ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HAS ARRIVED at California High School in San Ramon, and no one quite knows whether it’s helping, harming, or just hovering in the background.
As the San Ramon Valley Unified School District works to establish clearer policies on AI, teachers often set their own classroom rules in the meantime, and students balance the advantages of using AI with the potential consequences.
“Don’t use it. Don’t use it,” Cal High history teacher Benjamin Andersen said of AI. “Teenagers are not going to use it the way we are intending them to use it. They’re going to use it to do the work for them, because that is how the teenage mind works.
“There’s an MIT study (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) that says people who use AI to write papers forget what they wrote about within like an hour or two. It’s the problems (of AI) that outweigh the benefits,” he said.
Andersen added that he has seen students at Cal High turning in essays produced by AI, and he cited research that found that students who rely on AI fail to learn what assignments are meant to teach. He said he has used AI himself as a productivity tool rather than to replace instruction.
“AI companies have to sell their products, and to sell them they need to tell people to use it in ways that people want to use it, which is ‘make me lazy,’” Andersen said. “I think it’s going to hurt American students because they’re going to fall behind the rest of the world.”
Other teachers, however, believe that AI is a game-changing tool and should be used by students much more frequently.
“The biggest challenge isn’t AI itself, it’s getting students excited about using it,” said Cal High engineering teacher John Reed. “A lot of them aren’t interested yet because it’s still new. AI should be used freely and encouraged in classrooms.”
California High Principal Demetrius Ball emphasized the importance of teaching students to use AI responsibly.
“It can be a great tool when it comes to enhancing what you want to create,” he said. “But it’s important not to be so dependent on technology. We should use our own brains and see AI as a tool to assist us, not something we rely on completely.”
Students say it’s about expanding learning
Many students also support AI use in classrooms, saying it helps them learn more efficiently and stay engaged. For them, the technology isn’t about cutting corners but about expanding access to information and offering new ways to understand difficult subjects.
“I definitely use it when I’m studying, especially if I need to summarize something,” Cal High 11th grader Lucas Nguyen said. “If I don’t understand a problem, I’ll AI it and then try to learn how to solve it using AI.”
Nguyen described using ChatGPT to generate practice problems in calculus and said many classmates use AI both to cheat and to study.
“Not all AI usage is bad,” Nguyen said. “When you’re not learning anything — when you just make it do the work — that’s when it feels like cheating.”
“I definitely use it when I’m studying, especially if I need to summarize something. If I don’t understand a problem, I’ll AI it and then try to learn how to solve it using AI.”
Lucas Nguyen, California High School junior
He added that some teachers can spot AI work in English classes because it lacks a student’s individual writing voice, while in math, it’s often harder to detect.
Cal High 11th grader Pranauv Muthuraman said, “I think it’s positively affecting education because now if you don’t understand a topic, you can prompt an AI model to explain it for you. Suppose I want to know about physics. … Instead of prompting a friend, I prompt the AI to give me stuff.
“I know that you’re not allowed to copy and paste full ChatGPT documents for your English homework,” Muthuraman said, “but I guess they’re somewhat lenient on policy now, considering they’re letting us use AI for some stuff.”
Muthuraman also expressed a desire for broader access to AI on school networks. “I want more AI usage. I want ChatGPT to be allowed on the school networks because right now, only Gemini is allowed,” he said.
Gemini, an AI chatbot developed by Google, has gained popularity in the district due to its low cost and ease of integration with teaching platforms like Google Classroom.
“Gemini has a guided learning option that lets students have a dialogue with AI,” said engineering teacher Reed. “That kind of back-and-forth interaction can really help them understand material better.”
School concerned with safety and security
Principal Ball said the school adopted Gemini primarily for privacy and security reasons.
“One of the things about Gemini is it is part of the Google suite, and Gemini does not use the data that you input to help it learn and grow,” Ball said. “ChatGPT remembers and learns and adapts based on what you searched in the past. Gemini doesn’t record your previous information to help it learn and grow. So that’s one of the main reasons why we use Gemini. That and it’s part of Google, which we pay for already.”
Ball added that Gemini helps reduce risks associated with personal data exposure while still allowing teachers and students to explore AI safely.
“When people put a lot of personal information into ChatGPT — names, dates, locations — that’s the kind of stuff we don’t want coming up in searches later,” Ball said. “So that’s one of the main dangers we’re trying to avoid.”
He said most staff have welcomed Gemini as a useful classroom tool, though comfort levels vary.
“I wouldn’t say there’s pushback necessarily, but everyone’s comfort level is different,” Ball said. “Some are ready to jump in and integrate it into class, and others want to wait. We’re not forcing anyone to use Gemini, but we must understand it because students have access to it, too.”
Administrators have tried to strike a balance, communicating guidelines while leaving teachers some discretion.
For example, on the district’s website, its guiding principles for AI use state: “While it is necessary to address plagiarism and other risks to academic integrity, AI simultaneously offers staff and students an opportunity to emphasize the fundamental values that underpin academic integrity — honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility.”
Cal High student Anay Dixit said, “I honestly think that if teachers are being encouraged to use AI to come up with some particular things for helping students learn, then it’s only fair if students are given the same opportunity. Teachers aren’t available to students 24-7 to help and provide them with everything they need.”
Clearly, opinions across California High reflect the broader uncertainty surrounding AI in education. Teachers, students and administrators each see the benefits and drawbacks, and many say the challenge now is finding clear, fair guidelines that allow for learning without encouraging misuse.
Shaurya Chauhan is an 11th grader at California High School in San Ramon, the News Lite editor and social media writer on the school paper, The Californian, and a CCYJ reporter. This story originally appeared in CCSpin.