Issuu

Menlo School, Atherton, California

Volume 52 Number 6

May 1, 2026

serving Menlo’s Upper School since 1973

ChatJayPT: Jay Bush Adopts a Specialized AI Model by ASHER BECK

Over the course of the summer before the 2025-26 school year, English teacher Jay Bush, alongside computer science teacher Nandhini Namasivayam, applied for a school grant to develop a specialized AI companion for Bush’s English class. Upon the school administration’s approval of the funding, Namasivayam and Bush received compensation for the additional work that it would take to develop the tool, enabling them to use examples of essay feedback from Bush’s classes to create a bot that mimicked Bush’s behavior. Enter: ChatJPT. According to Bush, the platform is helpful in identifying editing opportunities for students, largely through questions that probe for more complex arguments. “The bot isn’t really to help at the brainstorming stage; it’s meant to be a revision tool,” Bush said. Namasivayam explained her collaboration with Bush. “The idea came up about a year ago, and then we worked on it over the summer,” she said. “We proposed the idea to the school, of working together to create a bot, probably around this time last year, when sophomores are working on essays.” In order to train the model,

Namasivayam explained the scope of materials that were used for the bot. “[We] fed it a lot of the information and data that Mr. Bush had about his English classes; his essays and his feedback,” she said. “We molded the tool into a mini replica of Mr. Bush’s feedback.” Although ChatJPT has been in development for several months, it was only very recently that it was first applied in the classroom. During the essay project for “The Great Gatsby”, Bush’s sophomore students were able to experiment with the platform, comparing the feedback given to past assignments from Bush himself to that of his AI clone. ChatJPT was purposefully coded not to generate entire essays for students. Instead, it annotates existing drafts to provide feedback on unclear sentences or underdeveloped ideas. According to sophomore Neal Goel, ChatJPT is trained to respond with very specific types of input. “ChatJPT [...] can reword sentences or clarify punctuation, changing some phrasing for different paragraphs,” Goel said. Sophomore Owen Bowie expressed just how similar ChatJPT was to Bush himself. “The analysis style that it was recommending to me was very similar to what Mr. Bush recommends, really going deep on the glowing words and analyzing that.”

Goel also noted some flaws with the current model. For one, feedback can vary drastically in length, resulting in occasionally uneven edits. “It would either give a huge response, a whole list of things to improve that would span a couple of pages, or it would hone in on one very specific thing,” Goel said. According to Bush, the current model struggles with concision, so reducing feedback length and making revision suggestions more manageable for students to parse through is what he and Namasivayam will be working on for future updates. Even though the model isn’t perfect, Bush believes it is still important to dedicate time toward improving ChatJPT so it can function as another medium for his students to hear suggestions. According to Bush, the primary reason for spending so much time training and iterating upon ChatJPT was to increase the timeliness of feedback. Oftentimes, English teachers spend weeks writing comments for students’ assignments. Bush explained that this often results in students forgetting about their essay, and as a result, struggling to implement the feedback as well as they might have had the project been fresher in their mind.

ChatJayPT, pg. 4

Staff illustration: Eilir Bjorlin

Menlo Welcomes New Athletic Director by SHAAN PARIKH

After 14 years leading athletics at the American School of London, Menlo’s new Athletic Director, John Farmer, is leaving behind the troubles of crosscontinent tournaments for the familiarity of the Bay Area. For Farmer, the move is a personal decision as much as a business one. With his parents and two of his three sisters living in the Bay Area, relocating here with his family had always been an option. When the job opportunity at

What’s Inside?

Menlo opened, everything fell into place. “All those things kind of came together at the same time,” Farmer said. Menlo’s emphasis on athletics to build character quickly stood out to Farmer. “I was immediately drawn to the aspect of athletics being really tied to character and education,” he said. “It’s a great teaching opportunity for people to think through life lessons and character development.” Farmer’s vision for his new role

aligns with his core philosophy: a program that doesn’t measure its success in wins and losses. “Success, for me, is two things: joy and character development,” he said. “If the kids are having a great time, bonding with each other, feeling like they’re a part of something big and being challenged to think through difficult situations in real time, I’m happy.”

New AD, pg. 14

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