How I Leveraged AI as a High School Teacher

Let’s be honest…. teaching can be exhausting. And teaching English? Even more so. Between grading essays, answering parent emails, chasing down missing work, planning lessons, and keeping thirty teenagers from combusting in your classroom at 2 p.m., there’s barely time to breathe.

And while I love the creative side of teaching, so much of the job is spent doing things that quietly drain your time and energy. One of those things? Making quizzes.

Saving Time for What Matters

At some point during the school year, I realized I was spending hours crafting multiple-choice questions, building review games, and formatting quizzes when I could have been focusing on creating more engaging lessons or checking in with my students.

So I turned to AI. I started using ChatGPT to generate quizzes based on our reading material or writing skills, exported the questions into a spreadsheet, and uploaded them to platforms like Kahoot or Quizizz. The time saved was astonishing, and once I shared the process with my team, they were on board too.

Suddenly, we had more energy to actually teach instead of scrambling to create last-minute assessments.

Feedback, Faster and Smarter

Another huge win? Feedback.

Anyone who’s taught writing knows how time-consuming it is to leave meaningful comments on student essays. I showed my team how to use AI to generate tailored feedback for specific writing traits: voice, clarity, organization, grammar based on student samples.

It didn’t replace our judgment as teachers, but it helped streamline the process and ensured students got more consistent and actionable responses.

It was like having a second set of eyes… that didn’t need a planning period.

Hallelujah!

Lesson Planning with a Brainstorm Buddy

I also used AI to brainstorm lesson ideas, create slide presentations, and even dig into research for texts or themes I wasn’t familiar with.

Whether I needed bell work ideas, sentence structure practice, or a creative STAAR review game, I could start with ChatGPT, then shape and personalize the content from there.

It never replaced my voice, but it just helped me get to the good ideas faster.

Teaching Students to Use AI Responsibly

One of the most important shifts was how I talked to my students about AI. I didn’t want them to see it as the boogeyman. The truth is, they’re using it anyway. So I made it a point to show them how to use tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm, outline, and organize their thoughts without just copying and pasting a full response.

We talked about digital literacy, academic integrity, and how AI can support creativity rather than replace it.

As I tell them often, “ChatGPT is my bestie, and it should be yours too. You just need to know how to use it the right way.”

AI helped me become a better teacher, and it gave me more time, more ideas, and more presence in my classroom.

And in a profession where every moment counts, that made all the difference.