Teachers are reaching their breaking point in the ChatGPT classroom

Teachers have a lot to get off their chests. Helping a classroom full of students learn to read, write, and work on their own is already a big job. Add chatbots that can do the homework — or create the lesson it’s based on — and there’s even more to work through.

Some are taking those frustrations to TikTok and Reddit, and finding plenty of people to commiserate with. Self-described teachers share accounts of students who need help getting through a sentence, or who hand in assignments they can’t explain. Some teachers for advice, others just need to vent.

In the replies, fellow educators recognize their own school days, while parents weigh in with concerns about their children’s education. The discussions can get heated, but some of the posts drawing attention are more personal — teachers admitting how hard their jobs have become.

In a TikTok posted a week ago, first-grade teacher Carol Fernandez broke down in tears as she talks about her students' struggles — along with her own.

"Clearly theyre not studying at home. Theyre failing." She gave an example of an exam, stating that only 1 student passed out of 34, and also telling a story about how they can't write words correctly, even when copying them from a board.

"It's exhausting," she says. "Its almost scary. And then you start questioning yourself, thinking, is it me?"

Teachers and parents in the comments tell her she isn’t alone, sharing their own concerns about students and their children falling behind.

"It's not you. These kids are DIFFERENT nowadays," wrote one commenter. "I had to quit. I ended up in an in-patient unit in September due to poor mental health. 30 beds...5 of us were teachers. This is nuts," wrote another. One commenter had her own theory: "It's the iPads. Now they have shorter attention spans so it's harder to teach them and it's harder for them to learn."

The frustration in those comments shows up in the research, too. In a Pew Research Center report published in 2024, 77 percent of U.S. public K–12 teachers said their jobs were frequently stressful, and 68 percent said they were frequently overwhelming. Most said they couldn’t get everything done during regular work hours. And students are having a hard time, too: On the 2024 Nation’s Report Card, 40 percent of fourth graders scored below the test’s Basic level in reading, with average scores falling from 2022.

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Then there’s the challenge of getting students to focus long enough to learn. In a federal survey, about a quarter of public school leaders said student inattention severely hurt learning at their schools. The same share said it severely hurt staff morale. Many also share that commenter’s concerns about screens: In Feb. 2025, 73 percent said cellphone use had negatively affected students' attention spans. Apparently, "eyes on the board" has become a pretty big ask.

Over on Reddit’s r/Teachers, users express the same exhaustion — and can sound considerably angrier. In a thread titled "I do not know how to teach kids this low," a user identifying themselves as a high school teacher writes: "They do not know how to write words and I have to stand over them and give them each letter. This is HIGH SCHOOL."

In one viral screenshot titled "My 8th graders are absolutely helpless," the user writes, "Independent work doesn't exist anymore because if I'm not right by their side holding their hand then nothing will get done," adding, "Maybe this isn't the right career for me." Another poster directs their anger at districts allowing students to advance without catching up: "Why are you okay with these students not getting appropriate help?" they ask. "I'm horrified at how our districts baby these parents."

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Now add in a chatbot that can fill in the answers before class even starts, and teaching becomes harder than ever. In another r/Teachers thread, "Student 'finishing' the activities in seconds," a user describes a student who repeatedly announced she was finished with textbook exercises almost immediately. The giveaway came when she claimed to have completed an activity requiring a video the teacher hadn’t played yet. Asked to put her answers on the board, the student struggled. "Half of them were completely wrong, and the other half were barely intelligible," the poster writes. As another user added, "That's what you get for trusting ChatGPT."

In the replies, users debated extra assignments, consequences, and moving more work into the classroom. One suggested having students watch recorded lessons at home and complete assignments in class, using pencil and paper, saying it's best if "students don't see the assignment until they get to class." Another questioned why suspected cheating should create yet another task for the teacher: "Oh, so the student who cheats through everything gets to have their teacher create more work for them to cheat through?" "The kid needs a detention and a call home lol," she adds.

Using a chatbot for schoolwork doesn’t automatically mean cheating. But teachers are navigating a classroom where those tools are already common: A Pew Research Center report published in February found that 54 percent of U.S. teens had used chatbots for help with schoolwork, and one in 10 said they did all or most of their schoolwork with chatbot assistance. For teachers already worried about students working independently, a completed assignment doesn't even give any sense of comfort.

Of course, students aren’t the only people hoping AI can make the school day more manageable. As Mashable reported in July 2025, the American Federation of Teachers announced an AI training academy backed by Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. That means teachers are being encouraged to embrace AI to ease their workloads, even as figuring out how students use it adds more to their plates.

Even figuring out whether a student used AI can become a project of its own. In a 2025 essay for Mashable, college writing professor Jonathan D. Fitzgerald discussed tools including GPTZero, ZeroGPT, and TurnItIn, describing how AI detectors could give conflicting verdicts on the same text. "How can a teacher approach a student with an accusation of AI plagiarism without concrete evidence, or really any way to get that evidence?" he wrote.

Interestingly, as per the Reddit threads, some students have questions about the teacher’s work, too. In another post, a student reportedly recognizes a teacher’s assignment formatting because it resembles the study guides they make with ChatGPT and reported it to the co-teacher. "It’s literally the meme of two AIs just communicating with each other," the poster writes.

Separate images circulating as alleged examples of classroom handouts show counting hands with six digits apiece, a fraction diagram with more sections than its label calls for, and a population map containing garbled place names.

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Some school systems are putting limits on how far this AI experiment can go. On Sept. 2, New York City announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI from pre-K through eighth grade, with exceptions including assistive uses. The policy allows limited, supervised high school pilots and lets teachers continue using approved tools for planning and operational tasks.

"There are a lot of holes in the policy, if we are being honest," Liat Olenick, AIM Coalition and Climate Families NYC organizer, told Mashable. "But Kindergartners will not be talking to chatbots this fall, and that is huge progress. We made that change this year."

As we move into the next phase of AI in schools, more policies like this will be needed. As generative AI becomes part of everyday life, the goal should be to make the most of what it has to offer while making sure neither students nor teachers take shortcuts that leave students unprepared for what comes after graduation. How well schools strike that balance is something teachers — and the rest of us — will be watching.