Dr. Thomas Taylor wants to get ahead of the AI revolution in the classroom by providing guidance and guardrails for the use of generative artificial intelligence in the classroom.
by Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
When people study why teachers leave the profession, burnout—caused in significant measure by an overload of work—is among the most frequently cited reasons. And the pressures aren’t just coming from administration. Outside forces are playing a significant role, too.
For Stafford School Superintendent Thomas Taylor, getting on top of one of those external pressures—Artificial Intelligence—is essential to helping teachers manage, and perform better, at their jobs.
“Teachers are in a position right now,” he told the Advance, where they have “to white-knuckle AI.” Whether that means knowing how to manage students’ use and abuse of the technology, or knowing how far they can go with it in their classrooms, Taylor believes that schools have to “get smart, or we’re going to be in quicksand.”
To that end, Taylor, the Stafford School Board, and the division’s technology team have put together two guiding documents that may well be the first in Virginia to provide a policy statement as well as guidelines for teachers and students on AI technology.
Focused, Flexible
Stafford School Board Member Susan Randall described a video she saw at a Virginia School Board Association meeting about what AI could be doing in the classroom as “Eye-opening.” I didn’t know “how far things had come, where we were going with AI,” she told the Advance.
Out of that experience, Randall brought together Taylor and the technology team to figure out a way to address how Stafford could begin to wrestle with what was coming.
The result was two documents—a policy statement about the use of generative artificial intelligence, and guidelines for its use by teachers and students.
The policy statement is “very general,” Taylor said. “We acknowledge that [AI] creates a challenging environment, but we want to put teachers in a position where they can have some guardrails in terms of instruction.” The policy “will not change much because it’s at the 30,000-foot level,” he said.
The guidelines, which are the second document, are expected to change often as the technology matures and as more information is gathered on its use by students and teachers.
For now, the guidelines focus on the following areas:
Curriculum Relevance: Ensure that AI is part of an intentional lesson plan and aligns with curriculum objectives. Educators are expected to model appropriate use of AI.
Professional Development: Specifies that teachers and staff who intend to use AI will receive training on its ethical use, limitations, potential risks and biases, and data privacy issues.
Avoiding Misrepresentation and Plagiarism: Teachers must guide students in proper citation for AI-generated content.
Ethical Awareness, Digital Citizenship, and Appropriate Content: Ensuring that students are properly educated about the ethics, fairness, and transparency requirements that come with using AI, and requiring that teachers model appropriate use.
Developmental Awareness: Limiting and tightly defining when AI may be used at the elementary and middle school levels.
Data Privacy and Security: Emphasizing that staff must prioritize student data privacy.
Parent/Guardian Involvement: Ensuring that AI guidance is made available to parents, and helping parents understand the technology’s benefits.
The important lesson for Taylor is that students not “use [AI] as a tool to avert learning. We wanted to provide guidance on what this looks like.”
The professional learning piece is also critical, however. Both he and Randall see AI as a tool that can enhance teachers’ work products.
For example, if a teacher needs 10 great ideas for projects to do with third graders about Ancient Greece that are aligned to Virginia State Standards, AI can do that.
Randall used an example of how a teacher facing a family emergency used AI to quickly put together lesson plans that could be used. Something that would be much more difficult and time-consuming to do without AI.
For that reason, the roll-out for teacher training will be fairly swift. Teachers at any level can leverage that power right now to improve their work.
How quickly this progresses with students is another matter.
“For student utility, it’s a slow roll,” Taylor said, “and it looks like our secondary students and high school students” will be the ones to leverage it most – at least initially.
Again, the school wants to ensure that AI is used by students as “a tool to enhance work product and spur creativity.”
Want to Know More?
Though Stafford County is leveraging a wide range of voices and resources to guide their efforts, the book AI for Educators by Matt Miller is a central tool. Find it at Amazon.
In addition, the governor has issued an executive directive on AI learning in the classroom. Find it here.
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