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In this episode, Priten speaks with Noelia Pozo, a high school Spanish and French teacher with nearly two decades of experience who now heads the Foreign Language and Classical Department at her school. Noelia shares how she transformed her classroom by using AI openly alongside students rather than policing it. The conversation covers how she handles AI-generated work through relationship-building rather than detection tools, why she collects phones in a "Telephone Hotel," how exploring AI bias with students sparked deeper learning than lectures, and her frustration with colleagues who refuse to adapt while hypocritically using AI themselves. She argues that the question isn't whether to engage with these tools, but how to do so while preserving human connection, critical thinking, and genuine learning.
Key Takeaways:
- Show students language is already in their lives. From "in lieu of" to Chipotle menus—they're already speaking foreign languages without realizing it. Recognition breeds respect.
- AI can't replace human connection. You can't build trust through a machine. Professional relationships require authentic communication, not a technological relay.
- Create honesty, not surveillance. Use AI openly alongside students and ask only for transparency. When trust flows both ways, students voluntarily admit mistakes—and learn from them.
- Teach students to verify AI output. AI isn't infallible. Once you put something in your paper, you own it—right or wrong.
- Explore AI bias together. "Nobody looks like me" in AI images sparked deeper conversations about bias and better prompting than any lecture could.
- Adapt or be replaced. Teachers won't lose jobs to AI—but they may lose them to teachers who use AI well.
Creators and Guests
Host
Guest
NP
Guest
Noelia Pozo
What is Margin of Thought with Priten?
Margin of Thought is a podcast about the questions we don’t always make time for but should.
Hosted by Priten Soundar-Shah, the show features wide-ranging conversations with educators, civic leaders, technologists, academics, and students.
Each season centers on a key tension in modern life that affects how we raise and educate our children.
Learn more about Priten and his upcoming book, Ethical Ed Tech: How Educators Can Lead on AI & K-12 at priten.org and ethicaledtech.org.
[00:00:05] Priten: Welcome to Margin of Thought, where we make space for the questions that matter. I'm your host, Priten, and together we'll explore questions that help us preserve what matters while navigating what's coming. Today I'm speaking with Noelia Pozo, who has taught high school Spanish and French for nearly two decades and now heads the foreign language and classical department at her school. Noelia's perspective is particularly valuable because foreign language classrooms are on the front lines of the AI revolution. Translation tools are everywhere. Students can generate seemingly perfect essays in seconds. And the fundamental question—why learn a language when AI can translate—is impossible to avoid. But rather than fighting the technology, Noelia has done something else. She's created a classroom culture of honesty and experimentation where students openly discuss their AI use, explore its biases together, and learn to see technology as a tool for human connection.
[00:01:05] Let's hear from her. Noelia Pozo: My name's Noelia Pozo. I've been teaching high school Spanish and French for 18 years, going on 19. I am the head of our Foreign Language and Classical Department. I'm also co-director of our new Global Scholars Program, which we started last year in our school. Lately I'm taking the reins myself and trying to bring more AI literacy into our school, trying to set up better guidelines and be more preventative of different issues—any issues with parents and students down the line. So I'm trying to be more proactive and prepared than surprised and caught off guard. Priten Shah: Very cool. I want to dive right into the foreign language component of this, because I think that's a unique perspective and one I want to talk about.
[00:02:01] I'd love for you to tell me what your classroom has looked like and what has changed in the last almost two decades that you've been teaching, especially in the last few years in a foreign language classroom. Noelia Pozo: The technology has definitely shifted. I started with a blackboard and writing things up and just seeing the shift as simple technologies like PowerPoint or Google Slides came into the mix. Then using YouTube to educate and seeing how apps developed and using them with the kids, making it more of a game than drudgery, because language is not for everybody. You try to find different things that can make it interesting and have kids respect it, even if they never love it as much as I do. And now with AI being integrated into certain apps or platforms to help tutor students, I've used it personally in my classroom and one-on-one with students, showing them how to prompt correctly, not just using it as a Google search. Seeing how kids are perceiving it now—they still don't have a great love for it. They're still trying to find the easy way out, but I'm finding that with certain AI tools, kids are using it more to help them study and prepare than trying to get the quick answer and move on. Even though they do still show signs of using it that way, especially with certain homework assignments, it's made me rethink how I give assignments so they're not just typing something in and submitting it right away. It's been quite an evolution in almost 20 years—just going from pen and paper, using textbooks and online textbooks, to all these other platforms and apps that can reinforce what's being done in the classroom.
[00:04:13] Priten Shah: Yeah. I'm fascinated to hear more about getting students to respect and put in the effort to learn a foreign language. You're clearly figuring out how to effectively use it for pedagogical purposes, and I think that's the direction we should all move the narrative. But a large part of people's concerns are about getting students to actually care enough to not use it for shortcuts. That takes respect for the discipline, right? They need to buy into the idea that learning the language is important. So I'm curious—how do you communicate that to your students? Noelia Pozo: Well, showing them that importance is about showing them the world around them. What do you hear? What do you eat? I point out to them, "You guys already speak Spanish. You just don't realize you're speaking Spanish because certain words within the English language are part of that." Or even French—when I say to them, "In lieu of you guys doing this," I remember one kid asked me what "in lieu" means. I said, "Think about it. Put your French accent into it." It was like "In lieu." And they were like, "Wait, we use that all the time." I said, "It's used all the time in English. It's a French term." So showing them—you use it; you just don't realize it. That's number one. And then with the food they eat—even though I don't think Chipotle is real Mexican food, I point out the different titles there. So they're more respectful, like, "Okay, it does surround us; it is around us." I try to help them see that you can use a foreign language in any field of study. If I'm going into business, then if you're able to communicate in a foreign language, you'll establish a certain rapport and relationship because you can communicate and understand your client's or future client's language. Thus showing respect for a culture, because language is involved with culture as well.
[00:06:09] You even have some of my native speakers or heritage speakers who challenge me like, "That's not how you say it." I'm like, "Well, that's one way of saying it." And it becomes a nice conversation. Sometimes I do let my students take me on tangents, but those are the ones I love the best because you can see the light bulb going off. They want to hear this; they want to understand this because they see it all the time but never ask the question. And now AI has brought up the conversation. Some kids will ask, "What does that word mean?" and we go into that conversation of, "Well, that's probably a very old Spanish word. It's probably favoring Spanish from Spain." Or we've seen it in French where it goes into old French, and then they ask, "But why is it always giving that response?" That goes into the bias of even language, even in English. They'll see it and ask, "Who uses that?" So why are you going to put it there if you're not going to use it? They start to understand that language is not just something perfect or pure, and they start to see how this can help them down the line. You still have the few who say, "No, I'll never use it," but they come back to me and say, "I wish I listened to you." So even years later, even though they didn't value it then, I'm glad they value it in their future.
[00:07:03] Priten Shah: Yeah. Those tangents are the best parts of classroom moments. I don't think AI and robots will ever replace teachers because those tangents are only something us humans will entertain. Tell me about having these conversations with your students five years ago versus this fall, and you think about how powerful the technology has gotten, where we could put headphones in and foreign languages could be translated to us and vice versa. How do we navigate those conversations with students when they tell you, "AI can do all the translating for me—why should I still learn x, y, z language for business or whatever?" Noelia Pozo: Yeah, one of my kids did actually ask that. I said, "Okay, so you're letting a robot do your work for you. You're not setting up a relationship. There's no human connection because you're letting something else do it for you. So the other human on the other end is thinking, 'Okay, so I have to talk to a machine. I can't really talk to you. How do I know if I'm going to trust you? How do I know what you're really thinking?' You can't relay your emotion or try to read me because you're putting everything in a language I don't understand and then I'm getting that relay from a machine."
[00:09:01] Making the kids understand—at the end of the day, you have all this great technology, but ultimately you have to create human connections, right? Whether personal or professional, that human connection is probably the most important thing. Which is why it also breaks my heart to see how the smartphone, as great as it is, is also a breaking factor in those human connections because clearly kids today are addicted. I'm the teacher who collects their phones. I have a phone hotel and I say, "Put it in the hotel; it needs to sleep." And they hate it, but you can see the signs of addiction—the moment the bell rings and they switch to another class, they're running to get their phone. They could forget their notebook, but they won't forget their phone. Things like that. Technology, as a very great and helpful tool, requires caution in that it is breaking certain human connections. Especially for kids today, when they start to go into the workforce, if they can't socialize or network well, it's going to hurt them down the line. Unfortunately, they're relying on texting to have conversations when not everything can be done through a text.
[00:10:00] Priten Shah: I think the value of these conversations with students is helping them see that it's not always just about whether a machine can do something. It's about what doing it by a machine means for your relationship with other humans. I think foreign language is a great place to have this conversation because it's one of the easiest places to use AI to do the work, but also one of the most valuable places you get benefit from doing it yourself. I think it's a great discussion point. I'm glad your students are having that experience talking it through, because I think that's creating those light bulb moments you're talking about.
[00:11:00] Noelia Pozo: Trust me, I hope so too, because at the end of the day, it's human nature. We want the easy way out. I mean, we were all kids who tried to cheat because we didn't study properly or were being lazy about it. I have to have these conversations with them where if I ask them a simple reflection question—"Write this for me in French. What did you do today?"—they don't want to sit there and write very simple five sentences. They'll go into the bot. I ask, "But why are you using that?" They say, "I'm trying to get it to help me." I'm like, "It's doing it for you. I need you to write it first before you use it. The cognitive offloading is ridiculous. They don't even want to think. You can't ask AI to reflect on something, on your feelings. So why are we going there?" They'll say, "I don't want to sound dumb." I'm like, "But it's a reflection. It's okay. You're not going to sound dumb. You're giving your ideas; you're expressing yourself." That's the other part—they're losing this great way of trying to express themselves. We were taught to express yourself, share your thoughts, share your feelings—do you like it or not? And it's hindering them from being able to express themselves and create their own thoughts or opinions. Even how they look at social media, I ask, "Okay, but did you do a deeper dive? Is that real or just someone's opinion posted as fact?" You can't just take everything you see as truth anymore. We have to do deeper dives; we have to research. But they're stuck on whatever TikTok is saying and call it a day. I've asked them, "Where did you hear that from?" They say, "I heard it on Snapchat." I'm like, "Okay, can I get a more meaningful source for what you're saying, because Snapchat is not my go-to for a good resource?"
[00:13:01] Priten Shah: Yeah. What's striking to me is how many digital literacy conversations you're having in your classroom. You're helping them navigate healthy AI usage, fake news and credibility, healthy habits with technology in general. For a lot of folks, that feels overwhelming—the amount of coaching we have to do for students to understand what role technology plays. For some educators, that feels overwhelming and not part of their curriculum. You're teaching a language; there's so much else to cover in a class period. The fact that you're finding ways to integrate those conversations is inspiring. Is this natural for you? What helped motivate you to integrate so much of that conversation instead of just saying, "We're going to lock your phones up," and then not even talk about them?
[00:14:02] Noelia Pozo: Part of it is just the kids' own questioning. I had to do a placement exam recently for incoming freshmen. A kid randomly asked me, "Do you guys really collect the phones? Are you going to do that because the new law passed?" At least he knows there's a law that was passed. But it doesn't affect us because we're a private school, so we don't have to collect phones if we don't want to. However, it's asked of us as teachers, so fine. I said, "If you have me, I will be collecting your phone." He asks, "But why? I don't understand." I'm like, "Trust me, 40 minutes, you'll survive. You won't die." He keeps giving me arguments: "What if my mom needs to get ahold of me?" I'm like, "Pretty sure if it's an emergency, she would call the school or you. She should know you're in school and in class." He's trying to find every excuse. But letting them know—you'll survive if you don't have that. Generations before you didn't have this. I remember having to read a map to get where I needed to go. I struggled with it, but it was what it was.
[00:15:00] It also comes down to—why am I going to fight them on something they're going to look at anyway? So I think I mentioned this earlier, but it goes into how I started having these conversations with kids—I established a rapport with them. I knew a kid cheated really badly because he never tried in Spanish. He could barely put two words together. When I asked for his final exam—write a paragraph or essay, two paragraphs—he wrote a beautiful essay in perfect Spanish, referring to Chichen and the pyramids. We never talked about any of this. This is fabulous. When I confronted him, I said, "Hey, you know, I should recommend you for AP Spanish." He said, "I don't want to go there." I'm like, "But you wrote such a beautiful essay. Where was this all year?" He said, "You're accusing me of something." I said, "I am, but I want you to prove me wrong. Just answer these questions and we'll call it a day. If you answer them, fine. Then we'll move on, and I'm sorry for ever thinking you cheated." He refused to do it. Then he admitted to it a day later and said he used ChatGPT. In my mind I was thinking, "How the hell did he do that? We're collecting phones." This is where colleagues are sometimes not fair to their other colleagues.
[00:16:06] But instead of getting angry at this kid, I thought, "You know what? Thank you for this, because it started me researching and looking things up. This is in our lives whether we like it or not." So that's what brought me to do research and I said, "You know what? Let me start easing this in. I don't need to reinvent the wheel, but I should start introducing to kids—let's start using this together. Here's what you can do on your own." The kids would ask me, "You're okay with that?" I said, "I'm okay as long as you're honest with me." They were very upfront. Especially for certain project-based things, I said, "You guys can use ChatGPT." That's when I introduced them to Claude as another option. We introduced them to Perplexity to help with research and live sites, and they loved it. I said, "Whatever you do, all I ask is that you tell me the engine you use and give me your work cited pages." They did that. I checked—okay, they're being upfront; they're not hiding behind it. Then kids would ask questions and show me like, "I did this, but it's kind of weird. Can I use this?" They would show me their screens of whether it was ChatGPT, Claude, or Copilot. So all right, they're open about this. They're not hiding. They realize I have an open conversation with them.
[00:18:01] This past year we got even deeper with it because now that we know you can do videos with AI, the kids asked, "Can we use them?" I said, "Yeah, let's use it together. Let's prompt this." We did one class lesson of trying to prep their projects. One kid said, "But nobody looks like me." That's when we got into the conversation of AI bias. It's like, "So you need to prompt it a little better so it understands. The people creating this have to work with certain parameters. Just think about it this way: if I say, 'teacher,' what's the first thing that pops into your head?" A lot of the kids said, "An old woman." I'm like, "Okay, thanks guys. Right?" We even did a baseball player. "What comes to your mind when you think baseball player?" A Hispanic guy, beard, dark skin. I'm like, "Okay, do you want to try this with one of the platforms?" Yeah, let's prompt it. It's going to give us that. It didn't give them that. They were like, "Wow, the guy's still coming out white." This shows you—it's going to lean towards what we ourselves think too sometimes, because that's just how society has built us. But if you want something to look like you, you have to have that conversation with the bot.
[00:19:01] One kid asked me, "Can I give it my picture and just make it age me?" I said, "You could, but keep in mind privacy issues. I wouldn't do that because then your face is out there; anyone can use it. I would be careful when using your own images." The conversations have developed over time. Kids are asking me, "How can I prompt it on my own?" We do what are called "think-alouds." So the last couple of times, I say, "Let's do a prompt together," and I type it up. I ask, "What do you think of what I just wrote?" They say, "Well, can we include this?" I say, "Sure." "And can we include that?" Because we were reviewing for their final and they were getting involved in how to prompt it correctly to try to get their result. That was very helpful, and their questions also helped me make sure they knew if the output was correct. That was another conversation because a couple kids spotted it and said, "I don't think this is right." I asked, "What makes you say that the output's not right?" They said, "Well, you said, and we discussed this." I said, "You're right. That is wrong."
[00:20:01] They say, "So this is wrong?" I'm like, "Well guys, it's not a hundred percent. Remember, this is taking information from the internet. But if it gets mixed up or does all that, understand that the result may not be what you're looking for. So be careful using it for other classes. Whatever it gives you, read through it, look through it, see if the information is correct. Once you put it in a paper or answer, once you use it for anything you're saying, you're taking responsibility for that information. If it's wrong, you can get in trouble. But it's led to nice conversations. The kids are like, 'Wow, this is interesting.' Oddly enough, the kids I've dealt with are very apprehensive about using it for different reasons. The ones who aren't afraid to use it are clearly just using it for the wrong reasons. But it's nice to see those two spectrums because you can make the kid who's not scared to use it a little aware of what he's doing and should take some caution. And the kid who's too cautionary—it's okay; I like that you have that caution. That's going to help you use this for good, not for bad."
[00:22:03] Priten Shah: Yeah. There are so many good moments you just mentioned in terms of building digital literacy for students, which is very valuable. But I'm sure your peers are benefiting from how you're talking about it and helping them see the big picture so it carries forward, not just in your class.
[00:23:00] Noelia Pozo: Right. For my colleagues, that's a different story. Some are great about it. They're very open-minded. They're willing to try; they're intimidated by it. I can only talk for my department because I've coached them. I said, "Look, you don't have to use the bigger platforms. You don't need to use Notebook if you don't want to." Even though I like Notebook because it creates a podcast for them, I used it for one lesson. It's like, "Okay guys, just listen to that," and they came back and some were able to relay what I was going to go over. I'm like, "Okay, this is a good tool for them to hear a lesson beforehand before I go into it." But I say you don't have to use all these big platforms—Notebook, Claude, or ChatGPT. So I introduced them to School AI and Commonigo, which isn't the best for foreign language I found. I said, "Why don't you guys just use one of these platforms with the kids so you get used to prompting? So you get used to this." They're not my favorite platforms, but if you're talking about people who are cautionary or beginners, those are good tools for them to get started, and they liked doing it with the kids. Seeing the real time work they were doing was helpful. I said, "Okay, so start there." Other teachers, not so much. They don't want it. They're like, "They're just going to use it as a crutch."
[00:24:02] I'm like, "But you're forcing them to use it as a crutch." I have one colleague who, we all sat down in a meeting and he was very adamant about it. It's almost like he wants to catch these kids. I'm like, "You're already ruining your relationship with your students. You're already distrusting them because you think they're using it, but you have no proof. Then they don't trust you because you're jumping on them, relying because you already think they're using it." There's that issue. I remember someone saying to him, "Well, maybe you want to rethink how you do your assignments." And you could see it was like asking him to give up his firstborn child. He's like, "Well, according to TurnItIn for the plagiarism component—but I know there's the AI detector now. And he said, "Well, according to the website, it picks it up at least 20% and it's never wrong," or something like that.
[00:25:01] I showed him something and said, "AI detectors don't work, and TurnItIn is the worst one. Look at this data." And he just didn't care. He said, "The website says it." This is going to be a lawsuit waiting to happen because all you need is a well-informed parent, and then he comes and attacks him. In my mind, I'm thinking, "You are the teacher who refuses to change. Yes, teachers won't get replaced by AI, but you will get replaced by the teacher who is using AI. If you're adamant about not using it." And I think he does use it for his own uses, and that's where I'm thinking, "Don't be a hypocrite. If you're using it, they should be using it." That's how I approached it. I told my seniors this year, "Guys, I'm going to be using AI to help grade your papers. I made that full disclosure with them because I just wanted to see for myself. Even then, seeing how it graded, I wasn't a hundred percent in agreement with the grading. Majority of the students said, "I don't agree with how this graded it." Some of them passed when I'm thinking, "No, this was badly written; this is wrong information."
[00:26:00] I'm like, "I would give them a lower grade." So even for me—one kid was like, "Oh, because you just don't want to take this time." I said, "No, I'm going to read it." And I even showed them. I pulled them up individually and said, "Here's what AI said I should give you. What did I give you?" He was like, "You passed me." I said, "Yeah, because I don't agree with what you wrote." I showed him, and I'm like, "But I do agree with what AI said. I gave him a slightly higher grade." We went through it and he admitted to me, "I used AI. I thought I would get a higher grade." He actually admitted that he had the paper written by it. I'm like, "Okay, thank you for your honesty. I'll give you another shot. But you have to come here and hand-write that paper now." He hated the whole experience. But it was a nice moment. They realized, "Okay, I got honest. She gave me a chance." Them seeing like, "Okay, if she's using it, she's giving us the opportunity to use it. Everybody is open about it." Other teachers not so much. That's one thing that bothers me about that whole situation. And there are colleagues who love it. They use it with the kids. The kids use it; they're using it themselves. So it's kind of like a 50-50 thing.
[00:27:01] Priten Shah: Yeah. Wow. You've given me a lot to think about, so I really appreciate it. Noelia Pozo: Alright. Priten Shah: Thank you so much. Noelia Pozo: You. All right. Take care. Priten Shah: You too. Bye-bye. I appreciated that conversation with Noelia. What stands out in Noelia's approach is her refusal to operate from a position of distrust by opening up conversations about AI use and using those tools alongside her students. She's created a classroom where honesty is possible. She believes that the question isn't whether to engage with these tools, but how to do so in a way that preserves what matters most—human connection, critical thinking, and genuine learning. Stay with us as we continue exploring these questions, and for more on how to preserve what matters, pre-order my book Ethical EdTech at ethicaledtech.org.
[00:28:08] Priten: Thanks for listening to Margin of Thought. If this episode gave you something to think about, subscribe, rate, and review us. Also, share it with someone who might be asking similar questions. You can find the show notes, transcripts, and my newsletter at priten.org. Until next time, keep making space for the questions that matter.