When Students Interview Jay Gatsby
Source: Mike Kentz Substack
Author: Mike Kentz
Original source: https://mikekentz.substack.com/p/when-students-interview-jay-gatsby
Private backup: the full article text is archived in the private repository at archives/articles/mikekentz-substack-com-when-students-interview-jay-gatsby.source.md. It is not published on the public Quartz site.
Summary
Mike Kentz describes a five-day high school English lesson sequence in which students interview a Jay Gatsby character chatbot to deepen literary character analysis. The assignment redesign responds to the unreliability of traditional take-home literary essays in the AI era by shifting assessment toward preparation, live questioning, transcript annotation, and metacognitive reflection. Students treat the chatbot not as a tutor but as an interview subject whose evasions, contradictions, and limitations become evidence for literary analysis and AI literacy. The article frames this as an “AI interactions as tests” model: AI becomes a text or interlocutor through which student understanding can be made visible.
Big ideas
- AI simulations need clear boundaries for learning
- Voice AI may make learning support easier to access
- Students need to check AI answers against real evidence
Claims
- Take-home essays are no longer reliable evidence by themselves
- AI conversations can become assessments when students have to think visibly
Key evidence and examples
- Students spend two days preparing open-ended questions about Gatsby’s motivations, contradictions, and unresolved ambiguities.
- The live interview asks students to sustain a 10–14 turn exchange with the character chatbot.
- Students annotate transcripts for deflection, contradiction, limitation, and interpretive failure.
- Assessment includes question preparation, interview transcript, transcript annotation, and reflective essay.
Education relevance
Very high relevance for English/literature instruction, authentic assessment, AI literacy, chatbot-based pedagogy, and alternatives to traditional take-home essays.