Sometimes it feels as if AI arriving has sucked all the joy out of being a teacher.

Hi, that sounds terrible! Without knowing anything about you or your context, first let me tell you that you are not alone. The presence of GenAI is a challenge many teachers struggle with, and it has caused many to question their own role as a teacher now that it seems that knowledge is even more readily available than before and students might feel that they can get personalised instruction from GenAI 24/7.

I recently read a study by Paxton et al. (2026) on writing instruction — probably the subject that is affected the most by the presence of GenAI — which I think it is relevant far beyond, where they ask what the presence of GenAI does to teacher emotions.

They motivate their study by writing “[t]he emotional well-being of frontline educators has far-reaching consequences, not only for faculty job satisfaction and retention but also for student success (Madigan and Kim, 2021)" (a study in which they find “preliminary evidence that teacher burnout can affect the students they teach"!). Teachers do emotional labour to regulate and care for emotions — their own as well as their students’. Paxton et al. (2026) interviewed eight writing teachers and find

• teachers emotional responses to GenAI are curiosity, but also anxiety over how writing skills will be valued in the future, and a sense of moral injury (because their jobs as teachers were made so much more difficult, but also because students would now never learn the same skills as before, and also not experience the joy that comes from being a skillful writer, especially in a second language).
• teachers respond to students’ potential use of GenAI by increased emotional and cognitive labour, and more time working with assessment, especially when GenAI use is suspected.
• teachers perceive a lack of institutional guidance on how to deal with GenAI and suspected misuse.
• teachers feel less professional accomplishment compared to “before AI”.

From their findings, Paxton et al. (2026) develop recommendations that — of course — include that universities need to provide clearer guidance for how to deal with GenAI and with suspected cheating, but also to “expand the range of supports offered to faculty in the wake of GenAI, specifically addressing the emotional and interpersonal pedagogical effects of the technology. Whereas workshop sessions on integrating GenAI tools into teaching and assignment design proliferate, guidance on addressing issues of trust-building in the [teacher student relationship] would constitute valuable additions” and relatedly, to offer more opportunities to talk about their experiences: “formal support for communities of practice in which instructors can share their experiences with each other for mutual support and acquire guidance from experts". And at least in my context at LU, we are working on all of this!

There is maybe not so much you can do about how much support you receive from your university (but sometimes even contacting people whose job it is to support you, for example in educational development units, can change the support you get -- both because you are then in direct contact with them, and also because they can use your request to document the demand and lobby for it higher up, which might ultimately give them more resources to support you and others), but the last recommendation about the communities of practice is something that you can somewhat drive yourself. We recently wrote an article (Glessmer et al., 2026) where we present four grassroot initiatives that teachers had created to talk about teaching in different contexts, and there we share how we interpret design principles for such communties and the success factors and difficulties we identified. Maybe you can initiate a community to talk with colleagues and support each other?

Last not least, maybe feeling like teaching is not fun any more is also an opportunity to seek out conversations with students. It is probably not the best approach to tell them that you feel that there is no joy left, but rather to ask them how they feel about the presence of GenAI. Maybe once you create some connections and realise that both you and your students do actually want to talk with, and learn from, actual humans, things will start to feel better? It won't make GenAI go away completely, nor all the challenges that its presence brings to teaching, but it might bring back at least some of the joy in learning and teaching, both for you and your students!

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Glessmer, M. S., Daae, K., Thoni, T., Lundmark, A. M., Dunnett, K., and Herde, H. (2026). Creating grassroots communities of practice to discuss teaching. Oceanography 39(3), https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2026.e300.

Madigan, D. J., & Kim, L. E. (2021). Does teacher burnout affect students? A systematic review of its association with academic achievement and student-reported outcomes. International journal of educational research, 105, 101714.

Paxton, A., Kang, P., & Yim, A. (2026). The Affective Impact of Generative Artificial Intelligence on Instructors of First-Year Writing Courses. Teaching and Learning Inquiry, 14, 1-17.

Is it just GenAI, or was that the last straw? It's always worth remembering that even though we can't always change things that are happening to us, we can change the ways we respond to them. Many years ago, I used to start workshops with a really cheesy activity: close your eyes and try to remember why you liked teaching in the first place. It was a private activity, so I didn't ask people what they thought about (potentially just their shopping lists or their dislike of cheesy workshop activities) but I liked to imagine they were thinking about how they liked young people, how they enjoyed talking about their subjects, how varied the job can be, or the challenges of solving problems. Then we used to talk about the gaps between then and whatever new thing I was probably inflicting on them (in that case, a huge curriculum reorganisation which everyone was very cross about). The point about the activity was to try to restart discussion from the point of view of someone who enjoys their role and has yet to discover the special challenges which come with working in a very large and very complex organisation.

One thing I am sure about is that grumpy and joyless teachers have a negative effect on students, although it is very hard, both ethically and practically, to collect reliable data on this. In research, we usually look at the opposite situation, and ask students what makes teachers effective and approachable, and being open and friendly is very important (Glessmer et al, 2025, Felten and Lambert, 2020, which both have many references to other related work). So it's important to get the joy back. So maybe my activity was cheesy, but I encourage you to try it now. What is it you like about your role? And then, what specifically is GenAI doing to suck the joy from it? Then, what agency do you have to get your joy back?

For instance:

I love seeing my contribution to students' development and academic success vs I hate that some of them hand in work which is generated by an AI product .

What can you do here? As Mirjam says, the first step is to talk to students. Let them know that AI slop or even good AI output is not what you want to see. You want to see their work, however wrong or badly constructed or off-topic it is. Try our Lund University guidance for students or this fun tool which you can use to create student guidance to suit your own preferences about GenAI use. But also, take a step back and look at your examination/assessment process. What incentivises students to use GenAI?

• Did they forget a human would be grading it? - Tell them how much you want to see what they can do. Use peer review and feedback on drafts or sections to encourage human engagement with the tasks and the drafts.
• Are they desperate to get a good grade? - Use your time to give them feedback at a draft stage and don't bother with feedback on the final submission, unless it is a fail.
• Are they uninterested in the topic of the task, or do they miss the connection between this task and what they should be learning? Think about how you can make assessment more authentic - which can mean making it relevant, meaningful, and using higher order skills. (Powell and Forsyth, 2024). Talk to them about what they will learn from this task, and how it can be used in future parts of the course and in their future lives. Show your own huge enthusiasm for the topic (even if some acting is required).

This challenge is qualitatively no different from others we've faced as teachers in the past. In my professional lifetime, the internet was going to destroy higher education. Open online courses were going to destroy higher education. The pandemic threatened to destroy our whole approach, gave us huge teaching challenges and definitely had an impact on our confidence and morale, but we got through it and campuses are busy again. League tables, impact factors, increasing student numbers have all contributed to the pressures, but we've learned to adapt to different external factors.

Students come to us for knowledge, inspiration, structure, and human contact. Don't let the GenAI products steal those things from all of us! We are the ones who are responsible for the fun and joy in teaching, and we can get them back.

Felten, P., & Lambert, L. M. (2020). Relationship-rich education: How human connections drive success in college. JHU Press.

Glessmer, M. S., Persson, P., & Forsyth, R. (2025). Engineering students trust teachers who ask, listen, and respond. International Journal for Academic Development, 30(1), 106–119. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2024.2438224

Powell, S., & Forsyth, R. (2024). Generative AI and the implications for authentic assessment. In S. Beckingham, J. Lawrence, S. Powell, & P. Hartley (Eds.), Using Generative AI Effectively in Higher Education: Sustainable and Ethical Practices for Learning, Teaching and Assessment (pp. 97–105). Routledge. Contact me directly if you would like a copy of this chapter.