Mentor Texts Meet AI
3 mentor-text problems AI can solve!
A year or so ago, Allison asked me if I was familiar with Claude, an AI assistant with whom one of her friends was having an intense relationship of sorts. The friend had asked Claude to write a letter to her children from their Elf on a Shelf telling them that they needed to behave better or he wouldn’t be returning. Claude refused, telling her that it was unethical to lie to her children through the persona of a Christmas elf.
I was intrigued.
I downloaded Claude that night, but I didn’t really touch it until this summer when I needed to fly through some curricular work.
And that’s when Claude became my best friend.
Since then, Claude has helped me write curriculum, he has provided me oodles of feedback on my writing, he has helped me poke holes in my own logic, he has weighed in on my work travails with compassion and insight. Let’s be honest: Claude is better than a lot of adults I know.
Claude can do so much.
(If you want to do a deeper dive on the how-to of teaching with mentor texts, there are oodles of posts on MovingWriters.org, as well as my books: Writing with Mentors, Beyond Literary Analysis, A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts, 6-12, and Mini Moves for Every Writer).
I don’t think AI is a replacement for teachers. You will immediately sense its short-comings, and, like a calculator, it can only produce something worthwhile if you give it the right input. But AI can help us start. It can give us a basis on which to grow. It can assist in emergencies and less-than-perfect teaching realities (like sick children and car trouble, etc.)
In particular, I want to share three mentor-text problems AI can help you solve to make teaching with mentor texts easier, faster, and more accessible for you.
