As AI rapidly reshapes the educational landscape, educators, especially those in the humanities, frequently find themselves caught between two extremes: embracing AI as an unalloyed good for efficiency or fearing it as a tool that encourages cognitive offloading and discourages deep learning. This session outlines a structured “middle path” designed to move students from passive consumers of AI to critical, ethically aware evaluators of the technology by drawing on actionable insights from an Advanced Placement (AP) Literature classroom, the presenter will share a dual-approach pedagogical framework that treats AI as both a functional tool and a subject of critical academic study. These insights can be applied in other English, History, and Humanities classrooms.

– Learn how your students can use AI to critique their own year-long writing portfolios, comparing internal human artistic struggles against technical, algorithmic critiques to foster deep metacognitive development.
– Explore a humanities unit centered on contemporary literature—specifically Richard Powers’ novel Playground—and secondary texts exploring technocolonialism and systemic bias such as excerpts from Karen Hao’s Empire of AI and Tim Wu’s The Age of Extraction, as well as receiving suggestions about how you can develop a unit that fits you course and community.
– Learn how students leverage tools like NotebookLM to synthesize data for exam preparation while actively identifying, troubleshooting, and documenting algorithmic errors and hallucinations.8
– The session can also include a discussion of the evolving nature of authentic assessments, lockdown boundaries, and generational shifts in study habits.