As schools across the country embrace the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI), innovative educators are leading the way, showing how AI can enhance teaching and learning while keeping students at the center of the experience. Providing educators with concrete examples of how to implement AI-enabled instructional practices empowers teachers with new strategies and helps the K-12 education sector more rapidly and efficiently adopt this technology.
This is where the School Teams AI Collaborative comes in – a partnership between Leading Educators and The Learning Accelerator (TLA), the Collaborative brings together forward-thinking school teams from across the country who are championing AI-enabled instructional practices with their students and educators. Collaborative members receive coaching and also have opportunities to share practices and get feedback through convenings, all while Collaborative leaders capture and share their promising practices to help more schools bring the promise of AI into their classrooms. At its core, the initiative emphasizes the human element of education – ensuring students continue to do the cognitive heavy lifting and learning, and that the critical connections between students and teachers remain strong. Moreover, students are encouraged to question and challenge the AI-generated feedback, fostering a more interactive and thoughtful learning process.
Earlier this year, we previewed some of the exciting practices emerging from this work, and today, we are thrilled to share the first set of resources showcasing standout AI-enabled instructional strategies from educators in the Collaborative. These strategies highlight tangible examples of how educators are embedding AI into classroom instruction and provide guidance on applying these strategies in your context. Here’s what we are learning:
1. From Consumers to Creators: Students Taking the Lead with AI
To thrive in a world increasingly shaped by AI, students need to go beyond being passive consumers of technology — they must also become active creators with it. At DSST Public Schools in Denver, for example, students engaged in a Civics Project where they identified a real-world challenge facing their community and developed a chatbot to address it. Students not only shared their solutions with public officials but also had the opportunity to transform promising projects into web-based apps with the support of a community partner. This project exemplifies how schools can empower students to leverage AI for meaningful problem-solving, leading to notable action steps.
2. Empowering Teachers: Streamline the Work, Deepen the Learning
Given the ever-growing demands on teachers’ time, AI offers significant potential to streamline tasks like lesson planning, assignment creation, and providing feedback — while still preserving the human element in teaching. At the Eliot School in Boston, educators use Claude to generate targeted feedback for students, and students follow a structured protocol to reflect on this feedback, ensuring they engage critically with it rather than accepting the feedback at face value.
DSST Public Schools teachers use ClassCompanion to provide targeted and rapid writing feedback. While AI handles the initial grading, teachers carefully review the feedback to assess student mastery, make adjustments as needed, and use the time they saved by using AI to develop targeted interventions for students.
Teachers can also develop AI chatbots to create tools customized to streamline lesson-planning, differentiation, and more. At Lynwood High School, instructional leader Georgia Mejia developed a professional development session and a video tutorial to help staff create their own AI chatbots using Playlab. This practice allows teachers to develop custom tools that can be used as student-facing or teacher-facing, depending on each practitioner’s needs, in alignment with broader system or school-level visions and goals.
For more strategies on leveraging AI to boost teacher efficiency, explore:
- DSST Public Schools: Using Generative AI to Build Complex Free-Response Questions
- DSST Public Schools: Use AI to Create Resources with Open Education Resources
3. Setting the Stage: Building the Right Conditions for AI Success
Before diving into AI adoption, schools and systems must lay the groundwork by setting clear policies and expectations. Teachers can also create conducive conditions within their classrooms to improve students’ understanding of AI and when and how to use the technology appropriately.
Desert Edge High School in Arizona developed a “stoplight protocol” to help students gauge when AI is appropriate to use in their work. Additionally, their AI policy document outlines how AI integration aligns with the district’s Portrait of a Graduate, offering a clear vision for how AI supports broader educational goals.
For more strategies on developing conditions for AI success, explore:
- DSST Public Schools: Embed AI Literacy into the Curriculum
- Denver Public Schools: Using Surveys to Guide AI Literacy and Instructional Practice
Looking Ahead: What’s Next for the Collaborative
The work of the School Teams AI Collaborative is far from over. As member schools continue to implement and refine AI-enabled instructional practices, we will capture and share more highlights, tools, and insights throughout the school year. While our insights currently offer standalone practices, they will be compiled into thematic collections, providing even more robust resources for educators.
Stay tuned for more updates by signing up for our newsletter. We’d also love to hear how you’re using AI in your classroom — reach out to us to share your experiences! Email your practices to jin-soo.huh@learningaccelerator.org.
If you will be in Austin this week for SXSWedu, join the Collaborative and Jin-Soo Huh at “Enough Talk! Let’s Play with AI,” on Tuesday, March 4 at 11:30 a.m. CT. This rotation-based session will showcase promising practices and guide you in applying them in your context.
