What is the Important Work?

And will AI really free us up to do it?

Back in the early days of ChatGPT, we heard a lot about how using generative AI was going to free us up to do “the important work.” But for those of us who teach writing, the writing has always been the important work, and so we entered a new era in which the lines between process and product were no longer clear. Two years later, we’re still asking questions: What does it look like to teach writing in the era of generative AI?What should it look like? Do we agree on the important work? Should we?

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

Over the past two years, I’ve had the opportunity to talk about the writing process and teaching writing with instructors from across the world—at conferences, online, and in person. I know I’m not the only one who has found these conversations enriching, heartening, and provocative—a silver lining amidst a lot of uncertainty. A few weeks ago, while talking to Boston-area colleagues at a conference sponsored by The Generator at Babson College, I was struck by how many more conversations there are out there to be had. I wanted to have time to talk to everyone there about what they are doing in their classrooms and how it’s going.

While there are a number of great repositories for assignments, including the AI Pedagogy Project (longer list coming soon), I think there’s room for publishing more personal reflections about how these assignments are going. I want to hear more about both what teachers think we’re gaining and what we’re losing when we bring AI into the writing classroom. What is “the important work” in your classroom, and what does it look like these days?

There are some great Substacks out there already (we’ve got a list of recommended ones to start with—please suggest more), so what will be different about this one? My goal here will be to crowdsource by publishing reflections from writing teachers who aren’t already publishing their own newsletters so that we can broaden the conversation. If you’re grappling with AI in the classroom—at either the high school or college level—we want to hear about what you’re trying and how it’s going.

Reflections can take any form, but if it’s helpful, here are some guiding questions: What have you changed about the way you teach writing? An assignment? Everything? Nothing? Have you tried something that seems to be working? If so, what do you think your students are gaining? Has something else been displaced in the process that you’re afraid you’re losing? We want to hear about experiments, assignments, failures, successes, what you’re going to do differently next time, and more. And if this works, I hope we’ll have conversations in the comments as well.

If you’re an instructor with a reflection to share, please email me (janerosenzweigwrites@gmail.com) and we can make a plan—or just send me your reflection—and your suggestions for what you’d like to see here. And please share this first post widely!

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