Teaching is a dynamic practice, and I reserve the right to change my mind about it as I grow and learn.
The state of education today is undeniably difficult. Teacher turnover rates, declining student performance, and the homeschooling boom are but a few of the many indicators of a struggling public education system. I say this as someone who is presently working in it. And while I’m an advocate for AI in Education, let me be clear: anyone who claims AI will “fix” all the problems in education is mistaken. AI is a single tool, not a cure-all.
With that said, like any tool, AI has its uses and its drawbacks. Here’s how I do and don’t use AI in my classroom.
Curriculum
Luckily, and much to the credit of my colleagues and school district, I’m provided with a vetted, standards-based curriculum to guide my planning, inform aspects of my teaching, and ultimately affect how students approach learning in my class. Ideally, a good curriculum serves as the backbone of teaching—it outlines a well-sequenced course of study. It provides educators and students with a functional framing of the goals of the class. More practically, it includes pacing guides, standards alignment, materials, and assessments designed to scaffold students toward mastery of the knowledge, skills, and dispositions presented in the course.
No AI Needed Here: I do not adjust, manipulate, or replace my school district’s curriculum with AI-generated curricular materials.
Why?
- The curriculum documents shared by my district are the result of a collaboration between many highly qualified professionals working at the district level.
- Teachers have an outlet, through co-planning and department meetings, to share suggestions for improving curricular materials or for developing supports.
- Curriculum development is a complex task related to the school’s unique context. The materials presented to me already are well-written, sequenced, and tied to the relevant standards and goals that my department is to meet.
If we think about AI as a tool and we think about tools as a means of solving problems, don’t waste your time fixing what isn’t broken.
That said, the ideal curriculum I’ve described above is not always put into practice. Often, and this is not the fault of anyone, the varied work of the teacher presents unique challenges that a rigid form like a curriculum simply cannot address. No single method, question, or guidance will meet the variety of unique instructional, behavioral, and emotional situations you’ll encounter in the course of teaching. There is a level of creativity, responsiveness, and persistence at play here.
What I use AI to do: I use it to fill some of those curricular gaps—short guided reading assignments, tailored scenario-based questions, or formatting a game-based review.
Here’s an example: I teach 8th-grade Science. My class is learning about the circulatory system. The lesson is about the types of Blood Vessels. I could, during the class, conduct a jigsaw activity.
For this, I could generate three readings, and each reading would include vocabulary support and guiding questions on the functioning of the three types of blood vessels: veins, arteries, and capillaries.
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Students are broken into groups of three.
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Each member of the group is assigned one of the three readings to become the group’s “expert.”
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After a set period to study and annotate their text, they meet with students from other groups to discuss their shared reading. They create notes, perhaps some flashcards, check their answers to the guiding questions, and develop a set of talking points for their next task.
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The activity concludes with the students returning to their starting Home Group, where they are responsible for teaching and tutoring their group mates on the essential information from their respective readings.
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There is a short quiz to see where the class is, and we’ll continue to interleave this material into follow-up reviews and practice materials.
In the background of this whole activity, AI allowed me to adjust the supports that different cohorts of students received. Some students had structured note-taking sheets in addition to the standard guided reading questions, and some students had short answers or annotating-the-text questions instead of multiple choice. Also, since I had saved some time on the base documents and questions, I altered the particular analogies used in the text based on what common interests I had observed in different students: the functioning of arteries was illustrated by how they may react through the duration of a soccer match, or while doing Yoga, training gymnastics, or reeling a fish—this relates the lesson material to topics and activities the students already understand and interesting which allows me to meet those students where they are and pull them into deeper, more meaningful learning.
Feedback vs. Grading
After students complete an assignment, I like to review their work and provide feedback. Feedback is essential to the learning process, but it’s also incredibly time-consuming, especially when teaching 120 students.
What I do: I use AI to help provide meaningful feedback to all of my students consistently.
Why? Feedback during the learning process is vital, and AI allows me to validate students’ efforts and offer suggestions for improvement in ways that would be difficult to scale otherwise. My students appreciate that the feedback was detailed and more specifically for them and not so generic, a kind of personal touch that allows them to feel seen and valued. However, the feedback has to be something I sign off on. In other words, I have to stand by it, which means I have to know that what’s being offered as feedback must provide actionable steps for improvement.
What I don’t do: I never use AI to grade student work.
Why? Grades are high-stakes, and they are assigned a lot of importance. Grades are the commonly accepted measure of a student’s performance in school. Assigning grades is a decision that should come from my professional judgment as the teacher of record for my course. As the teacher, I have the responsibility to understand how each student has progressed through the course and how they demonstrate the knowledge and skills they have attained. Using a rubric to ask AI if an essay deserves an A, B, or F feels soulless and removes the humanity from education. However, the state of Texas used AI to grade part of their standardized STAAR exams last year. So perhaps I’m off, and that’s the direction in which grade automation will go. Here’s the article. I’m curious how folks are thinking about automated grading. We’ll have a forum on our Discord if you want to weigh in.
Student Use of AI
I teach middle school, so my students are 14 or younger. While I’m known as the “AI guy” at my school, I don’t encourage or allow my students to use AI for schoolwork.
Why not?
- Parental Consent: Most AI platforms require users under 18 to have parental approval. Without district policies or clear guidelines, I don’t feel it’s ethical—or even illegal—to introduce AI tools to students without parental involvement, platform approval, and prior consent.
- Learned Helplessness: Over-reliance on AI for simple tasks can rob students of the opportunity to develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Many already struggle to source credible information online—AI tools could exacerbate this issue if introduced before the foundational skills and competencies are even acquired.
- Accountability and Bias: LLMs are probabilistic tools, not necessarily intelligent. They can produce misleading, biased, or outright incorrect information. If I assign an AI-driven project, I’m responsible for its outputs—outputs I can’t always control with student-facing AI. Until we have education-specific models with appropriate guardrails, this is a risk I’m unwilling to take.
Final Thoughts
AI is an incredibly powerful tool for teachers, but it’s just that—a tool. It doesn’t replace professional judgment, curriculum expertise, or the human connection that defines education.
Every time I use AI, I ask myself:
- What problem am I trying to solve?
- Why am I using this technology to do it?
- Is this the best way to serve my students?
These questions guide how I integrate AI into my practice—and, just as importantly, where I draw the line. As educators, it’s up to us to navigate this new landscape thoughtfully, ethically, and always with our students’ best interests in mind.