Teachers are learning to work with AI, not against it.
As AFROTECH™ previously reported, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said that he believes “AI-powered early education” is not necessary. New York City Public Schools echoed these sentiments through a moratorium that bans generative AI and software companion chatbots for elementary and middle school students until more research is done.
The Los Angeles Unified School District has followed suit and is taking it a step further, announcing that all students will be banned from using generative artificial intelligence platforms during the 2026-27 school year, K-12 Dive reports.
These are the nation’s two largest school systems.
While some school systems are drawing boundaries around AI, some educators are increasingly confronting AI’s influence in the classroom firsthand. The Washington Post reports that teachers and professors are rethinking their assignments, adopting new policies, and incorporating AI into the classroom as part of the new normal.
“The big worry now is not if they’re using AI. The big worry is if they’re still learning,” Andrew Zeiser, a supply chain management professor at John Carroll University in Cleveland, told The Washington Post.
In Zeiser’s classroom, among other efforts, he uses “Supply Chain Wars,” an online game that requires students to make critical choices and explain their thought processes.
Rachael Zeleny, director of the writing program at the University of Baltimore, has made changes to her curriculum over several months. Her first major move was implementing the Brisk app, which can monitor students’ writing in Google Docs, share videos with teachers of students making adjustments in the doc, and provide a scoreboard that includes edits, pastes, and time spent in the document. Zeleny has been encouraging instructors in the program to use the app. According to its website, the app is trusted in more than 10,000 school districts.
“Is it surveillance? Yes, I think obviously,” Zeleny told The Washington Post. “I told my adjuncts, ‘Listen, this is a Band-Aid, this isn’t a solution. Everything was just happening so fast.”
Zeleny is also now using BoodleBox, and, through it, created a chatbot called “Confrontational Parent,” which engages students in debate as they practice developing arguments supported by evidence. One scenario includes a simulated school board meeting centering on a ban on books, the outlet reported. The software makes it possible for instructors to view both sides of the conversation.
Instructors in the program also require students to share transcripts of conversations with the chatbot and ask them to share a video of their thoughts on the assignment.
“In a lot of ways, we have made these assignments harder, but writing should have always had more detailed checkpoints along the way,” Zeleny told the outlet.
For Madison Park Academy’s 10th-grade media, art, and design educator Hannah Scharlin-Pettee, students using chatbots to assist with their coursework is no surprise. She believes the value young people place on education has declined since the COVID-19 pandemic, with some students working nights to support their families and having less time to complete coursework, which makes AI more appealing, according to The Washington Post.
