At a recent gathering of university and college faculty I attended, the driving question was how are we planning to re-tool our assignments so that students cannot use A.I. to cheat.

It’s understandable why this is on the minds of so many faculty. Cheating has never been easier. I have watched university students in our campus coffee shop cut and paste assignments from Canvas onto Chat GPT and then copy the answers into their Canvas pages.

The problem with focusing our teaching on overcoming the impulse to cheat is that it affects the way we think about our students, and about ourselves.

If we focus on students cheating, that causes us to think about our students first and foremost as potential cheaters. So we think about ourselves as people whose job it is to prevent this cheating. All our students become potential criminals, and we become the police.

That’s not why I got into teaching.

My own approach is closer to what Parker Palmer writes about in his classic The Courage To Teach. His thesis is that good teaching focuses on the character of the teacher rather than on the teacher’s technique. Technique has its place, but if we put technique (or technology) first, then the technique and its technology will become the center of our attention. Students will fade into the background.

Both students and faculty are harmed by this. We find ourselves in hallway conversations about students looking for an easy A, complaining about students who don’t read well, gnashing our teeth at the software that has received so much attention.

I wish that that faculty retreat had instead focused on character. What kind of people are we teachers trying to become? How are we modeling good learning for our students? How are we growing, and what are we inviting students to learn from our example?

Rather than focusing on the students as potential violators of the rules, what if we were to focus on them as people who are here to learn, people who are growing and who need some guidance? What do we have to offer that they need, and how can we offer it in a way that is helpful?

There is an old tradition in many religions and mythologies of the divine showing up in modest human form. A baby in manger, a divinity who is a charioteer for a prince, a god who shows up in humble dress to mentor a young person who has lost their way. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes that we should not give up showing hospitality to strangers, “for some of you in so doing have entertained angels unawares.”

Every great person in history was once a child. Every scientist, pastor, ambulance driver, firefighter, farmer, doctor, caregiver—everyone who has done good for others—was once a child. And someone taught that child. Quite possibly, some teacher saw in that child more potential than the teachers themselves had.

What a gift to be that teacher! To be in the presence of someone who is becoming something great, and to have the opportunity to play a small role in their growth.

To my fellow teachers, then, I ask you to consider this: of which of our students can we confidently say that there is no potential for them to someday be great? On the contrary, which of them might someday be revealed to be a helper, a healer, an angel in disguise? Which of them might someday be regarded as a saint?

As my semester begins, I will let that frame my teaching. What a joy to spend time with these people in whom great things might be stirring! They are not potential scoundrels; they are potential saints. And my job is to do the little things I can to nurture that, and to see the saintly things grow in their lives.