I Tried AI for a Week as a Teacher. Here Is My Honest Review.

# I Tried AI for a Week as a Teacher. Here Is My Honest Review. I teach high school English. I have 140 students, 5 classes, and approximately 3 hours of planning and grading for every hour I spend in the classroom. I was drowning. So when a colleague mentioned AI tools for teachers, I decided to give it a real test. One week. Every tool I could find. Honest results. ## What I Tested **Lesson Planning:** I asked Claude to generate a week of lesson plans for a unit on persuasive writing, aligned to my state standards. It produced a solid framework in 10 minutes that would have taken me 2 hours. I customized it for my students. Total time: 30 minutes. **Differentiated Materials:** I asked ChatGPT to create three versions of a reading passage at different Lexile levels. It worked. My struggling readers got accessible text. My advanced readers got challenged. I did not have to create three separate materials from scratch. **Grading Rubrics:** I described an assignment and asked AI to generate a detailed rubric. The first version was 90% usable. I refined it in 5 minutes. **Parent Emails:** I described a difficult parent situation and asked for help drafting a professional, empathetic email. The result was better than what I would have written under stress. ## What Did Not Work Anything requiring knowledge of my specific students. AI does not know that Marcus needs extra encouragement or that the third period class needs more structure. That knowledge stays with me. ## The Honest Verdict AI saved me approximately 5 hours that week. That is time I spent with my family instead of grading at midnight. For that alone, it was worth it.