I've been teaching high school physics for 15 years, and I need to address the elephant in the room: is AI going to take my job?
Short answer: no. Longer answer: it's complicated, and the real story is more interesting than the headlines suggest.
What AI can't do (and probably won't for a long time)
Last week, one of my students came to class looking like she hadn't slept. I pulled her aside after class and found out her parents were going through a divorce. We talked for twenty minutes. I adjusted her homework deadline. I checked in with her the next day.
No AI does that. No AI notices the body language, reads the room, and makes a human judgment call about what a student needs in that moment. Teaching has always been about more than transferring information — it's mentorship, emotional support, socialization, and inspiration. Those things require a human.
What AI is genuinely good at
Here's what I'll freely admit: AI is better than me at some parts of my job. And I'm okay with that.
I have 32 students in my third-period class. When a student doesn't understand Newton's third law, I can spend maybe 3 minutes with them before I need to help someone else. An AI tutor can spend 30 minutes walking that student through it, from five different angles, at 10 PM when I'm at home with my family.
AI is infinitely patient. It never has a bad day. It never gets frustrated when a student asks the same question for the fourth time. As much as I try, I'm human, and sometimes my patience runs thin at the end of a long day. The AI's doesn't.
How I actually use AI in my classroom
I've started recommending AI tutors to my students as a supplement — not a replacement — for classroom instruction. The results have been genuinely positive.
Students who were too shy to ask questions in class now get help privately from the AI. Students who need extra practice can get unlimited problem sets. Students who learn at different paces aren't held back or left behind by the single pace I have to set for the whole class.
I've also started using AI to help me create differentiated assignments. I can generate practice problems at three different difficulty levels in minutes, something that used to take me hours.
What actually worries me
My concern isn't that AI will replace teachers. It's that administrators will use AI as an excuse to increase class sizes. "You have AI assistants now, so surely you can handle 40 students instead of 30." That's the real danger — not replacement, but budget-cutting disguised as innovation.
I also worry about students becoming over-reliant on AI for answers instead of developing their own problem-solving skills. But honestly, we said the same thing about calculators, and we figured out how to integrate those into education without destroying mathematical thinking.
What I think actually happens
I think the future looks like this: AI handles the repetitive, scalable parts of education — practice, review, basic Q&A, progress tracking. Teachers handle the irreplaceable human parts — inspiration, mentorship, emotional support, complex discussions, and guiding students through the messiness of actually growing up.
If anything, AI might make my job better by freeing me from the parts that burn teachers out (grading, repetitive explanations, administrative work) so I can focus on the parts that made me want to teach in the first place.
The students who do best will always be the ones with great teachers AND great tools. AI is a tool. A very impressive one, but a tool nonetheless.