(and aren’t) losing to AI

The chatbot is out of the bag. Where do students and teachers go from here?

by Teagan Nam

At this point, there’s no need to explain ChatGPT. Throughout Northwood, MCPS, and the entire world of education, students and teachers alike are now all too familiar with the notorious AI program. ChatGPT has been lauded by programmers as an incredible feat of AI technology; its ability — and that of many other similar systems — to generate writing would have been unimaginable even a year ago. But now, it’s a stark reality for students, educators, and writers of all stripes. As with countless other advances in technology over the past few years, ChatGPT has now risen as one of the highest hurdles

— or most useful shortcuts — for those in the education system.

But even with its impressive reputation and undeniable skill, ChatGPT still lacks some significant elements of human writing: typos, original ideas, and most importantly, a sense of spirit and human experience. Over the past few months, some teachers have become confident they can catch out students cheating on assignments using the program. Others admit they’re completely in the dark.

We decided to put these teachers — confident and skeptical alike — to the test, with examples of real student and AI writing. By taking an AP Lit prompt about the concept of exile in Frankenstein and plugging it into ChatGPT, with no changes or further elaboration, the program was able to generate a surprisingly coherent, if predictable, essay. We presented teachers with both this AI-generated essay and a student’s real essay for the same prompt. Their responses, and theories, were surprisingly varied.

“I’m pretty confident,” says Mr. Jonathan Brammer (he/him), an AP Language teacher at NHS. “I would say that the second one is pretty obviously not student writing, based on my experience … [but] nothing is 100% certain.”

Other educators, like Ms. Joyanna Priest (she/her), a composition assistant, See AI, Page 8

Do yesterday, or due yesterday

Editorial: do students receive too much work?

by Avi Berzofsky

Imagine for a second that you wake up one morning and feel sick. Your temperature gets taken and it turns out you have a fever, so you spend the day in bed. You email all your teachers, letting them know you’ll be absent, and they all respond by telling you to ‘feel better, you don’t need to worry about classwork.’ The next day you feel amazing, and you decide to go to school. As soon as the teachers see you’re back, you are greeted with a chorus of, “Glad you’re feeling better! By the way, here is all the work you have that is due tomorrow.”

The struggle is real, and it applies to lots of students at Northwood.

Every day, work piles up for students who are absent from a class. This contributes to the “academic butterfly effect.”

For example, if a student misses learning the Quadratic Formula in math, then the assignments they missed become a set of hieroglyphics. It’s understandable that the teachers are looking out for their students who are absent due to illness, but this can pose a challenge as teachers also need to put in grades and move with the rest of the class onto the next set of instructional material. When students have multiple absences, the pile of work can grow exponentially.

Regardless, teachers’ email well wishes for good health can get lost in the sudden onset of work when we return. This can make students feel like they’re being mistreated, all because of an excused absence. Even if they have an excused absence, there is more pressure on students than being assigned a lot of work in class. Many students have done nothing wrong in the above scenario; they reached out to their teachers, asking them if there was anything they could do to stay in the rhythm of things, and the teachers said not to worry about it.

I asked people at Northwood – students, teachers, and staff – this controversial question: should students receive large amounts of work, all because they missed a day of school?

First, let’s start with the students. In a survey, 38.9% of students said they are not See WORKLOAD, Page 5

At the end of the day, Northwood students struggle with University Boulevard

SIDEWALKS from Page 1 in traffic as an opportunity to cross.

“I cross whenever I can,” said senior Muhammadou Coker. “One person can stand and take up the entire sidewalk.”

The narrow space encourages jaywalking, actively putting pedestrians and drivers in danger of collision.

In the summer, the sidewalk and as- phalt alike are hot and oppressive, with the intersection often entirely devoid of shade. In the winter — especially during ice storms like the one Maryland experienced in early 2022 — plows and runoff from neighborhoods cause ice to pile up along the sides of University Boulevard, creating a foot-and-a-half thick layer of packed ice and snow that is almost impossible for pedestrians to navigate safely.

“I’ve had to walk on the grass because the sidewalks are so slippery, and I don’t want to fall into the road,” noted senior Cyrus Hamilton-Rohe.

Sidewalks, when maintained improperly, have clearly become a hazard.

“I should not be living in fear of cyclists crashing into me,” Hamilton-Rohe continued. “We either need more sidewalks or bike lanes. . . actually, we need both.”

With Northwood’s building renovation on the horizon, it is important to prioritize not only improvements to the interior functionality of our school, but also the mechanics of everyday arrival and departure.

Northwood, as a site and a community, is part of a larger municipal network and neighborhood. MCPS and Montgomery County must create a space for safe and orderly operation, including interaction with the outside world. Our school is not a fortress, disconnected from the rest of the neighborhood, and its students are not invincible.

Red and Black Northwood High School 919 University Blvd W Silver Spring, MD 20901 (240) 740-6950

Editorial Staff

Avi Berzofsky

Megan Leatherwood

Aidan Lewis

Teagan Nam

Ash Newton

Madison Riggs

Zach Welch

Staff Writers

Tolulope Adegoke

Ariana Amaya

Athena Arriaza

Andrew Blakey

Charlotte Cazahuatl

Alex Edwards

Luc Girardot

Malisha Gunawardena

Emily Gonzalez Reyes

Daniel Gray

Kenneth Gray

Angie Jurado

Łeah Le Breton

Omer Omer

Alexandra Palencia Pineda

Shyla Rincon

Graham Summers

Liam Surrusco

Kim Thai

Caroline Touhey

Derek Ventura-Ly

Luis Zelaya Barrera

Business Managers

Zach Welch

Special Contributors

Shannon Ryan

Emmett Vandenbroek

Faculty Advisor

Ryan Acosta-Fox

A Word From The Editors

As summer nears, a deeper dive into Red and Black journalism

The fourth quarter of the year is too often a kind of afterthought.

Much of the major academic work of the school-year is completed and we stare down an onslaught of standardized testing. In this environment, it can be difficult for us to pause and reflect on the experience of living and learning in spring and summer.

In this edition, you will find words and images that allow Red and Black staff to consider the present moment — and showcase the results.

Our mission remains steadfast: we cover school and community, and we want you to feel that representation through and through.

Northwood Theatre’s “Chicago” enjoyed by all

After we returned from winter break, all eyes were set on Northwood Theatre’s next challenge: “Chicago.”

The show certainly lived up to the hype, with four dazzling performances loved by audiences of students, teachers, and community members alike.

Perhaps sophomore Emmett Vandenbroek said it best: “The show was really well done. . . It was the first musical I had ever watched and I was really blown away.”

Here, we showcase the visual impact of the show.