Joy and Writing in the Age of AI

A few summers ago, I (Katie) attended a conference of English educators where the hottest topic of conversation was the emergence of generative AI in schools. That year it wasn’t uncommon to pass groups of teachers sharing horror stories from the past school year that starred ChatGPT as the evil monster lurking in student writing and reading. In one similar conversation I had with a high school ELA teacher who had a former career in technology, he posed a question that has both haunted and motivated me since then: “How will we get students to write when they don’t have to anymore?” This question, for me, gets at other deeper, philosophical questions that the emergence of this new technology forces us to contend with like: What are the purposes of writing? Is writing primarily for communicating a message to certain audiences? Does writing have value for individuals outside of these utilitarian purposes? Is writing, like other forms of art, in some way a part of what it means to be human? In the context of this blog, it also makes me wonder how joy and writing may be connected, and if (re)casting writing as a joyful pursuit–as well as how we define joy–may be one possible answer to these questions.

But first, we must acknowledge that for many of our students–and maybe even us–writing is in no way related to what we consider joyful. For instance, writing a five paragraph informative essay to explore the advantages of limiting car usage (which is a real life sample prompt for 10th graders from my state’s summative standardized assessment), while arguably important, is not something that inspires joy for many (including me), unless you’re interested in topics like city planning, curbing pollution, or possibly biking. Even so, a person interested in these topics may find this prompt simplistic or limiting in that they cannot make choices that real writers make when writing about an idea that gets them going, like choosing an appropriate genre or form, or what the intended purpose of the writing will be. Adding to these challenges, or lack thereof, even if the topic is engaging, crafting a response in a limited amount of time for a computer, rather than a real audience, can dissuade the writer from truly wrestling with the topic to think about it deeply or meaningfully, or from being changed or moved by this thinking, and to instead rely on the formula that will earn them a top score. Put another way, the task of writing in this scenario is reduced to mechanics and correctness rather than a thought-/feeling-provoking exploration of ideas. Because this writing task is divorced from authenticity and the real messiness of human thought and emotion, it can feel the opposite of joyful. To be sure, there is a time and a place for practicing the genre of standardized test writing, and sometimes that can even be joyful, but the problem is when this becomes the only type of writing students do in our classrooms. If it is, then it makes sense to me that a student would reach for ChatGPT to complete a writing task that we give them. And why not? The AI can locate and synthesize a variety of related ideas from the internet in mechanically perfect prose in seconds, and when an idea isn’t worth spending the time or effort on or when the response won’t make a difference in the life of the writer or the reader, it can accomplish the purpose of the writing task without the interference of human input.

A common rebuttal to this line of thinking is that it’s valuable for students to follow through on hard or boring tasks, so that we should keep prioritizing this type of writing in our classrooms, except maybe with pen and paper rather than a computer. While I do agree that students should learn how to engage with and complete difficult or boring work–in fact, I think guiding them through these is part of our job–I don’t think this means we have to keep assigning writing that any of us could just as easily offload to AI. But, what I do think it means is that we should make real space for joy, or “deep fun” as Tom Romano puts it, in our writing assignments, because, as I see it, joyful experiences are inherently imbued with personally- or communally-relevant challenges that compel students to do hard things even when they may not want to from the outset. Perhaps if we do so, students will find writing meaningful and worthwhile even if ChatGPT exists and can write for them.

I’d like to pause here to clarify what I mean by joy because, at least from my experiences, it’s not typically defined as how I’m thinking of it. Sometimes it’s easier for me to explain abstract concepts by starting with what something is not, so here goes. Joy is not easy, rather it is wrestling with challenges to find a way through. Joy is not mindless, rather it is creative and rigorous. Joy is not a free-for-all, rather it is carefully cultivated. Joy is not a brain break, rather it is a brain mender. Joy is not novelty for the sake of novelty, rather it is inviting new ways of thinking and doing. (If you’d like to read more on how we define joy, check out our book Joyful Literacies in Secondary English Language Arts.)

An example may help me further illustrate. One time I sat through a four-hour PD about how to use games to make content more engaging for students. The company had an app where teachers could transfer information from existing PowerPoints into a dozen or so Jeopardy-like games they had created. In a writing game they demonstrated, for instance, we filled out a color-coded paragraph with information from a provided reading passage as quickly as we could to be faster and more accurate than the other teams. While this was certainly a novel way to approach writing, after a few minutes the tasks started feeling like boxes to check off rather than something I was deeply invested in or challenged by; the fun felt contrived, a little cheesy, and wore off quickly. It was like the sugar high you get after scarfing down a chocolate bar when you’re hungry that energizes you at first but then all too soon leads to a crash. Likewise, the activities were fun on a surface-level, but ultimately did not lead to deeper, more engaged learning about the topic or skills at hand, nor did they replicate the processes writers use to write, so in that way they weren’t really helping me become a better writer.

As a counter-example, writing this blog post was genuinely joyful. It all started by reading a chapter from John Warner’s book More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI with a group of teachers who challenged my ideas about what the purposes of writing are. I mulled over the ideas from this discussion for weeks, which I had quickly jotted down highlights from in my writer’s notebook, thinking also of the conference experience I mentioned in the intro, until one day in conversation with Holly I wondered how all this connected with joyful literacies. From there, I made a quick outline to get started, but ultimately the writing process has been what can best be described as meandering or circuitous, ideas begetting ideas, leading me to thoughts I hadn’t even considered before. I’ve also been in a state of what Don Graves called “constantly composing” as ideas for this blog post are continually on my mind even as I put this writing on the backburner for a week.

To be clear, I wouldn’t describe any of this as fun or easy, certainly not like the activity from the professional development session, but it has been “deep fun” – that is, challenging and creative and inspiring new ways of thinking. When I open my laptop, I get lost in a state of flow, looking up at my clock hours later after I started. I also must think critically about how my ideas are fitting together, and consider the best ways for structuring these thoughts so they make sense to both me and my potential readers. To be honest, it’s much more challenging–and liberating– than deferring to the five-paragraph format I learned in my schooling because I am having to actively evaluate my choices and find creative solutions for meeting my goals for this piece. What adds to this creative challenge is that I know I’m writing for you all, a very real audience of educators who are interested in contemplating these ideas with me because it could impact the work you do, so I’m thinking of you along the way as I choose examples and consider how I want to organize these thoughts, which by the way, I’ve rearranged and subtracted from and added to more times than I can count. In all of this, not once have I been tempted to reach for ChatGPT to do the work for me. For one, I know I’d lose credibility with you all, which matters a lot to me. But mostly I’ve written my way into being truly interested in this topic because not only does it directly impact my work, but it connects with big questions that compel me about humans and technology. I know this means I’ve got to roll up my sleeves, so to speak, and get to writing because actually doing the hard work of writing is what transforms me, while I know letting ChatGPT do the work won’t, as this new study from MIT found.

(I want to pause here and clarify that we are not completely against using ChatGPT in the classroom. In our book, for instance, we illustrate a few ways that we’ve positioned students to use it as a thinking partner or as a way to kick off a research project. In fact, I’d argue we are doing a disservice to students if we don’t teach them how to use this tool skillfully and responsibly. A huge problem with AI though, as I am hoping to underscore here, is when it replaces human creativity and intelligence. If you’re interested in thinking more about both the peril and promise of AI in the classroom, check out a book chapter I contributed to as a starting place.)

So how do we make writing a joyful endeavor for students? For one, choice, time, support, and the ability to make choices about their writing are essential, just as is the imperative that writing is for exploring ideas and feelings. This reminds me of Yagelski’s idea of “writing as a way of being,” or the notion that the act of writing is valuable on its own apart from the text that is produced because it “underscores—indeed, enacts—the deeper relationship between our consciousness and the world around us.” In other words, writing intensifies our awareness of ourselves in a time and place and therefore has the capacity to transform us by simply engaging in the action. This reminds me of a time one of my students said that “writing makes me feel more real.” I knew exactly what she meant, and I’d bet Yagelski would too. Again, take this blog post as an example. I’ve acknowledged that I’m writing this blog post for a specific purpose and audience–so the product is indeed important to me–yet, the act of writing itself has been immeasurably valuable not only for me to bring together my formerly disparate ideas, but also to feel more connected within myself because I’m having to articulate my ideas and beliefs to myself, if that makes sense. Therefore, the writing process is like being because it is a tangible representation of thinking and feeling and adapting, ultimately enabling us to understand our own and others’ minds. All of this leads us to enhanced authenticity and agency, and more fully-realized selves.

But I think what it really comes down to is belonging. Besides being personally relevant, interesting, and potentially life-changing, students want to feel like their writing matters, that it is either contributing to something larger than themselves and/or that it can create the type of world that they dream of. I think John Warner sums it up best:

“We tend to view thinking as a solo activity, emblemized by Rodin’s famous statue of The Thinker hunched over, fist on chin, absorbed in thought. But with writing, at some point, the thinking ends, and we uncurl ourselves and present the product of our thoughts to an audience. This, then, is the act of thinking through writing, taking a turn into communication, a word that also conjures connections to other words like community and communion. Writing starts with a kind of communion between ourselves and our minds and ends when this communion is joined with others as an act of community…In this way, ultimately even this private act [of writing] will impact others in the community.”

So perhaps we could make the argument that the act of writing actually helps us live our lives more meaningfully as individuals and as a community. All of this leads to yet another question (isn’t that the beauty of writing?): what if writing, like other forms of human creativity, can lead us, because of the deep joy it generates, to our most human and real selves? What if the joyful act of writing itself is enough to sustain its existence in the age of AI and beyond?

We can’t let AI get in the way of real writing and real living, and I believe that it starts with reframing our approach to writing as inspired by and capable of producing joy in our lives in and beyond our classrooms.