Thinking About AI's Threat to the Writing Process

"I will never forget the student who-upon being given 15 minutes at the end of class to get rolling on the writing assignment I'd just given-whipped out their phone and starting furiously typing away. At first, I thought this was an act of defiance, a deliberate wasting of time I'd been generous enough to provide following a carefully constructed discussion activity that was meant to give students sufficient kindling to get the flames of the first draft flickering to life."

"I'd been teaching the writing process for my entire career, talking students through the steps and sequence to producing a satisfactory piece of work-prewriting, drafting, revision, editing, proofreading-with more detailed dives into each of those stages, but until that incident I didn't fully appreciate that I shouldn't be teaching the writing process per se, I should be giving students the kinds of challenges that allowed them to develop their own writing processes."

A teacher observed a student use a cracked phone's Notes app to draft a writing assignment during class time. The student typed at speeds comparable to or better than peers using computer keyboards and had extensive draft material saved on the device. The teacher realized that students create idiosyncratic writing processes tailored to circumstance and technology. Emphasis on prewriting, drafting, revision, editing, and proofreading alone can miss opportunities to cultivate personal methods. Classroom tasks should present challenges that encourage students to develop their own workflows. Personal methods may appear inefficient externally but function effectively for the individual.

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