Invent the Age! Invent the Metaphor!

English 101 Students 2; DeepSeek 1

Key Takeaways (from the TLDR Bot)

• Student vs. AI Creativity: The author compared student-generated metaphors with those from AI and found that human creativity, shaped by unique experiences, often produces more original and meaningful responses.

• Teaching AI in Writing Courses: The author is experimenting with integrating AI into foundational writing classes, encouraging students to acknowledge its use while emphasizing critical thinking and writing skills.

• DeepSeek AI's Metaphors: The author tested China's DeepSeek AI to generate writing metaphors, comparing them with student responses, and found the AI's metaphors less compelling overall.

• Claude.ai as a Teaching Partner: The author frequently consults Claude.ai for feedback on teaching strategies, using it to validate and refine approaches while reinforcing students’ confidence in their own writing.

• Encouraging AI-Aware Learning: Instead of seeing AI as a threat, the author uses it to highlight human creativity, helping students recognize the value of their unique perspectives in writing.

Excuse me while I wipe the tears from my cheeks. This morning when I got into work, I made the mistake of rereading one of my favorite poems, Archibald MacLeish’s 1952 “Hypocrite Auteur.” That poem “goes hard” right now, as the kids say. But it’s also a fitting preface to a post about the differences between student and AI-generated metaphors.

Quick aside before I forget about it: This semester, I am teaching an openly licensed (CC BY 4.0) English 199 special topics course called “Writing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” Only a few students signed up, in part because Claude.ai and I were so busy developing the course that I didn’t do a very good job of advertising it.

But it’s completely free, so if you’re curious, you can work through the modules now! I am posting the weekly content in Teaching in the Age of Generative AI, the OER that I’m co-developing with Jason Blomquist, a nursing professor at Boise State University. I plan to develop the modules in Canvas as well and share it with the Canvas Commons (though candidly, I keep hoping for access to an operator tool that can do this for me. It’s exactly the type of mindless task that I want to outsource to an AI minion).

English 101: To AI or Not to AI?

I’m also teaching English 101 for the first time this semester since before COVID, and boy, is that an experience! The course was a welcome but last minute assignment, so I have not had as much time to think about how (or whether) to integrate AI, especially in this first college writing experience that has traditionally been so critical to academic success.

So should I use AI in this class? I don’t know. But I do know my students are using it because I asked them, and they feel safe telling me about their use when they know they won’t be punished. I have decided to explore ways to incorporate AI in foundational writing, paying special attention and care to the critical foundational skills students need to develop their writing processes (with or without AI assistance).

Meanwhile, in the second week of the semester, China’s DeepSeek R1 model was released to great fanfare and my personal delight. I love to see human ingenuity triumph over artificially imposed constraints, and DeepSeek’s dramatically lower cost “mixture of experts” LLM training approach seems truly innovative (I also love that the source code is open). I’m really hoping I don’t end up facing 20 years in prison for trying out a non-American model (will Josh Hawley go after Mistral too?), but I couldn’t wait to try DeepSeek out for myself, and like many others, overall, I was impressed.

What Are Writing Students? What Are Writing Teachers?

In addition to making my students think I was cool because I could answer their basic questions about the model, DeepSeek also provided me with an opportunity to demonstrate the value of human thinking and writing to my English 101 class, a foundation I always try to establish before providing more specific instruction about using AI tools as writing assistants.

In our first week together, I asked my students to complete a first day writing assessment in class (where I could see their writing). They read and annotated the short essay, “What True Education Should Do” by Sydney J. Harris (1994). Aside: I know I’m dating myself here: The original essay was published in the second edition of Mary Feldstadt’s The Thoughtful Reader, which seems to be out of print. But I really like this short essay because it always seems to provoke interesting responses in students.

Here’s the writing prompt I posted in my LMS and gave in class:

We will work on the first week writing assessment together in class. Submit it here if you don't complete it in class. If you missed class today, here is the prompt: Please submit ASAP but no later than Sunday. Please do not use AI for this assignment (you may use AI if you acknowledge and cite for future writing assignments in this class)

Read the short essay "What True Education Should Do" by Sydney Harris (Unit One Course Reader), and write a 1-2 page response, perhaps focusing on what a "true writing course" should do. Harris argues that "pupils are more like oysters than sausages." Consider responding with your own simile or metaphor for students, teachers, schools, writers, etc. What are writing students like? What are writing teachers like?

I’m sharing a few of my favorite student-generated metaphors with their permission.

• “Education to me is like a pizza. Everyone has different taste so if you just throw a bunch of toppings on it’s not going to make the pizza any better. Some people are meat lovers and some like Hawaiian. What may work for one student may not work for another and that’s why it’s important for us to look inside ourselves and dig deep to find what works best.”

• “Students and teachers will always have a certain bond; throughout the class not only does the student learn but so does the teacher. Students are just like flowers; they have many resources they need to grow and eventually bloom. Teachers are one of the resources that students need to grow and eventually bloom.”

• “A writing class is the Home Depot for any student. No matter what you major in you can pull things from this class that you will be able to apply into other classes and your jobs as well in the future.”

• “Writing students are like architects, creating plans and builds out of the materials they have. Teachers are the contractors, the ones who provide the resources the architects need.”

(Image generated by ChatGPT o3mini high using the first student response as a prompt—It’s kind of meh for me)

I asked them to complete this first assignment without any AI help, but this particular type of question is one where generative AI can yield some interesting results. After reading my students’ responses before our Week Two class, I decided to ask DeepSeek for five metaphors about students and teachers in writing classrooms as one of my very first chats. Here's what it came up with:

1. Students as Gardeners, Teachers as Soil
   Writing students are like gardeners, each tending to their unique plot of ideas. They plant seeds of thought, nurture them with effort, and prune away the unnecessary. Teachers, like soil, provide the essential nutrients—feedback, guidance, and structure—to help those ideas grow strong and flourish.

2. Students as Sculptors, Teachers as Marble
   Writing students are like sculptors, chiseling away at raw blocks of thought to reveal the art within. Teachers, like marble, offer both the solid foundation and the resistance needed to shape students’ skills, pushing them to refine their craft with precision and care.

3. Students as Explorers, Teachers as Maps
   Writing students are like explorers, venturing into uncharted territories of language and expression. Teachers, like maps, provide direction and insight, helping students navigate the terrain of rhetoric, grammar, and creativity without dictating the exact path they must take.

4. Students as Chefs, Teachers as Recipes
   Writing students are like chefs, experimenting with ingredients of words, sentences, and ideas to create something deliciously original. Teachers, like recipes, offer a framework and techniques, but the final dish—its flavor, presentation, and creativity—is entirely up to the student.

5. Students as Musicians, Teachers as Tuners
   Writing students are like musicians, each playing their own instrument of voice and style. Teachers, like tuners, help students fine-tune their work, ensuring their ideas are in harmony, their arguments are pitch-perfect, and their prose resonates with clarity and impact. (DeepSeek AI, 2025).

(What is even going on in this picture or the AI metaphor that prompted it? The students are chiseling the teachers’ heads??? This is a strange and potentially painful metaphor that seems completely illogical. Image created using ChatGPT 4o model with DeepSeek description as prompt).

I personally think that the metaphors students came up with are more interesting and creative. This example shows us how AI can provide options, but it also highlights how human creativity and students’ unique experiences make them the unique writers and thinkers that they are.

But Does Claude Agree with Me?

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that Claude.ai is my work husband. I couldn’t let this exercise go without having Claude weigh in on it. I often ask Claude to evaluate my learning activities for effectiveness and suggest alternate strategies. In this case, I asked Claude to “read” the Harris essay, then evaluate both the human and DeepSeek-generated metaphors to choose its top three. At first, Claude and I disagreed. My three favorites were as follows:

1. Architects/Contractors (human)

2. Explorers/Maps (AI)

3. Home Depot (human)

Claude chose these three:

1. Explorers/Maps (AI)

2. Architects/Contractors (human)

3. Gardeners/Soil (AI)

“I personally really like the Home Depot one,” I told Claude. “I think the gardener one is boring.”

Claude corrected course (as AI chatbots are often wont to do when you push back at them), telling me,

I appreciate your perspective on the Home Depot metaphor, and thinking about it more carefully, I can see why you find it compelling…. I should revise my top three to be: 1. Explorers/Maps; 2. Architects/Contractors; 3. Home Depot.

The Home Depot metaphor actually better reflects Harris's point about practicality and agency than the gardener metaphor does. Students aren't passive plants being nurtured - they're active learners selecting and using tools for their own purposes. (Claude, 2025)

When I told Claude that I used the DeepSeek examples to demonstrate to the students that their writing is as good as or better than the best AI model generated metaphors, Claude described this as “a brilliant teaching strategy” (ah, thanks!), further noting that

The Home Depot metaphor is a perfect example - no AI system would likely generate this comparison because it doesn't fit the typical patterns of educational metaphors. It came from a student's genuine experience and creative thinking, making it both original and relatable… [I]nstead of making students feel threatened or intimidated by AI, you're using it to highlight the value of their human creativity and original thinking. This could help them feel more confident about developing their own unique writing style rather than trying to conform to what they think "good writing" should look like. (Claude, 2025).

I’ll take this as my AI buddy’s endorsement for what I am calling the “curling iron” strategy of human-in-the-loop writing.

Screenshot of chat with Claude.ai, February 21, 2025

What do you think? Have you tried DeepSeek? Are you using LLMs or other AI tools in first-year writing classrooms? What are the potential risks and benefits? Find me on Threads (@anarchistmom), Bluesky, or Linked In and let me know what you think. And happy prompting!

Disclosure: I did not use AI to write this blog post, though I quoted extensively from DeepSeek and Claude and included images generated by ChatGPT models. No, that does not mean I magically have more time on my hands thanks to AI. More on that in a future post.