A 16-year-old Girl Scout is fighting against AI, one story at a time.
Willow Grosskopf, a rising senior at The Wheatley School, spent her summer teaching elementary schoolers how to write stories at the East Williston Library because she wants to be sure AI doesn’t make them forget how.
“Addressing the growth of AI is really important because it’s taking away the necessity of using your own imagination and writing things authentically,” Grosskopf said. “I think it’s a really important issue that’s so prominent in our world right now and needs to continually be addressed.”
Grosskopf designed the three-week, six-session course for 7- to 9-year-olds for her Girl Scout troop’s Gold Award project, which asks Scouts to complete an act of service that supports their local community and has a larger, global link.
“Being a Girl Scout is really centered around community service. This is kind of the culmination of all the community service skills we’ve learned throughout Girl Scouts,” Grosskopf said. “The Gold Award is optional, but it is something that I really felt compelled to do because it had to address an issue that relates not just to your community, but also to a much broader scale. “I was like, wow, ‘I want to reach a larger problem.’”
To Grosskopf, an advanced English student with a passion for writing, there aren’t many problems larger than the increased use of artificial intelligence to produce writing, schoolwork and essays.
“English is my whole life. I love writing stories. I was like, how can I incorporate this into something service-related?” Grosskopf said. “Then I was having a conversation with one of my friends, and she was telling me about how she used AI on her homework. And I was like, how are you using AI instead of writing it yourself? That’s unfathomable to me.”
“I thought this is such a problem because with the prevalence of AI, we’re losing that aspect of creativity and authenticity in our writing because it’s not human generated as much anymore,” Grosskopf continued. “I was thinking, if this is such a big issue with my generation, what about the next generation of kids who are growing up with this completely interwoven in their life?”
“I was really concerned at that moment. Kids are going to grow up not ever having to write stories and do the writing that I love to do on my own because they simply don’t have to,” Grosskopf said. “I felt like I needed to get to them before AI does.”
Grosskopf developed a comprehensive course with detailed lesson plans, all focused on getting the kids excited about writing and developing their creativity while having fun.
“I was up many late nights trying to think of what lessons would be interesting, which I think was the most important part of developing the lessons,” she said. “I thought if I want to really reach them and make them passionate about writing so they don’t feel the need to turn to AI, they have to be interested.”
Her lessons always included some type of action, visuals and collaboration. Some queries asked kids to look at nature photography and come up with words and stories about what they saw. Others asked them to pull a random word out of two different bags and integrate them into a group story. During another lesson she played a set of 10 sounds and asked her students to come up with stories based on what they heard.
Grosskopf said she saw marked improvement in her students over the course of the lessons.
“Before the class started, I had them all take a survey with their parents and talk about what their biggest struggle when writing stories was,” Grosskopf said. “Many said coming up with an idea or sticking with the idea. By the end, the kids that said their biggest struggle was coming up with an idea were the ones who were helping other students. There was a lot of pretty clear improvement there.”
When asked if she thought she did reach them before AI, Grosskopf said yes.
“I definitely think I reached them because they were so passionate about their writing by the end of the class,” she said, adding that kids who were previously hesitant to write were excited to read their stories in front of the class and their parents by the end. “I feel like seeing them have that passion showed me that they would continue writing instead of turning to an outside source.”
Grosskopf developed the project in collaboration with her fifth-grade teacher, Jessica Liakonis, and East Williston Library Director Jamie Cutinella, who both called her project incredible.
“The kids seem to really love and enjoy it. They were very into it, and they looked like they were learning,” Cutinella said. “It was one of the best Girl Scout projects I’d seen.”
She said she would look to find volunteers to continue teaching the course in future years if Grosskopf moves.
Liakonis, who attended one of Grosskopf’s courses, said the lessons had a real impact on the kids’ ability to learn reading and writing skills, particularly creative ones, which can sometimes be lost in today’s school lessons.
“Writing is not something many kids enjoy. I feel like nowadays, with all the structured writing and the test writing…when you ask kids to create a story creatively and use their imagination, it’s very hard for some of them because they’re not used to that,” Liakonis said. “I thought it was great because it encouraged kids to write creatively.”
They have also had a real impact on Grosskopf. She said she’s discovered a love of teaching kids and is now considering pursuing a career in education, something she never considered before.
“I’ve always liked volunteering with kids, but I’ve never had an experience where I’ve really taught kids. It was just such a wonderful experience, seeing kids actually excited to learn by the end, raising their hands and wanting to actually contribute,” Grosskopf said. “It was so rewarding. Finding a love of teaching and also giving back to kids was just such a great reward from this. It’s definitely something that I’ll keep with me.”
She said she plans to teach the class again at the East Williston Library next summer or over winter breaks.
But Grosskopf isn’t stopping in East Williston. She plans to bring her story writing course across the island, country and maybe even the world. She has plans to reach out to libraries across Nassau and has already reached out to libraries in East Hampton and New Orleans, offering them her lesson kit that can be recreated and distributed to anyone looking to teach the class.
“Words are so powerful and are one of the most important ways to connect with people,” Grosskopf said. “I just urge everybody to not stand by and be complacent with the takeover of AI when it comes to authentic writing. Whether that’s putting down your phone and saying ‘I’m gonna do this myself,’ or it’s volunteering to run a program like this, I just really encourage everyone to do something.”
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