A3 - AI as a tool in the classroom

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about AI in the classroom—not as some looming dystopian force or magical teaching solution, but as a tool. A very fast, very sometimes-weird tool. Reading the recent Education Week piece curated by Larry Ferlazzo only confirmed what I’ve been feeling: this tech isn’t going away, but that doesn’t mean we need to panic. It means we need to get curious.

The teachers featured in the article weren’t wide-eyed cheerleaders for AI. In fact, many of them started with suspicion—worrying about cheating, depersonalization, and whether it’s even ethical to lean on AI for support. Valid concerns. But what struck me is how each teacher came around not because they were forced to, but because they discovered small, practical ways AI could help without replacing anything essential.

One teacher, Donna Shrum, compared AI to the leap from wooden plows to steel ones. That image stuck with me. Not because AI is revolutionary in the same way, but because it reframes the conversation. If a tool saves us time and energy—the kind of low-burnout tasks that drain teachers—shouldn’t we at least explore it?

I’ve used AI tools myself for drafting emails, brainstorming project outlines, and giving early-stage feedback. Never the final product. Always the starting place. That’s what Donna emphasized, too: it’s not about letting AI do the work, it’s about letting it start the work. Like letting a student turn in a rough outline before the real writing begins.

Another contributor, Bonnie Nieves, talked about using AI to help students access scientific research. Not dumbed down—just clearer. More approachable. If we say we want all kids to access complex texts, isn’t it our job to make that possible? AI isn’t the only way, but it’s one more tool on the shelf.

Of course, there are boundaries. We still need to teach kids how to think critically, how to write with their own voice, how to struggle productively. But I don’t think AI necessarily undermines that. If we’re thoughtful—if we keep pedagogy first and tech second—then AI might actually free us up to do more of what matters.

Cautious optimism feels right. Not starry-eyed. Not cynical. Just open enough to try the new plow, and wise enough to know it still takes a human hand to guide it.

NOTE - This was written by ChatGPT. The initial prompt was "Using https://natescape.blogspot.com/ as an example of writing style, give a 300-500 word analysis of the attached document, explaining that the author is cautiously optimistic about the use of AI in classrooms." The response was too much of an analysis of the piece, so I added the second prompt, "Please rewrite that to be less of an analysis of the piece and more of a cautiously optimistic view of AI in education from Natescape's point of view, with occasional reference to the PDF."