Balancing Act: Navigating the AI Revolution in K-12 Education Without Losing Our Core

Dr. Lee McCanne, Director of Technology & School Libraries, Weston Public Schools

Dr. Lee McCanne, Director of Technology & School Libraries, Weston Public Schools

Artificial Intelligence is not the problem, nor is it the savior of K-12 education. We are all wrestling with a fear of students using AI because a core tenet of our educator soul is under attack. How do we engage students in the hard work of building their skills in writing, communication, reasoning, thinking, and problem-solving when AI tools will supplant that work in a short few seconds? Students can access sophisticated answers to complex problems they do not fully understand and do not have the experience and background knowledge to judge the merit of the answer AI gave them. Learning requires work. Students need to chew on a problem, wrestle with the context, and fine-tune their conclusions over time.

I posit that we need not be paralyzed by the quandary, but rather define the problem and act accordingly. The problem is a simple one. We must redesign our learning experiences so that they cannot be easily subverted by AI tools. How? Think like a student. Look at your lesson and act like a 7th grader who would much rather be gaming. What would they do? They would Google it and run it through Gemini or Chat GPT (or a thousand other tools that employ AI). You know your students. Now act like one to learn what tools are out there.

Yes, this takes some time. But once you have done this, you can think through how to redesign that lesson to add offline activities, project-based aspects, oral or recorded visible thinking check-ins, and even the use of student focused AI tools to supplement the activity.

"Think like a student in the digital age: How would a 7th grader bypass the lesson plan with technology?"

he future for our students will be nothing like our past. They will rely on AI tools for much of their work. They need to learn how to leverage these tools in conjunction with building their own skill sets and talents. One question to ask your students is “what will you bring to the table for an employer?” Why would an employer hire you if all you do is regurgitate AI output? Human skills and intuitions are still valuable and will continue to be so. These human skills and experiences in concert with the ability to harness the power of AI will make them more marketable, and you, as a master educator, invaluable.

"The real challenge: Redesigning learning experiences to outsmart AI's quick fixes."

Focus on weaving real-world problems and project-based learning into your units. Find throughlines with colleagues from other departments. Building leaders need to allow for more planning time to make these collaborations powerful experiences. And schools need to leverage AI tools as teaching assistants and tutoring aides.

None of this should be done without student voice. Create the means to seek student and faculty feedback regularly. The landscape of AI resources will be so fluid that you’ll need this to keep up with what the students are using among themselves to complete assignments. These student/faculty feedback loops will be healthy for the organization and allow you to monitor and adjust your professional development, communications, and the subscription investments.

Right now, the landscape is moving under our feet, but we must learn to dance through the quake.