Impromptu: Amplifying Our Humanity Through AI Ms. Shields’ biography could have been written as a celebration of public education. She herself attended only public schools, where she developed her love of English and decided to spend her life teaching it. She became the first in her family to finish high school, then college, and then she got a Masters in English. Decades later, she still teaches English at a public high school. In January, for the first time in her career, Ms. Shields submit- ted a column to Education Week, which published it around the same time NYC schools were moving to ban ChatGPT. She argued that teachers were up to the task of using the new tool: Rather than blocking and banning this new technol- ogy, teachers should work with its astonishing ability to improve student writing. AI has the potential to greatly assist students in the essay-writing process. It can help generate ideas, provide feedback on writing style, and even provide templates or outlines. About a week after that quote was published, the New York Times called Ms. Shields between classes for a phone interview. They asked how hard it was for her to start using ChatGPT, and she answered, “I learned about it on a Friday and I was using it by Monday.” The Times asked Ms. Shields directly about fears of plagiarism. She responded that rather than doing their work for them, ChatGPT would require students to work differently. She used the example of a specific class project regarding the “I Have a Dream” speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The students had to work hard, both collaboratively and with her, in order to get ChatGPT to produce anything useful on the subject. Ms. Shields expected her students to use ChatGPT not to reduce 30