What Spellcheck Taught Me About AI in Education
I'm old enough to remember when spellcheck felt like cheating.
Teachers worried that students would stop learning to spell. Parents worried their kids would become dependent on a crutch. And students? They used it anyway and kept right on learning to write.
Sound familiar?
The students I work with today are living through something similar, except the technology is exponentially more powerful and the stakes are much higher. The instinct to say "just don't use it" is understandable. It's also not going to work.
Telling Students Not to Use AI Is Like Telling Them Not to Google
Here's the thing about AI in education that most people miss: students aren't encountering AI for the first time when they open ChatGPT. They're already using it. Use Grammarly? That's AI. Learning another language with an app? AI. Searching Google? Increasingly, that's AI too.
When we tell students not to use a technology that is quietly embedded in almost everything they already do, we lose credibility. And when we lose credibility, we lose influence. Students will keep exploring AI — often learning to use it better than their parents and teachers — while the adults in the room debate whether to allow it.
We have to do better than that.
The best teachers didn't ban spellcheck. They figured out how to teach alongside it. That's exactly what we need to do with AI in education — not hand students an open-ended tool and walk away, but build intentional, structured ways for them to engage with it without letting it do their thinking for them.
Why Just Sending Students to ChatGPT Doesn't Work
There's a reason I didn't just tell my struggling students to paste their paragraphs into ChatGPT and ask for feedback. An open-ended LLM is exactly that—open-ended. A student looking for grammar help can end up in a twenty-message conversation that spirals into something else entirely. There's no focus and no guarantee the interaction is actually building any skills.
What struggling students need, especially neurodivergent learners and multilingual students working to strengthen their English writing, is structure and consistency. They need a system that keeps them on task and pushes them to engage rather than outsource.
That's why I built my own paragraph writing tool using AI. It coaches students through their writing using my T.E.D.L. framework. It identifies grammar and punctuation issues, offers examples of correct sentence construction, and highlights what they're doing well. But here's the critical part: it does not give them a corrected version of their work. Students have to interact with it, think through the feedback, and make their own revisions.
The AI is there to support the learning. Not replace it.
Most EdTech Gets This Backwards
Unfortunately, my approach is the exception, not the rule.
Most educational technology puts the technology first and the learning second. Schools and districts get pitched shiny tools that promise transformation, and teachers are left to figure out how to integrate them into an already overcrowded workflow.
The result? More work, not less.
Teachers spend hours learning new platforms that don't meaningfully improve on what they were already doing. Grading and feedback processes get more complicated, not simpler. And students end up with another tool that underdelivers.
What students and educators actually need are simple, consistent systems: tools that assist teachers in the teaching process and genuinely engage students in the learning process. Not the other way around.
AI Isn't the Enemy. Thoughtlessness Is.
I use AI. I built a tool powered by it. I'm not here to tell you that AI in education is a lost cause. I do think we have to be cautious and aware, however.
There's a real difference between AI that helps a student become a better writer and AI that writes for them; there's a real difference between an educator who understands how to guide a student through technology and an flashy ed-tech tool that can't tell when a student is struggling, scared, or just having a bad day.
The students I work with—neurodivergent learners, multilingual students (or ESL learners), high schoolers and adults with persistent English reading and writing learning gaps—can’t rely on technology alone. They need better technology and to be guided by people who actually know them.
If you believe your student could benefit from my help, I offer free consultations and won't suggest services you don't need.
Ted Conway is a Houston English tutor specializing in students with learning gaps, neurodivergent learners, and multilingual students. Book a free consultation to talk about your student's needs.
