Article
Brian Tash
7 min
Jul 16, 2025
Introduction
As a fourth-grade teacher, balancing lesson planning, classroom management, and grading is an ongoing challenge – particularly when striving to provide personalized feedback to every student. In a classroom in Southern California of 23 diverse learners with unique needs, delivering individualized feedback, especially in writing, often felt overwhelming and unattainable. Despite spending countless hours grading outside of school, I frequently questioned whether I was making the meaningful impact I envisioned on my students’ growth and confidence.
Determined to address this challenge without compromising the quality of feedback, I sought a solution that could streamline the process while enhancing my students’ learning experience. That’s when I discovered EnlightenAI. Within weeks, it became an invaluable part of my teaching toolkit, enabling me to deliver detailed, targeted feedback efficiently. EnlightenAI allowed me to shift my focus from endless hours of grading to engaging more directly with my students, providing them with timely and meaningful insights to foster their growth.
Methodology: Training the AI to align with my classroom needs
Integrating EnlightenAI into my workflow wasn't just about using the tool – it was about ensuring it aligned with my specific grading style and classroom goals. To achieve this, I approached the AI as a collaborator that needed guidance. For instance, I uploaded examples of high-quality student writing to train the AI on how to apply my grading rubric consistently. These examples provided clear benchmarks for what strong performance in areas like grammar, evidence use, and organization looked like in the context of my assignments.
Throughout the process, I also adjusted the AI’s feedback to ensure it was both accurate and aligned with my instructional goals. After generating initial feedback, I reviewed the AI’s suggestions, fine-tuning them as needed to address nuances such as tone, voice, and creativity – areas where human insight remains indispensable. For example, if the AI highlighted grammatical errors but overlooked the student’s creative approach to storytelling, I modified the feedback to acknowledge and encourage their originality.
By maintaining this level of control, I could strike a balance: leveraging the AI for efficiency while ensuring that the feedback remained personalized and reflective of my teaching philosophy. This not only enhanced the quality of feedback but also reassured me – and my students – that the tool was a supportive extension of my teaching, not a replacement for it.
Findings
After incorporating EnlightenAI into my grading routine, several key outcomes emerged. Over the course of three writing assignments, I observed significant improvements in student writing skills, particularly in areas like grammar, evidence use, and organizational structure. Students demonstrated a clear upward trajectory in their ability to integrate feedback and refine their work based on the insights provided by the AI tool.
I also experienced a notable reduction in the time spent on grading. What once took hours of manual effort now took about half the time, allowing me to engage more meaningfully with my students and devote more time to their individual needs.
Rubric scores: On average, students showed a 20% improvement in writing quality across grammar and organization after receiving AI-generated feedback for two consecutive assignments.
Survey responses: 85% of students reported feeling more confident in their writing abilities, citing the regular, targeted feedback as a key motivator for their improvement.
Pre- and Post-samples: In analyzing student writing before and after AI feedback, I found significant improvements. For example, one student’s narrative writing initially lacked clarity and logical flow. After receiving AI feedback, their next submission exhibited clearer organization, stronger argumentation, and improved sentence structure.
One student, initially struggling with the concept of providing evidence to support their ideas, received specific guidance through EnlightenAI feedback about how to strengthen their arguments. By the third assignment, the student had successfully incorporated relevant evidence, demonstrating an enhanced ability to substantiate their claims.
Another student, who often had difficulty with grammar, particularly sentence fluency, showed improvement over time. By the third writing sample, this student’s sentences flowed more naturally, and their grammatical errors decreased by approximately 30%.
Across all assignments, students consistently improved in grammar and sentence fluency, areas where AI feedback provided clear, actionable suggestions. However, organization remained a challenge for many students, indicating that while AI feedback was effective for addressing surface-level issues, students still required more guidance in structuring their ideas logically.
Over the course of a month, I also noticed a shift in my own practices. Not only was I able to stay on top of grading, but I also observed that the more consistent and timely feedback my students received led to quicker progress. The AI feedback acted as a scaffold that allowed students to independently apply suggestions, leading to continuous improvement in their writing.
While EnlightenAI was an invaluable tool in managing my grading workload, there were limitations. For one, since this implementation occurred over a relatively short timeframe, the findings primarily represent early trends rather than long-term changes. Additionally, while the AI feedback was helpful, I still found it necessary to review and sometimes adjust the feedback to address nuanced student needs, particularly when it came to more subjective elements like creativity or voice in writing. Nonetheless, the time saved on grading allowed me to better balance these adjustments with other teaching responsibilities.
Conclusion
Using EnlightenAI has been a transformative experience in my teaching journey. It challenged me to rethink how I approach grading and feedback, showing me that with the right tools, it’s possible to strike a better balance between efficiency and meaningful engagement. By reducing the time spent on grading, I could focus more on fostering relationships with my students and tailoring instruction to their individual needs. Seeing their confidence grow as they received timely, actionable feedback was deeply rewarding.
For my students, the impact was equally profound. They no longer saw feedback as a one-sided critique but as a dialogue that empowered them to improve. The progression in their writing, coupled with their growing confidence, reaffirmed that timely, constructive feedback is a powerful motivator for learning.
This experience underscores the potential of AI in education – not as a replacement for teachers but as a tool to enhance and extend our capabilities. By leveraging AI, educators can save time, provide high-quality feedback, and create space for deeper student engagement. My case study serves as a reminder that even in traditionally hands-on practices like grading, technology can help us achieve greater personalization and efficiency.
For other educators, the message is clear: integrating AI doesn’t require perfection or a complete overhaul of your methods. Small, thoughtful implementations can lead to meaningful improvements in both teacher workload and student outcomes. As AI continues to evolve, it’s exciting to think about the possibilities for supporting not just grading, but also differentiated instruction, collaborative learning, and real-time intervention.
Ultimately, my experience with EnlightenAI has inspired me to keep exploring innovative ways to enhance my teaching while keeping students at the center of the learning process. By embracing these tools, we can redefine what’s possible in the classroom and set our students up for success in an increasingly tech-driven world.
