're not necessarily depriving them of the opportunity to learn English, but I do think that's an argument that some make. I also think that on the one hand, the more shortcuts we give, the less we're teaching people how to read, but at the same time, in a class of 30, 25, 30, if you're a teacher and you have to move everybody along, you have to figure out where the median is and move to the next thing, even if not everybody has gotten it.

Some proponents of AI say that this is when you can target tutoring or supplemental instruction to the students who are behind to help them come closer to catching up when the class starts moving beyond what they've learned.

Brian Lehrer: Last text, and then we're out of time, and this goes back to cynicism about what the AI companies that are funding this $23-million partnership with the UFT are getting from spending that money. Listener writes, "I'm a UFT high school teacher and parent of two New York City public school students. My son is actually earning cash this summer by participating in various research in the City, including surveys and focus groups about tech. This so-called partnership sounds like an efficient way for the edtech private sector to get uncompensated research participation from teachers and seems like a cynical giveaway by the UFT."

Any thought on that, and then we're out of time, or from your sources who are teachers? We had another text that I'm going to paraphrase because I don't have it in front of me from somebody who said, "Oh yes, sure, they're going to train the AI on what the teachers already know, and that's going to come back and replace some of the teachers."

Jessica Gould: Yes, that's really interesting. That's a counter to the Randi Weingarten, "But we're going to have a direct line to Seattle. We're going to be the ones shaping this, as opposed to being the ones put out of business."

Brian Lehrer: Seattle, being Microsoft, yes.

Jessica Gould: Yes, right. Yes, I think there's labor questions. There's intellectual questions. There's environmental questions. It's a really rich topic.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, you know what, I'm going to extend. Michael Hill, hold on. We will get to you with the news, but after all those teachers are calling in, here's Elizabeth in Norwalk, who apparently works for one of the tech companies. Elizabeth, excited to have your perspective. Thank you for calling in.

Elizabeth: Hi. Thank you. I'm glad that I caught this segment.

Brian Lehrer: Let's go.

Elizabeth: The perspective that I wanted to offer is, I work for an education technology company. I was also a classroom teacher before this, and I think that every industry is changing, and AI is offering an opportunity for all of us, me and my work, to make ourselves more efficient and to have more time to do the creative work that we want to do. Why should teachers be an exception to that?

If we can create tools that support admin work that they do or repetitive work that they do, so that they can focus on classroom time with students, then we should be supporting teachers, and I think that a lot of people are afraid of AI replacing teachers rather than supporting. In my perspective, I want to create tools that help them do the work that they want to do, so that they can focus on that creative work and that AI can support them and not replace them.

Brian Lehrer: What about all the concerns regarding what AI does to students' ability to think and learn, and write?

Elizabeth: Absolutely. As someone who worked with children, I'm really concerned about it. Every time that we have new technology, it's hard for ourselves as adults to control ourselves when it comes to new technology, and when something's easier, it's really exciting. I think that creating what we would call a walled garden is the best way to do it, so creating really specific AI tools that work within a platform and not just giving them, "Hey, here's ChatGPT, good luck," but say a writing platform that watches them write and give them feedback in real time, or a reading platform that listens to--

I heard a teacher talk about EL students, listens to students read and critiques their pronunciation or their reading of the passage, asks them questions, and so they can start to understand what they're reading. That's something that, if we can give students, that is homework, a reading tool like that that's supported by AI, that frees up teachers to do much more instruction during class instead of listening with students.

Brian Lehrer: Elizabeth, we really appreciate you chiming in. Thank you very much, and that's going to be the last word. Except, Jess, here's maybe a text that sets up a future story you might do, who knows? Listener writes, "Missing from the discussion. I'm a 64-year-old CUNY English prof. Younger colleagues have more in common with the students than with me in their acceptance of tech as a norm to do their work for them, a whole different concept of education and knowledge."

Maybe there's a future story on the generational divide being bigger than the divide between teachers and students. Who knows? Our guest was Jessica Gould, education reporter here at WNYC and Gothamist. You can read her story on AI and the UFT at Gothamist or hear it on the radio. Jess, thanks as always.

Jessica Gould: Thank you.

 

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