This is a weird time to be a teacher for many reasons — but one big one is this:

You’re supposed to be teaching students to think critically. And yet, more and more, it seems like we can all ask computers to do something that looks a lot like thinking.

In this post, I’m going to share the framework I currently use with teachers for how to make sure you’re still teaching students to think critically in the age of AI.

But first, it probably makes sense to back up and ask: what exactly do we mean by critical thinking?

We often think of the role of a teacher as preparing students for the future.

Which is scary, because now, more than ever, we don’t know what the future holds.

We just don’t know what AI is going to look like in any area of our lives in five years — or even one year from now.

And it’s easy to wonder what students even need from teachers in a world where knowledge seems completely flipped on its head.

This post is about what approach you can take to teaching in this era of uncertainty — but also why you can go into school tomorrow feeling like you still have much to offer your students.

There’s a lot of talk on whether students are going to use AI to cheat, which. . . they definitely are going to.

AI has made it that much easier to cheat.

And it is frustrating to spend your time reading something that someone else did not spend their time writing.

Will there ever be technology that detects AI cheating? Hopefully.

But that being said, there is no type of cheat-blocking technology that make teaching the same as it was before AI.

So here are a few thoughts for teachers about how to approach cheating right now.

When teachers think about whether AI is good or bad for education, it’s natural to approach it from two angles.

On the one hand, what possibilities does this open up for me to be a better teacher?

On the other, which parts of the complex set of skills involved in teaching are going to be irrelevant in five years?

The answer to the second question may be more reassuring than you expect.

When you boil classroom management down to its essence, it really is just two things.

1. A set of decisions that a teacher has made in advance.
2. A system for getting students to go along with those decisions.

In a well-managed class, a lot of problems stop before they even start.