Many years ago I wrote about the holy trinity in teaching English—the teacher, the student, the book. The core of the core. We who teach fiction, poetry, dramatic literature, and literary non-fiction consider stories to be essential, beautiful chronicles of the human experience, from Shakespeare to Cisneros. But in 2026 more people carry cell phones than paperbacks. More watch quick videos in hypnotized trances than peruse a collection of poems. More share with their friends saying, “Hey, I saw a funny thing the other day” rather than “I read something amazing recently.” And when asked to reflect and write in their classrooms about a piece of literature they’ve studied, many, too many it seems, eschew the task and seek help from a generative artificial intelligence chatbot known as ChatGPT. What then is the English teacher to do? What does the study of literature look like in classrooms in 2026? Here are some insights from an incredible Encinal High School educator in this special 5Q4: Kevin McNulty.
[1]How has ChatGPT affected your teaching and what, if any, departmental actions have been taken to adjust or combat the use of AI?
Certainly, with the advent of AI, we as English teachers (all teachers really) need to be more vigilant than ever. There is no question that students know how to use ChatGPT and other AI platforms. Unfortunately, when they lean on such tools, they generally are not honing their thinking and writing skills, which are key standards in our classes.
One thing we do across the board is inform students that the use of AI to write essays or assignments is considered cheating, a form of plagiarism. We don’t want gray area there.
We all know how to use GPTZero, a tool for detecting the use of AI in generating a text. We also know our students’ voices as writers, and when writing doesn’t sound at all like that student’s voice, alarm bells ring. This has been true for many years with students copying from sources on the internet, so it’s not absolutely new.
Some teachers in our department are assigning more in-class essays so we can monitor what students are doing and curtail the use of AI. We have Classwise, software that enables us to see what students are doing on their devices in our classes. We can close tabs, block websites such as ChatGPT, and even see a history of what sites students have been visiting on the school-issued devices.
We haven’t found all the solutions by any means, but we are rising to the challenge and still pushing our students to become strong independent thinkers and writers.
[3]Do you see any upsides to AI in terms of developing critical reading and effective writing skills?
Frankly, from a high school teacher’s perspective, no. I find that AI is more of a hindrance than a help to what we are trying to do. Personally, I don’t use AI to write the host of letters of recommendation that I write annually, though I think some teachers might. I think the personal touch is important. I do recognize that in many professional situations, adults are using AI in the workplace. One hopes that such adults were already trained to be independent thinkers and writers so that they can bring those skills to the table and then revise and edit any AI-generated text they are using. I don’t want AI to become a crutch for my students.
[5]Walt Hunter, a college level English teacher, recently wrote an article in The Atlantic entitled “Stop Meeting Students Where They Are.” The subtitle was “What I learned when I finally started assigning the hard reading again.” I was startled by that declaration. How much reading takes place in English classes at Encinal? Were there accommodations made coming out of quarantine, and are they still in place? Does rigor have a new meaning in 2026?
I don’t think the amount or quality of reading we assign in English classes has changed greatly during my 15 years at Encinal. Our curriculum is still mostly novel-based, and we have a great deal of voice in which novels we choose to teach. During the quarantine year, we had to teach our courses in one semester—a smart decision by AUSD so that students had three courses at a time, not six. For English courses, we simply taught fewer novels, but still taught to the same core standards (reading, writing, thinking, speaking/listening). I don’t think rigor has a new meaning. I think productive struggle, challenging texts, and pushing students to grow are still at the core of what we do.
As a teacher who loves your job, working with young people, and who also loves language and literature and composition, has the joy of what you do diminished from all of this?
Absolutely not. Students still light up when reading a good book. They still have great insights into texts, and we can still assign assessments and activities that encourage intellectual discourse around text (Socratic seminars, debates, presentations, mock trial, etc). It is still hard work, but rewarding to read students’ writing and give them feedback to help them grow. And they still appreciate that feedback. Despite new technologies, the students and the joy of teaching them has not changed much in my 24 years of teaching.
Is there any advice about books and reading and writing you’d like to send out to all of those trying to raise kids in this era?
Just to encourage them to read and write. Not just the books or essays assigned in class, but to read and write for fun as well. If we can cultivate the love of the written word in students, we open new worlds to them. Families can do this more and better than any teacher can, and the younger they start, the better.
Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players [7], a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected] [8]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane [9].