“He’s just so chill and relatable. You can talk to him about anything,” says Ning, a senior in Mr. Rea’s 7th period A.P. Literature class.
Who is Mr. Rea?
Christopher Rea is an English teacher at Ludlow High School. He has been a teacher for 23 years, and worked at Greenfield High School for 3 years before he came to LHS where he has worked for 20 years. He started off with an education at Tantasqua Regional High School in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. He got his degree at UMASS and went to grad school at Western New England with majors of Education and English.
Even as a child, Mr. Rea wanted to be a teacher, whether it was history, Spanish, or his chosen subject, English. He enjoys teaching at LHS with both senior and freshman classes. His favorite class to teach is AP Literature and Composition. It is his “heart and soul” and allows him “always to be more inventive.” He teaches seniors in this class and “likes to teach seniors who are almost adults in the world.”
In his free time he likes to learn music theory, practice music, recording, and engineering. He even said that if he were not a teacher then he would want to help people through social work or pursue music and recording. In his past, he was the guitarist and singer in a band called Fiesta Brava.
“”His humor and wit is contagious” said Jessica Vautrain, a senior in his class.
He enjoys working with people and helping aid those in need. He spends time with his family and likes to travel to national parks and other places.
He particularly enjoys teaching poetry and dystopian literature, which he often incorporates in class to show how our world connects to the world in those novels.
AI in Class
Mr. Rea uses AI such as Chat GPT in his classroom and outside of school. He enjoys the discussions that come with the topic of AI. Outside of school, he uses AI to quiz him on music theory and to navigate software. He immediately started to incorporate ChatGPT into his classroom when it was developed starting with his seniors last year. He likes to show what it can do when used responsibly and ethically.
He even pays $20 a month for GPT-4 access and the other AI sources that go with it. He uses ChatGPT to seek out new ideas where he can get about 80% of the idea and then tweak it and add things to make it whole. He uses it as a guide to teach things like grammar, with the AI creating models. He has it create a weak model, a middle of the road model, and a strong model to show a range of performance and how writing could look.
With AI, he is able to generate new approaches to lessons.
“Mr. Rea uses AI as a learning tool and teaches us to use it in a safe and beneficial way,” said Olivia LeClaire, a senior who is taking his A.P. Literature class.
Within Mr. Rea’s class, he encourages the use of AI to create ideas for assignments and to help students study. Within his class he incorporated an AI to help his A.P. Literature students study for a test and a quiz on Hamlet. He used SchoolAI by telling it what to question his students on, and the AI then helped answer any questions while also being able to quiz on characters, quotes, and scenes. Through this his students are able to expand their knowledge of the book while also seeing the expanse of AI.
He feels as though the future will incorporate AI as tutors, and that those who don’t use AI and haven’t used AI will be at a disadvantage when the future of AI comes. Though he believes AI is a great tool, he also knows that it can be used inappropriately, especially in school, with students not submitting their own work and failing to put independent thought into an assignment.
“I have Rea’s class 7th period and although it’s the end of the day, it is easily one of my most enjoyable and memorable classes I have ever had,” says senior Rachel Roach.