For over 30 years I’ve been teaching teachers to engage in meaningful conversations with their students about real things. Strong teachers know how to pose thoughtful questions, elicit questions from students, and listen and engage respectfully with students.
And yet, 30 years in, there are still a shocking number of schools where adults and children fail to discuss important issues. For instance, according to findings recently released by RAND’s American Youth Panel, only about 1 in 3 students say their school has a school-wide policy on the use of AI. Many students say AI policy in their school varies by teacher, and 67 percent of students endorsed the statement, “The more students use AI for their schoolwork, the more it will harm their critical thinking skills.”
The RAND report recommends “direct conversations” with students about the use of AI. So let’s talk about how to do that.
Talking Directly About AI in Schools
According to the Center for Democracy and Technology, approximately 85 percent of teachers and students report using AI for schoolwork. If your school has a clear policy on AI use, great! Discuss it with your students. Ask them how they feel about it; what’s clear and what needs more explanation; what feels fair and what they might want to advocate to change.
If your school does not have a clear policy on AI, talk with your colleagues, and talk with your students. Here are some questions to get those conversations started.
With colleagues, including teachers and school leaders:
Is it our goal to make things easier for students? For teachers? AI can simplify, increase efficiency, and in other ways do the work for us. Is this what we want?
If so, when is this a good thing?
In what types of situations might we want to avoid making things easier?
How can we implement AI and LLM tools in a way that benefits our learning community, i.e. increased efficiency, time savings, ability to gather and analyze more data, etc.?
What guardrails can we put in place to ensure we maintain the learning experiences we value, such as engaging in productive struggle; working through complex problems and devising, testing, and refining solutions?
How are we going to teach students to critically analyze information and “answers” provided by AI tools?
How skillful are our students at identifying bias? Will our students ask, “What’s the source for this information?” “What perspective does this source have?” Can they distinguish fact (i.e. the distance between the Earth and the sun) from opinion (i.e. the filibuster as a tool for promoting democracy)?
What skills do they – and we – need to strengthen in order to ensure that we are the drivers of AI innovation?
Are there other schools or people we trust, admire, and respect who have implemented AI policies? What can we learn from them?
What processes do we have in place (or can we put into place) to include student voice in determining when and how to use AI in our school?
With students:
What is valuable about the work we do together in school? How might AI tools increase this value? How might AI undermine it?
What does integrity mean to us, as individuals and as a school? How can we implement AI in a way that supports integrity in our school?
What do you know about AI? What do you want to know about it?
What are some ways we might use AI in our school? What are the potential benefits and drawbacks?
Aligning AI with School Values
If this seems like a lot of work, and a lot to talk about, that’s because it is. An AI policy isn’t something to overlay on a school, and then continue with business as usual. AI is a powerful tool. It has the power to disrupt. That disruption can be beneficial, such as disrupting inequitable access to information and learning tools. It can also be harmful: AI can fuel complacency and undermine critical thinking and curiosity. So a school’s AI policy needs to be deeply aligned with the school’s values. And that requires thoughtful, school-wide conversations about those values.
During these conversations, make liberal use of the phrase, “I don’t know.” Because we don’t have all the answers. There is so much we don’t yet know about what AI can, or should, do. How it might support, or undermine, critical thinking and curiosity.
When you engage in conversations based on the questions above, you are modeling to your students – and your colleagues – how to puzzle through complex issues. You’re building uncertainty tolerance. You’re teaching problem solving at the highest level.
And isn’t that what we teachers are here to do in the first place?
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