Three school superintendents, two college officials and five students from high school and college made up the panel fielding questions at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Decatur Riverfront. The State of Education forum was hosted by the Decatur-Morgan County Chamber of Commerce.
Moderator and educator Scott Mayo, executive director at Cook Museum of Natural Science, asked the panel to talk about artificial intelligence and the opportunity and challenges it brings, specifically to college-level teaching and learning.
Kassie Mathis, vice president of student services for Calhoun Community College, said "the first thing we have to acknowledge is that artificial intelligence is here to stay."
"There has been some apprehension about it but when you really think about all the things it can do it can be very exciting," Mathis said. "The challenge is making sure that students, educators and everyone is using it appropriately. But there are so many opportunities ... I think the key is just to make sure you are operating with integrity. That you are making sure you are authentic."
At Calhoun they are looking for dishonesty with AI, she said. All of those academic dishonesty cases come through her office.
"What I find interesting is that when a student gets caught using AI to cheat, they also use AI to write their defense to cheating," Mathis said.
Catherine Wehlburg, president of Athens State University, said AI is a tool and like any tool it can be misused or overused. She said faculty are using it in classes.
"Teaching our faculty, our students and our staff how to use it appropriately and with integrity is a key piece to that," she said.
Wehlburg said educators are having to be nimble to keep up with the pace of AI And there are some fears about it among some.
"AI is not going to take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI is going to take your job," she said.
In terms of the benefits, Superintendent Michael Douglas of Decatur City Schools said he knows his administrators enter their reports and have AI clean them up and that they use AI to give feedback to teachers, which he said is acceptable.
"We are naive if we don't think they are going to grow up in a world and have jobs where it's not going to be required," he said. "So, like all things, we have to expose them to it. We do have to have the ethical component. But the opportunities are endless and the knowledge that might have taken me six or seven hours to do they can do in 30 minutes."
Superintendent Tracie Turrentine, Morgan County Schools, said her school system, too, has decided to embrace AI.
"We have also had to change our teaching from standing up there and being the stage to being the guide and teaching our students how to use it correctly. They are quicker at grabbing knowledge than we ever were. We had to grab the encyclopedias and everything else."
She said they purchased school AI programs for the teachers. One of the ways they use it is to put in a lesson plan they want to use and it creates it for them, she said.
"It has given them, hopefully, more time to focus on students," Turrentine said.
Superintendent Holly Sutherland, Hartselle City Schools, said her system has one of the only AI classes in the state. They partner with the cyber school and have an AI committee.
"So, we are sort of developing that curriculum with the cyber school and trying to introduce some of our students to those technologies that they can use for careers," she said. "We are using that every day."
For example, she said she uses AI to make sure her emails are properly structured in a professional manner.
"It is helping the teachers grade. It is helping them plan lessons with standards-based activities. And they are doing that in two or three minutes where it was taking them hours," she said.
Mayo asked high school students on the panel to raise their hands if they had ever witnessed a student use ChatGPT to write papers for them. All three raised their hands.
Blaine Johnson, a Hartselle High School student, said, "A.I. is just another tool in our toolbox. I think it only becomes a problem when we say AI do my job for me instead of AI help me do my job."
Mayo also asked the panel about what they were doing about the teacher shortage.
"This is probably the worst teacher shortage we have ever experienced in the state," Douglas said. "All of the colleges are producing fewer and fewer teachers. My impassioned plea is the same: We've got to start honoring and loving up our teachers. ... There are other countries that pay teachers a whole lot less but those teachers are regarded like doctors and lawyers. We've got to get back to that or we're not going to have any teachers."
He said Decatur City Schools has more emergency certificates than they have ever had. The certificate holders don't have a degree in education; the schools have pulled them from other fields to work.
"The dilemma is that we make it nearly impossible for a highly educated person to come teach children," Douglas said. "I have an engineer working in CAD (computer aided design) who went to school to be an engineer and my state department (of education) wants him to take four classes so he is qualified to teach engineering."
He called it "insanity."
"We know we have a teacher shortage," he said. "We need to make it easier for people to get in the classroom. We'll train them, just give me the body."
Wehlburg said Athens State has been able to bring in a lot of teachers through the Athens State Teach Program, which they were able to offer because they received a grant. They are offering education courses to students who might want to become teachers but are not sure, she said.
"We are able to offer that class for free so they can go in a say, 'Yes I really would like to do this' or 'No I really don't want to do this,'" Wehlburg said.
Turrentine said Morgan County Schools has a "grow your own" program to recruit, which has been going on about three years.
She said they have aides who don't have time to go get the degree but they are giving them hours inside the classroom as an aide so they can work toward being a teacher. She said there are also about 40 kids who are in the career tech program who aspire to be teachers.
"We are growing them up from there," she said.
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