Students’ Perceptions of AI In Seven High Schools: Moving from Avoidance and Deterrence to Responsible Engagement
“We need teachers to actually teach us how to prompt. Show us good examples, and let us try. Don’t punish the whole class because one kid went overboard—most of us want to use it carefully.”
This is just one of hundreds of thoughts high school students shared with me across 20 hours of focus groups I conducted last spring about their perceptions of the current state of AI, academic integrity, teaching, and learning.
As I listened to these students, who attend seven different high schools in the suburbs of an upper-Midwest state, three key tensions surfaced. These tensions reflect what students in these schools see as a misalignment between their needs as learners and the seismic technological shifts that are remaking our world, given the access we have to powerful AI tools.
Tension 1: Cheating as a Coping Mechanism Rather Than a Crime
Issues related to cheating and academic integrity are not new to schools (1, 2 ). But access to AI tools has made it easier than ever for students to complete specific academic tasks without engaging in the productive struggle necessary to learn. While students acknowledge the importance of rules to prevent cheating and limit access to technology, they think adults ignore other factors that are the root cause of cheating. As one student put it, “I think some teachers think that the phone is what's making us cheat.” Another added, "They think that as soon as you open an AI thing, you're gonna cheat."
But students argue that blaming phones or AI tools misses the very human pressures that lead to cheating—with or without AI—in the first place. Students frame cheating not as a first resort, but as a coping mechanism to navigate a system that expects students to have unlimited time to excel in everything.
For example, as one student shared, “I had five (sporting events) in six days, so I was constantly running around after school.” He knew his schoolwork was piling up and a big test was only a few days away. Faced with a choice between falling even further behind and failing a time-intensive assignment, he reached for his phone to text a friend: “Hey, could you just send (the assignment) to me? I'll change it before I turn it in.”
As students shared stories like these, they didn’t come across as defiant, rebellious, or defensive. To the contrary, they spoke matter-of-factly about the lengths they’d gone to trying to meet the expectations of their teachers, parents, advisors, and coaches. In the end, many of them described cheating as a weary decision to balance expectations and capacity. Many of these anecdotes ended by simply acknowledging, “I just needed to get it done."
Students across each of the focus groups justified why this get-r-done approach was an essential coping strategy to be embraced rather than a liability to be avoided. Students made a clear distinction between how they approach busywork, which one student described as “assignments that had to be completed and turned in but then they’re like never spoken of again” and another explained as “a bunch of extra homework on top of the already infinite homework we get” vs. important work that “is interesting and actually helps you learn.” As one student, who sees herself as a rule follower who never cheats, explained without an ounce of intended irony, “except cheating on busywork, I don’t count that as cheating.”
Many students acknowledged that they use AI tools to complete busywork, despite their teachers’ disapproval. One student offered a solution, “If (AI) is used so much for busywork, hopefully teachers learn, ‘Hey, kids aren't actually doing this, maybe all this work is not really needed in the first place.’”
Other students shared anecdotes about gaps in instruction and a lack of time or opportunity to receive individualized support as reasons for cheating. The most concise diagnosis of this problem came from a student who said, “When everyone in a class cheats, it’s because no one in the class understands what’s happening.”
To minimize cheating and maximize integrity, students shared anecdotes about teachers who are transparent about their expectations, provide opportunities for support, and are enthusiastic about their students and their subject areas. One student explained, “It helps when teachers let you know what you need to learn, take time (to teach it), and then give you time to ask questions.” Another student added, “It also helps when the teachers want to be there. When they feel passionate about what they are teaching, it makes it easier to learn.”
Tension 2: Preparation for The Future vs. Prohibition and Detection of AI
Educators and students are navigating uncharted territory together. Generative AI tools are widely considered to be among the most powerful, easily accessible, and quickly deployed technological innovations in human history. Many teachers have not had the time, professional development, or guidance necessary to adapt their practice to an AI-saturated world. This has resulted in a patchwork of classroom policies that students find confusing.
Some teachers issue blanket prohibitions on all AI tools, but students agree that it is almost impossible for those teachers to actually prevent students from using them. Other teachers use AI checkers “on everything, and if a 1% match comes up, it’s over.” In some schools, AI tools were blocked on the school’s network, but students would simply access them on their personal devices. And, there was consensus that when most teachers see a student using AI, “they immediately assume the worst.”
Across every focus group, students recounted anecdotes about teachers and students who seem “obsessed” with playing AI-related cat and mouse games. One student explained how his friends run their text through “AI cleaners” as a way of countering AI detection tools by “fighting fire with fire.” Students shared anecdotes about classmates who were rightly, and wrongly, accused of cheating with AI and the distrust and paranoia that inevitably followed.
While AI-related cheating scandals generated strong responses and colorful anecdotes from students, they explained that the many of their teachers “pretend like AI doesn’t exist.” Sentiments suggesting that teachers “don’t talk about it at all” or “they just say ‘don’t use it’” or they say “they hallucinate so they aren’t really useful” received head-nods and a chorus of affirmations in nearly every focus group.
But students are acutely aware that they need to be prepared to navigate a world where AI tools are everywhere.
“(AI) is going to be a big part of our future, like, in our college future and our professional future,” one student asserted. “So it's kind of more dangerous if you just ignore it while we're in high school, because then students won't know how to use AI properly at all.” Both of these observations are grounded in experiences shared by other students.
Students shared examples of how they’ve seen or heard about AI being used in the “real world.” One student explained how his parents use AI to draft business plans. Another student, who was doing an internship in an office at a manufacturing company, explained how his mentor was using AI daily to automate his work-flow. A student planning to study business after graduating from high school recounted a conversation he’d had with a relative who works for a large company. “My cousin said AI is used everywhere in the industry and using AI effectively is just something you're going to need to know how to do.”
Students also shared risks of not knowing how to use AI as a learner. One student, who participated in a careers program that included a seminar on how to effectively prompt AI tools, thinks his friends have already fallen behind. “(They) don’t know how to prompt it. So instead of doing the work and asking the AI, ‘how can I make this better?’ they're like, ‘Just write me the whole essay.’”
A senior at another school who was volunteering as a tutor in a freshman study hall noted a similar gap in students’ understanding of how to use AI tools effectively. She quickly realized that for many students, “prompting AI” meant pasting their teacher’s questions directly from their assignments. “They use AI and then the AI does (the work), but then they don't understand it even more, so they use AI again.” She continued, “So it's just kind of like they’re caught in a loop where it just keeps going and going.”
Another student added, “These are teenagers, so the more teachers say ‘don't use it,’ the more they are going to be drawn to it. If they gave us more guidance of what to use it for and what not to use it for, and how to use it, I feel like it would just be a lot better for everybody.”
Across all of the focus groups, students expressed appreciation for teachers who helped set boundaries related to when AI could be harmful and when it could be helpful.
For example, one student shared, “I had one teacher that set boundaries about ‘Okay, you can use it to help you make this part of the project, but when it comes to this part, you're going to be hurting yourself if you use AI and here’s why.’” Other students shared examples of specific prompting strategies that other teachers showed them in class.
When asked what they wish their teachers would teach them about AI, one student captured the sentiment shared across nearly every focus group: “I think if they like showed us how to ask it questions that help us learn versus just giving us the answer, then a lot of students would probably feel more like empowered to do that instead of just cheat.”
Tension 3: A Tool to Engage In, Rather Than Avoid, Productive Struggle
Through direct instruction from teachers and through trial and error, students spoke positively about strategies they’d learned to help them use AI as a tool to focus their efforts to learn.
For Personalized Feedback: One student in a history class explained how her teacher taught the class how to use AI to get feedback on short analysis essays. “[He] would give us this page-long prompt and a rubric that we'd copy paste into AI, and then it would help us get feedback on our responses. He was like ‘I’ll show you how you can use AI on your own time to get extra practice.’”
Another student who was struggling with trigonometry was shown how to use AI to get a step-by-step breakdown of a problem. “I think it's very helpful because it goes into depth more than my teacher does, to the point where I understand it more,” he said.
As a Creative Aid: A student who “freezes” in front of a blank page had a teacher show her how AI can serve as a brainstorming partner. By generating examples of topics, characters, and settings that could be used to write an allegory for a creative writing assignment, the student was able to get unstuck. According to the student, it was the first time she had a teacher talk about AI with anything other than a cautionary warning about plagiarism.
As an Editor: Several students shared examples of teachers who were adamant about students not using AI to generate initial drafts of their writing but showed them how to use AI to assist with specific tasks like editing for clarity and checking to ensure sources were formatted properly. One student shared that his teacher required him to turn in the initial draft and copies of the prompts and replies from the AI tool along with the final draft. In each case, students appreciate when teachers affirm the importance of doing one’s own work and acknowledging that AI could be used as a tool to make it even better.
To Seek Individualized Help: A student who was struggling in a class said she’d gone in for extra help and a line of other students were already there waiting. That evening, she asked an AI tool for help. “I was like, can you rephrase this? Can you ask me follow ups? Can you show me how you can do this with an example?” The student found the responses to be extremely helpful. And, she added, “it’s a lot less embarrassing to ask AI more questions if you don’t understand its first response.”
A student at another school shared a similar anecdote: “If a teacher tries to explain something to me for too long, after a while I just get overwhelmed and stop listening.” She’s found that when she turns to AI tools for help, she can engage in a back-and-forth discussion until she gets explanations in clear language that she actually understands. “And,” she added, “being able to read it again and again makes it even easier.”
As a Study Partner: Several students shared examples of how they’ve used AI to study more effectively. For example, one student explained that in his most challenging class, he started taking pictures of his notes each day and uploading them to AI. Then, he’d ask the AI tool to summarize the notes, ask him questions about them, and then give him a quiz with feedback. At the end of the unit, the AI tool could quiz him and help him focus his efforts to study.
“Did a teacher show you how to do that?” I asked as a follow-up question.
“Not really,” he replied. “For an engineering class a teacher had us design something and then submit it to AI for suggestions on how to improve it, and I just kind of used that idea but applied it to my schoolwork.”
When these anecdotes were shared, students uniformly expressed appreciation for their teacher’s efforts to show them productive ways to use AI. These strategies empower students to take ownership of their own learning, and they invite integrity. As one student stated, “When I have a teacher who I know actually knows how to use AI tools, it just helps me be more honest with my work."
Moving Forward: From Avoidance and Deterrence to Engagement
These students are not asking for a world with AI and without rules. They want guidance and preparation to successfully engage a world where AI tools are as ubiquitous as the internet.
They see the potential of AI tools to support their learning. As one student shared, “You can ask it anything you want. It will not judge you, and it will give you the personalized response that is tailored for you, and that will specifically help you learn. And like, who wouldn't want that?”
These students do see the risk that AI tools will undermine their learning. When asked what advice he would give to 8th grade students about how to use AI, one senior offered a piece of wisdom that any student would do well to heed: “Use it to understand topics. Don’t go overboard and just have it do your work. Know what you’re using it for, and don’t use it too often.” This is the kind of thoughtful, intentional approach we can help cultivate among all of our students.
Students are hungry for guidance on how to use AI tools. As one student shared:
“I wish teachers were more aware of how students use AI, both for when people are using it more ethically to understand, and also in non-ethical ways to just straight get the answer and to cover it up. I don’t feel like enough teachers are aware of it. I wish they would talk about it more so we could learn the good things we can do with it, and then the drawbacks and the consequences. ”
As we begin the fourth school year where powerful AI tools are available to our high school students, it’s time to move beyond approaches to AI in high schools that are based on avoidance and deterrence. Our students are eager to engage in these conversations. Are we?
*As with any focus group research, my role was to ask questions and listen; not to push back, justify, or explain. As I synthesized students’ responses, I looked for patterns and themes that recurred across all, or nearly all, of the focus groups and each of the schools.
Tony Frontier, PhD, is an award-winning educator with 30 years of experience as a teacher, principal, curriculum director, university professor, and consultant who works with teachers and school leaders across the globe to help them prioritize efforts to improve student learning. His most recent book is AI with Intention: Principles and Action Steps for Teachers and School Leaders. Recent articles include Catch Them Learning: A Path to Academic Integrity in the Age of AI, and Deeper Learning with AI, Not Passive Compliance. To learn more about his research, writing, and consulting, see tonyfrontier.com or e-mail him at tonyfrontier@gmail.com