The intention behind teaching writing is to equip students with skills needed to express themselves proficiently, and to allow them to attempt creating or drawing meaning out of their own experiences or those that they learn about in the classroom. Given the advent of generative AI, including Large Language Models (LLM) such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and the many more that continue to crop up across major platforms, it is essential that teachers of writing retain the goal of teaching writing as a skill that can be accessed without technology, and certainly without AI.

There are certain advantages of generative AI models that students find attractive, and for good reason; these models can summarize, organize, and simplify information and writing incredibly quickly, and can do so at a level that often reaches the bare minimum of ‘good writing.’ However, in the classroom, these AI models should not be utilized. Students must develop their own senses of grammar, syntax, style, and organization. Writing with a focus on rhetoric emphasizes the students’ ability to draw their own conclusions, analyze the world around them, and compile what they have learned into their writing. To lose these skills, and the individuality that comes with a writer’s voice, would mean a loss of compelling and convincing writing. 

Because of this, it is imperative that writing skills be retained in the classroom. There is no doubt our classrooms will begin to fill more and more with AI-generated content and the use of AI by students. However, it is our responsibility as educators, and particularly educators of writing, to encourage students to use their own voices and to honestly attempt to acquire these skills for themselves. It is our responsibility as instructors to foster classroom communities that encourage genuine interaction and discourage work generated outside of the students’ minds.