Wright-Tech is a specialized program that offers various fields, allowing students to participate in high-level learning during the school day. These opportunities can lead to internships and college credits. Buffalo seniors in this program leave at 9:58 and arrive at Wright-Tech within 10 minutes. When students arrive at their Wright-Tech class, they only have an hour of work time remaining. Due to the lack of time given, students often feel rushed and pressured to complete their work. Students from other districts have a little over two hours of work time, over double what Buffalo students have, leaving them frustrated and feeling behind.

Fabian Maldonado ’25, a Delano student studying welding at Wright-Tech, says, “Wright-Tech for Delano gets 2 hours of class to work on projects and takes up our 1st and 2nd-hour classes (6 classes a day). Even though Wright-Tech is taking up two of my classes, I haven’t had any issues with grades or feeling behind this year in [any of] my classes.”

Buffalo’s new schedule caused Wright-Tech students to lose BASE Time. BASE Time is a 30 min period for students to sign up for teachers to get some work done, help with assignments, retake a test, etc., instead of coming before or after school. Losing this time can cause grades to lower, students to have to go out of their way for retakes or extra time, causing extra stress.

“If I still had BASE Time, my grades would be at least a letter grade higher,” said Buffalo student Joshua Froberg ’24. “I wouldn’t have to worry and make plans to come in before school to take a test I missed. Even now, I wish we had BASE Time and more time in Wright-Tech. It still is helping me with my future career in the Marine Corps.”

Interestingly, Buffalo is the only school in Wright-Tech that has received many complaints about the lack of time; like Froberg, it can be a real challenge to boost grades within the limited time frame provided by the school.
“If we had more time in Wright-Tech, I could take my time instead of rushing to get things done,” said Welding Student Colton Borden ‘24. “Compared to the other schools, it feels like a consistent catch-up game, but you never win.”

The main problem for BHS Wright-Tech is the time. Students only get an hour of work time for Wright-Tech, which takes up second hour and BASE Time. This caused Students to feel rushed, stressed, and even a lower grade average. Students hope that BHS doesn’t damage Wright-Tech by lowering class time. “I want to have fun when I’m learning,” Borden said, “Instead, I’m thinking about if I mess this weld up, I’m screwed.”

Both teachers and students have found that using AI for some assignments can be helpful. However, teachers have also found it to be a detriment to teaching.

“[AI] can make some tedious work much more efficient,” CIS World History teacher Tara Rosh said. “For example, today I showed some students how to very quickly create some APA citations [with AI]. The fact that students can definitely use it to cheat and basically not do anything. That’s really concerning to me.”

However, students can also use AI as a positive aid for school work.

“For one of my projects, I had to make a slideshow about a picture book,” Lucas Lawrence ‘25 said. “I didn’t want to do the illustrations myself, but I knew pictures out there of what I wanted just didn’t exist. I was able to utilize an AI-generated image thing, and ask the AI to generate me an image of this. It gave me a great picture that I was able to use in my presentation.”

AI has changed the relationship between teacher and student as well as the way that teachers view assessments and assign work. It has also changed the way that work must be turned in.

“It makes it a less trusting place to be,” said English Teacher and creator of the Writecheck AI feedback generator Ryan McCallum, “and then teachers are starting to spend more time chasing cheaters, which is very much not fun.”

There may be a need for change, but can we change fast enough to keep up?

“I think [progress we make] is probably slower than how fast AI technology [is developing],” said Rosh. “We’re just sort of beginning to have discussions about AI as a staff.”

Students and teachers that use AI have the ability to use it for good.

“People got nervous about [AI] until they realized that it could actually be used for good things,” said Lawrence. “Now I think that if it continues to be used for good things, it can be a great resource for the students and the teachers both.”

Students and teachers found uses that benefit everyone yet there is also a common problem. AI being misused as a form of intelligence.

“Some teachers know kids are cheating,” said McCallum, “and I know some who have said ‘I wasn’t hired to be an AI scanner’. So they’re just gonna roll with it and pretend like everything’s legit because it makes them miserable to spend 12 hours copying text into various AI detectors and analyzing document histories and looking at everybody’s changes and to see if they wrote a whole essay in 10 minutes, or if they actually did the work Or did they put their phone up next to their computer and have their Snapchat AI type it and then they type it so it looks like it was written over time instead of pasted into the document?”

However, others do not agree that cheating is widespread at BHS.

“It’s not widely used by students yet,” said physics teacher Paul Anderson, “because there’s not enough understanding. You need to know what to do in the first place in order to cheat.”

Teachers found misuse of AI is common for students looking for shortcuts. That idea is tiny in scale considering the world as the presence of AI has brought changes benefiting people around the world.

“I think this is equivalent to the printing press or even the internet itself,” said McCallum. “This is a world-changing invention.”

AI is here to stay and will likely have an increasing presence in the future world.

“I definitely think that [AI is] going to do some incredible things,” said Rosh. “There’s talk that it could have the ability to diagnose people and cure diseases – maybe far better than what people are capable of doing. There is also the possibility that it will take over a lot of jobs that we currently have and those jobs will no longer exist. So as a society, we will have to come up with new economic theories as to how to deal with the changes in the workforce it’s going to bring. Just like with the Industrial Revolution, humankind came up with economic theories of capitalism, socialism and communism. There will be new economic theories that you will all have to come up with to deal with the changing workforce under AI.”

Now that students have access to AI on Snapchat, teachers are getting more concerned that kids are using it. Students who didn’t use AI, have been accused of it when they were innocent. 

“The one and only time I wasn’t using [AI], I got accused of it and had a long talk about something I didn’t do,” said an anonymous sophomore.

“Once I got caught talking to my AI and the teacher saw me,” a junior said. “I got a long talk on how I’m cheating my education by using it.” 

Cheating using AI is not only against academic integrity but some believe it defeats the purpose of learning on your own. Society has different opinions on this topic, and some believe it helps students.

“It by far helps. It gives people ideas, and it really helps when you are able to get away with it,” a sophomore added.

Teachers at BHS have struggled with their students lying and cheating. They have developed far different opinions. 

“It’s plagiarism and it’s not beneficial for kids to be getting away with it, they aren’t learning by using this machine and it’s corrupting them,” said a BHS teacher.

AI can be a problem because it can make students think that the AI knows everything and can always be trusted. AI can give biased opinions making the student value the AI’s opinion over their own.

“I think I’m smart enough to not use it but when I am stumped, I ask it a question,” said a junior, “I still don’t know if it’s going to be right or not. [AI] is very inconsistent.” 

Artificial intelligence is not always reliable. Many students and teachers have strong opinions about whether it’s helping or destroying our education.