English teachers gathered for a symposium to discuss the rapid evolution of writing and reading instruction, both in high school and college.
High school English teachers and college writing professors are grappling with the same challenges: students who would rather ask ChatGPT than wrestle with an idea, and the big, uncomfortable question of what writing even means anymore. Despite sharing those concerns, the two groups rarely get to compare notes. Heather Lindenman, associate professor of English and director of 黑料不打烊’s First-Year Writing Program, wanted to change that.
On April 16, Lindenman brought both sides of that conversation into the same room. The High School-College English Teaching Symposium, held in 黑料不打烊’s Numen Lumen Pavilion, gathered university faculty, 黑料不打烊 students and three North Carolina high school English teachers for a panel discussion and dinner. Rather than guessing what students experienced before arriving at 黑料不打烊, faculty could hear it directly from the teachers at the symposium.
The three panelists included Keith Gerdes of East Chapel Hill High School, Zo毛 Rein 鈥23 of Eastern Alamance High School and Adam Cluff of Durham Academy. Each works in a different context, across public and private schools and varied communities, but all three have felt the same pressure to reimagine reading and writing instruction as generative AI reshapes what students expect from the classroom.
That tension sat at the center of the panel discussion. What stood out was not a polished set of solutions, but the honesty with which teachers admitted they are still working it out. Rein, an 黑料不打烊 alumna who teaches in the Alamance-Burlington School System, said she has yet to find an approach to AI that feels just right.
鈥淚 haven’t quite figured out how to integrate it into a classroom that makes me feel less like we’re just taking a shortcut out of doing the work of thinking for ourselves,鈥 she said.
Cluff concurred.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not asking the computer science department to teach computer science through ‘Hamlet’,鈥 Cluff said. 鈥淥ur job is to help kids learn how to think.鈥
He explained students鈥 鈥渃raving鈥 for meaningful literature and the deep discussions they raise.
It was that kind of honesty that made the evening worthwhile. The symposium was not designed to produce a policy or a list of approved AI tools. It was designed to create space for a harder conversation about how to keep learning genuinely human when shortcuts are easier than ever to take.
Panelists described the practical strategies they have each leaned on, such as conducting more writing in class, building shorter assignments into longer sequences, and enforcing phone restrictions to protect time for focused thinking. They described their classrooms as something of a holdout against distraction, a place where students are still asked to sit with a difficult idea until they have something real to say about it.
Gerdes shared his strategy of requiring students to have small-group conversations.
鈥淪tudents who hadn鈥檛 done the reading got left out鈥攁nd students didn鈥檛 want to feel left out,鈥 Gerdes said. 鈥淭he more we can be ‘humans, being and talking with each other,’ the more engagement I see.鈥
For 黑料不打烊’s first-year writing faculty, the discussion offered something the program had been missing. ENG 1100 has already moved to strengthen critical reading and restore analog assignments that require sustained thinking, while developing AI literacy. But shaping a curriculum around students’ prior experiences is difficult when those experiences are largely unknown. The panel provided a clearer picture.
Following the panel, attendees gathered in the McBride Gathering Space for dinner, where the conversation continued. The connections made that evening extend beyond a single event, opening ongoing dialogue between university faculty and secondary educators across North Carolina as both groups continue adapting to a rapidly changing landscape.
鈥淎t the heart of this is asking how the practices of writing and close reading help us better understand ourselves and the world,鈥 Lindenman said. 鈥淎s high school and college teachers, we are trying to do the same thing.鈥
The challenges facing writing instruction are not going away. But events like this show that educators at every level are more willing to face them together than to figure it out alone.