“Last year, I got really depressed and tired of being a tech detective,” said English teacher Katharine Holt, describing the challenge of monitoring student digital activity. “As soon as I have people writing on Google Docs… they often have five other tabs open. They’ll say something like, ‘it’s just the golf Masters in the background’… And I just don’t think that is the best way to practice sustained thinking.”
The surge of AI tools and constant online distractions has prompted the English department to rethink how students focus, write, and engage with texts in real time. As a result, some English teachers are abandoning digital homework and long-term assignments in favor of in-class, paper-based work. Lexi Garrity ‘27 noted the difference: rather than embracing the “essay-centric” writing of her last English class, her Reading Consciousness course is now “focused more on reading and in-class journaling.”
Although the English department, as of this year, has prohibited use of AI tools for Class IV and has asked all Class IV teachers to not teach any lessons involving AI in any way, the department has no single AI policy for Class I-III courses, leaving those teachers with flexibility when navigating the digital world’s shifting landscape. The move towards handwritten, in-class assignments and graded discussions didn’t happen overnight—it has been building for years. Two years ago, the department formalized the requirement that each teacher include some form of graded discussion. “To say that some of the [changes] were not precipitated by conversations in AI… would be inaccurate. Certainly, those are conversations we had,” described English Department Chair Nicole Colson, “but we started having them years ago. This isn’t something from [just] the summer or last year.”
And yet, last year, the pace did seem to pick up. For Holt, “there was a tipping point where it felt even more pressing to redesign some assignments or structure classes slightly differently.”
Grading assignments in an AI-saturated universe can be exhausting. Holt admitted, “all that is demoralizing. I don't think it’s a great use of my time, and I’m just disappointed that for a place that has such a great reputation, that attracts really deep thinkers and really motivated kids, [integrity violations were] deemed okay by a good percentage of the students.”
However, the Department’s adjustments come with sacrifice. Holt admitted, “when I adapt a teaching practice from one year to the next, I might end up privileging… one group over another.” She added, “I’m aware of trade-offs.” Holt reflected that some students, especially when faced with in-class writing assignments, may lose the chance for deeper reflection: “the deep thinking that I want to encourage might get lost sometimes, as slower processors… take their time to really reason through things and don’t necessarily have an answer in the first instance they are asked a question. Those people might be discouraged from doing the really good deep thinking that the world needs.”
For students, the results are immediate and personal. Talia Coval ‘27 described that in-class assignments “can put students with anxiety at a disadvantage, because my anxiety makes it so I cannot execute these assignments in the intended way. I’m not going to do my best work. I had an English in-class… and it was essentially my freak-out on the page.” Lukas Caggiano ‘26 added bluntly, “the quality of my writing is inevitably going to decline.”
Director of Academic Support Lainey Sloman framed the paradox: in-class writing can be both a lifeline and a trap. For instance, for some students with diagnosed anxiety, “it is more contained… so it actually relieves the pressure.” However, “for others, it’s totally unnerving and causes panic… It can be super triggering.”
The push for in-class work, as Colson explained, is meant to teach “with [English Department] values at the forefront.”
On the other hand, Holt explained the challenge: “I devoted my life to literature. I would love for people to be sitting with Jane Eyre, or something else, and really thinking about it and turning it over in their minds. And so, we lose that self-guided processing time, and we lose that revision time when we only do classwork.”
Yet, an at home essay can’t guarantee better results, Holt noted, “because people have tutors. People have parents. People have AI.”