the tricky part is that AI changes weekly. So how can we be concrete about something so fluid?
Here’s how I’ve started to think about it: Be flexible about tools, but concrete about values.
Students don’t need us to predict the future of AI. They need us to articulate the principles that guide our choices. That might be things like:
Transparency: Always disclose when AI is used. Integrity: Use AI to assist thinking, not replace it. Learning: Choose methods that strengthen your own skills. When students internalize these values, they can adapt them to whatever new tool emerges next semester: Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, or something we haven’t heard of yet.
A good AI policy, like a good syllabus, isn’t a list of prohibitions. It’s a shared framework for reasoning through change.
We help classroom and environmental educators ethically use AI to create human-centered learning experiences.
Alpha School promises kids can learn twice as fast with just two hours of daily academics powered by AI, but experts say the evidence is thin, the benefits uneven, and equity concerns loom.
More Insights:
AI mainly personalizes pacing and assignments; it’s guide-led, not chatbot-taught.
Model echoes older self-directed approaches (e.g., Montessori) and long-used tools (IXL, Khan, Duolingo, Math Academy).
Claims of top 1–2% scores and 90% satisfaction face selection-bias questions given affluent demographics and sky-high SF tuition.
Researchers urge rigorous trials and warn about hallucinations, bias, and risks for less-motivated or younger learners.
Public districts are cautiously integrating AI literacy and pilots, signaling inevitability—but not a one-size-fits-all solution.
Fourth and fifth graders at Alpha School in Austin, Texas, aren't just learning — they're pioneering education's new frontier. Every click and every keystroke is guided by artificial intelligence.
Students spend only two hours in the morning on science, math and reading, working at their own speed using personalized, AI-driven software.
Adults in the classroom are called guides, not teachers, and earn six-figure salaries. Their job is to encourage and motivate.
When asked if an algorithm replaces the expertise of a teacher, guide Luke Phillips said, "I don't think it's replacing, I think it's just working in tandem."
Afternoons at the school are different. Students tackle projects, learn financial literacy and public speaking — life skills that founder MacKenzie Price says are invaluable.
"There is such a huge advantage when students can be met at the level and pace of learning that is right for them," Phillips said.
Purposeful, conscious, effortful integration. Take what comes from outside, a book, a conversation, an AI output and do the work of making it yours. Test it against experience. Reconcile it with what you already believe. Change your mind when you must and know why you are changing it. Be able to trace the path.
This is authenticity. Not purity of origin. Purposeful integration.
A person who writes with AI is not less authentic than a person who writes alone. A person who cannot explain their reasoning, who has lost the thread of their own integration, who has become a conduit for unassimilated outputs, has lost something essential, regardless of tools.
