CARVSMARK

There are certain moments in teaching when you realize you are not simply delivering curriculum. You are witnessing history. Or accidentally summoning the future. Or causing a small educational earthquake while standing beside a projector cart, holding a cold coffee, and wondering why the dry-erase marker has chosen this exact moment to die with dignity.

It was May, which means the school year has entered its final form.

May in a high school is not a month. It is a psychological endurance event. By May, students are tired. Teachers are tired. The photocopier is making noises that suggest it knows goverment secrets. The classroom plants are crispy. The glue sticks have disappeared into the same black hole as phone chargers, permission forms, and every pair of scissors ever purchased by the art department. Everyone is one locker slam away from a spiritual awakening.

The bell rang, and my Photo/Media class wandered into Room B109 after lunch with the energy of raccoons who had just discovered iced coffee, Wi-Fi, and unresolved generational trauma. They are sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old, which means they are old enough to drive, soon old enough to vote, capable of running six social media platforms at once, and yet still somehow unable to locate the Photoshop file they saved six minutes ago.

“Miss, Photoshop deleted my work.”

No, Bud. Photoshop did not delete your work. You saved it to the desktop of a computer you used last Tuesday, named it “Untitled-7,” closed it without syncing, and then blamed Adobe like it showed up at your house and betrayed your family.

This is teaching in the digital age.

It is not enough to teach composition, typography, media literacy, visual storytelling, or design. No. You must also become a detective, therapist, IT support, hostage negotiator, life coach, printer whisperer, and occasionally a forensic file-path investigator.

But because teachers are, by nature, wildly optimistic people with poor self-preservation instincts, I decided this would be a wonderful time to introduce a new project: Summer Movie Posters.

The concept was fun. Students would imagine their summer as a movie poster. Their summer could be a horror film, an adventurous road trip, a romantic comedy, a coming-of-age drama, a survival thriller, or, in many cases, a documentary called I Slept Until 2:17 p.m., Ate Cereal from a Mug, and Told My Mom I Was “Basically Busy.”

Cinematic. Honest. Probably nominated at Sundance.

We had spent months learning Photoshop: layers, masks, selections, typography, composition, image editing, visual storytelling, and the sacred art of not naming files “final final final ACTUAL final USE THIS ONE.psd.” We had built skills. We had built patience. We had built resilience. We had also built several projects featuring floating heads, accidental shadows, text that looked like ransom notes, and at least one human hand that appeared to belong to a Victorian ghost child who had lost a duel with a ceiling fan.

But progress is progress.

So, naturally, I thought: Let’s introduce Photoshop’s AI features.

Yes.

I knowingly opened the portal. Somewhere, an educational policy committee dropped its muffin.I began the demo. I showed them how AI could extend an image, generate background elements, create atmosphere, add visual possibilities, and help students experiment creatively. I explained that AI was not there to replace their ideas, but to help push their ideas further.

And then it happened.

Gasps.

Actual teenage gasps.

Not polite little “oh, neat” gasps. Not “that’s mildly interesting” gasps. I mean full-bodied, Shakespearean, village-has-seen-a-dragon gasps. The kind of gasps normally reserved for hallway drama, surprise fire drills, or discovering that a teacher exists outside the building and buys bananas at Safeway. They looked at me like I had just revealed the smartboard was sentient and had been quietly judging their attendance since September.

Then one student, with the grave seriousness of a Supreme Court justice wearing Crocs, said:

“Wait. Isn’t that cheating?”

And there it was.

The question. The thundercloud hovering above every modern classroom. The question that now floats over essays, posters, lab reports, reflections, presentations, and anything written with suspiciously correct semicolon usage:

Is AI cheating?

And the answer is: sometimes.

I know. Horrible answer. Annoying answer. Very teacher of me. It has nuance, which is exactly what students hate unless they are arguing whether they were “technically late” because “the bell was still echoing.” But that is the truth.

AI is not automatically cheating, and it is not automatically genius. It is not a villain crouched behind the whiteboard wearing a cape made of stolen essays. It is also not a magical fairy godmother who taps a laptop and transforms everyone into Shakespeare with better font choices.

AI is a tool.

A powerful tool.

A strange tool.

A tool that can help brainstorm a brilliant idea and then, five seconds later, generate a human hand with nine fingers, three knuckles, and the haunted expression of someone who saw the future and did not enjoy the slideshow. The issue is not that AI exists. The issue is whether students are using it to support their thinking or avoid thinking altogether.

If a student asks AI to write an essay, does not read it, does not understand it, does not edit it, and then submits it like they have just emerged from a candlelit cabin after wrestling with the human condition, then yes. That is cheating. That is not learning. That is academic Uber Eats. You ordered the essay, someone else made it, and now you are trying to pass it off as homemade because you added a comma and changed “moreover” to “also.”

But if a student uses AI to brainstorm, organize thoughts, explore visual ideas, generate counterarguments, revise unclear writing, or test creative possibilities, and then they think that is different. Thinking is important. I know. Radical concept. Someone alert the district.

With thinking, AI becomes a tool. Without thinking, it becomes a vending machine for fake effort. Insert prompt, receive assignment, sprinkle with one personal anecdote, submit, and pray your teacher has not been alive long enough to recognize when a sixteen-year-old suddenly writes like a retired Oxford professor trapped inside a TED Talk.

And this is where education has tied itself into a very awkward little pretzel.

We keep telling young people that AI is their future. AI will change jobs. AI will change careers. AI will change creativity. AI will change how we work, communicate, learn, shop, date, drive, write, design, and probably how we order a sandwich without speaking to another human being.

Then the second students use it, we gasp louder than they did during my Photoshop demo and shout:

“Absolutely not, tiny academic criminal!”

So, the message becomes:

AI is the future.
Do not use it.
But be ready for it.
But not here.
But understand it.
But do not touch it.
But employers will expect it.
But schools may ban it.
But innovation!
But integrity!
But digital literacy!
But not like that.
But be prepared.
But stop being prepared in front of me.

No wonder students are confused. I am confused, and I own sensible shoes. It is like telling someone cars are the future but refusing to teach them how to drive because “walking builds character.” Yes, walking builds character. So does parallel parking. So does merging onto Highway 99 beside a logging truck in the rain while your passenger says, “You’re good, you’re good,” and you are not good. At some point, someone needs to explain the mirrors.

And here is the best part: adults are already using AI.

Teachers are using it. Writers are using it. Designers are using it. Business owners are using it. Administrators are absolutely using it, probably to generate a fourteen-page document about reducing workload, which will then be emailed as an attachment called “FINAL_REVISED_UPDATED_ACTUAL_FINAL_v9.pdf.” We use AI to brainstorm, summarize, organize, draft, revise, format, and occasionally make an email sound “professional and warm” instead of “I have answered this question six times and now my eye is twitching.”

Teachers are not using AI because we are lazy. Teachers are using AI because teaching is a full-contact sport disguised as a cardigan-based profession. On any given day, a teacher is planning lessons, adapting curriculum, assessing work, answering emails, supporting mental health, managing behaviour, supervising hallways, attending meetings, locating missing scissors, preventing a glue stick from becoming a projectile, reminding someone not to lick the paintbrush, and trying to remember where they put the coffee they reheated twice and never drank.

If AI helps me create five project ideas, and I choose one, rewrite it, adapt it, reject half of it, add my own experience, shape it for my actual students, and then make it work inside a 68-minute block with one broken mouse, a printer that has chosen violence, and a student asking if they can “go quickly to the bathroom” while holding their entire backpack, that is not cheating. That is professional survival with better formatting. Because AI does not know my classroom.

AI does not know that Block D after lunch has the collective attention span of a golden retriever at a balloon festival. AI does not know that one student needs encouragement, one needs structure, one needs a challenge, and one needs to be gently redirected because somehow every assignment becomes about explosions, sneakers, or a basketball player floating in space.AI does not know that when a teenager says, “I’m basically done,” it means they have opened the file and selected a font called Impact.

I know that.

That is expertise.

That is pedagogy.

That is also why I need coffee.

So yes, AI can be helpful. It can help students begin when the blank page feels like a personal attack. It can support language learners. It can explain a concept in a different way. It can offer examples. It can help students revise. It can help generate ideas when their creative brain has gone to the cafeteria and has not returned, which happens often after lunch and almost always during the last week before a long weekend.

In visual arts and media, AI can be especially interesting. It can help students test mood, extend images, imagine surreal environments, experiment with tone, and push beyond their first idea, which, as every art teacher knows, is often:

“Can I just do a sunset?”

No, Bud.

You may not “just do a sunset.”

Unless the sunset represents the emotional decay of a society overrun by algorithmic convenience and late-stage capitalism. Then yes. But fix the typography.

AI can also teach critical thinking because AI is frequently wrong with breathtaking confidence. Honestly, AI has mastered a skill many people on the internet have been perfecting for years: sounding extremely certain while being aggressively incorrect.

It can invent facts. It can misunderstand context. It can produce a paragraph that sounds wise but says absolutely nothing, like a graduation speech written by a scented candle. “Through the journey of life, we discover that success is not the destination, but the path we walk together.”

Thank you, Lavender Vanilla Optimism. Please sit down.

This is useful, though. Students need to learn that polished does not mean true. Fancy words do not equal understanding. A beautiful image does not equal meaning. A confident answer does not equal accuracy. AI gives us a chance to teach verification, bias, authorship, ethics, originality, and judgment. These are not bonus skills. These are “please survive the future” skills. But let us not throw glitter on the robot and call it a parade. There are real concerns.

Students can become dependent on AI. Their own voices can disappear. Their writing can start to sound like a LinkedIn post wearing a backpack. Their artwork can become visually impressive but emotionally empty, like a hotel lobby with dramatic lighting and one unnecessary bowl of decorative moss.

Assessment becomes complicated. Teachers now must look at a student’s paragraph and think, “Did you write this? Did AI write this? Did your older cousin write this? Did you and three chatbots form a consulting firm in the library?”

Equity matters too. Not every student has the same access to devices, paid tools, strong Wi-Fi, or someone at home who says, “Let’s have a thoughtful conversation about ethical technology use over organic soup.” Some students have the premium version of everything. Others are working on a cracked phone with 4% battery and a charger held together by hope and tape. If schools adopt AI without thinking carefully, we risk widening gaps that are already there.

And then there is the big issue: young people are already drowning in technology, and, as adults, we did not exactly nail the first round.

Hello, social media. Please come to the front. We need to discuss your behaviour. Social media entered youth culture like an unsupervised substitute teacher with a fog machine and access to everyone’s self-esteem. For years, we handed young people platforms that rewarded comparison, performance, outrage, perfection, popularity, and the ability to look casually flawless while pretending not to care. Then we acted shocked when anxiety showed up.

Really?

Shocked?

We gave them a digital cafeteria with no supervision, no closing time, and a scoreboard measuring their social worth in likes, follows, comments, streaks, views, and whether someone watched their story but did not reply, which apparently is now a felony under teenage emotional law. Now we are trying to fix the damage while saying, “Put your phone away,” to a generation whose entire social universe was allowed to move inside the phone.

And now AI arrives. A new technology. Powerful. Helpful. Risky. Addictive. Already in their hands. And this time, the app talks back. That should make us pause.

Students are not only using AI to write essays or make images. Some are using AI chatbots as companions. As friends. As something to talk to when human interaction feels too risky, too awkward, too unavailable, or too exhausting.

And honestly, I understand the appeal.

A chatbot does not judge your outfit. It does not leave you on read. It does not whisper to another chatbot at lunch. It does not post a vague quote that is obviously about you but claims it is “just a vibe.” It does not say, “We need to talk,” which remains the most terrifying phrase in the English language, right after “please see me after class” and “the printer is offline.” A chatbot answers. It listens. It agrees. It is available at 1:00 a.m., when everyone else is asleep and your brain has decided to replay one embarrassing moment from Grade 7 in IMAX with surround sound.

At first, that may seem comforting. But it is also concerning. Because young people do not only need conversation. They need human interaction. Messy, awkward, inconvenient, sweaty-palmed, “I said the wrong thing and now I need to repair it” human interaction. They need to learn how to read tone, body language, silence, facial expression, humour, frustration, disagreement, sadness, sarcasm, and the difference between “I’m fine” and “I am absolutely not fine but cannot discuss this beside the vending machine.” You cannot learn all of that from a chatbot. You cannot learn community from a screen that always responds when asked. You cannot learn friendship from something programmed to be agreeable.

Human beings are inconvenient. That is kind of the point. This is why schools matter more than ever. A school is not just a building where students learn algebra, write essays, edit images, and ask to go to the bathroom immediately after lunch even though lunch was, allegedly, the perfect time to go. A school is a community.

A loud, messy, imperfect, gum-under-the-desk, someone-left-a-banana-in-the-locker-in-October community where young people learn to exist beside other young people without turning every inconvenience into a constitutional crisis. Schools teach content, yes. But they also teach patience. Empathy. Collaboration. Conflict. Repair. Humour. Belonging. They teach students how to work with someone they did not choose, how to sit in a room with people who think differently, how to recover from embarrassment, how to apologize, how to lead, how to follow, and how to survive group work without requiring diplomatic intervention from the United Nations.

This is why the idea that education can simply move into the living room worries me. Of course, home learning can be necessary and helpful for some students. Flexibility matters. Compassion matters. There are students for whom alternate environments are genuinely important. But if we start imagining education mostly as isolated digital tasks completed alone at home, what kind of society are we building? A society where students can submit assignments but cannot make eye contact? A society where they can prompt AI but cannot speak to the person sitting beside them? A society with excellent Wi-Fi and absolutely no idea how to be in a room together?

That is not progress.

That is loneliness with a login.

Education does need to change. Of course it does. Some parts of the system feel like they were designed when overhead projectors were considered futuristic and “multimedia” meant someone rolled in a TV on a cart like it was the Olympic torch. But the answer is not to demolish schools. The answer is to renovate them.

Students still need structure. They need deadlines. They need routines. They need skills. They need teachers. They need classrooms. They need to learn how to think, create, revise, question, collaborate, and occasionally manage the unbearable injustice of being assigned a partner who “forgot” to do their part but somehow remembered to bring a bubble tea. They need digital literacy, but they also need relational intelligence. They need to know how to use AI, but they also need to know how to talk to a real person without buffering.

The idea that AI will replace teachers misunderstands what teachers actually do. AI can generate a lesson. It can write a paragraph. It can summarize a text. It can make a rubric faster than I can find the staffroom scissors, which were last seen in 2018 and are now part of school mythology. But AI cannot read the room. AI cannot notice the student who is unusually quiet. AI cannot sense when a class needs a laugh, a pause, a reset, or the firm reminder that “independent work time” does not mean “rotate your chair until it becomes transportation.” AI cannot build trust. It cannot create classroom culture. It cannot stand at the door and say good morning in a way that tells a student they matter. It cannot notice the kid who always says they are fine but is clearly carrying something heavy. It cannot turn a chaotic collection of teenagers into a community.

That is teacher work.

That is human work.

That is the work no robot can do, no matter how fast it generates a lesson plan or how politely it says, “Certainly!”

So maybe the question is not “Teacher vs. AI?” That sounds dramatic, like a Netflix special where I fight a laptop in the parking lot while a narrator says, “In a world where rubrics have gone rogue…”

The better question is: how do teachers help students use AI without losing themselves?

How do we teach them the difference between support and substitution? Between inspiration and plagiarism? Between creativity and convenience? Between help and dependency? Between using AI to think more deeply and using AI so they do not have to think at all? How do we make sure students understand that their voice still matters? Their choices still matter. Their relationships still matter. Their mistakes still matter. Their humanity still matters.

When my students gasped at Photoshop’s AI tools, I thought the moment was about technology.

But it was really about wonder.

Fear.

Curiosity.

Possibility.

It was about young people standing at the edge of a future adults are still trying to understand, regulate, panic about, monetize, ban, adopt, and possibly turn into a professional development slideshow with too many animations.

AI can generate answers. Schools must teach students how to ask better questions. AI can simulate conversation. Schools must protect real connection. AI can produce polished work. Schools must help students develop voice, judgment, courage, humour, empathy, and character.

We owe students more than panic. We owe them guidance. We owe them boundaries. We owe them honest conversations. We owe them classrooms where technology is understood but not worshipped, used but not blindly trusted, questioned but not feared. Most of all, we owe them communities where they can look up from the screen and remember how to be with one another.

Because the most important question is not whether AI belongs in education.

It already does.

The better question is whether education will continue to belong to humanity.

And honestly, if we can figure that out while also getting teenagers to name their Photoshop layers, save their files properly, stop asking to “just do a sunset,” stop blaming Adobe for their life choices, and understand that “I’m basically done” is not a measurable stage of completion, then maybe just maybe there is hope for civilization after all.