8 Educators on Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial intelligence is reshaping classrooms around the world, sparking debate about how teachers can harness its potential while staying true to the heart of education. From lesson planning to providing students with meaningful feedback, AI tools are offering new ways to save educators time and enhance learning. But what conversations are educators really having about this technology? 

We touched base with teachers from around the world to hear about their experiences with and ideas for AI. Whether you’re curious about AI or already experimenting with it, their perspectives offer useful insight and guidance for navigating the constantly evolving education landscape.

Enhancing, Not Replacing, Teachers 

Zee Ngwenya — a school social care worker in Ireland who previously taught in China — was quick to address a common misconception head-on. 

“People have the idea that AI is taking over [and that] teachers don’t have jobs now because of AI,” Ngwenya said. “No, that’s not true. AI is just there to enhance [education], not to eradicate the teachers.” 

Ngwenya emphasized that teachers are still essential in the classroom, despite any worries in education circles. When used responsibly and ethically, AI can serve to meet the demands of today’s learning environments. Specifically, Ngwenya noted that she learned how to monitor student use of AI and recognize when students are relying on it too heavily during a recent professional development course. She has also discovered practical, time-saving applications for AI, like using these tools to streamline administrative tasks such as attendance tracking.

From Unfamiliarity to Exploration 

When she arrived in Morocco to take on a new role, Kathy Schmidt had little prior knowledge or experience with AI. 

“When I arrived, there was no AI allowed, and I didn’t really know ChatGPT. I had never used AI; I didn’t really know how it worked,” she said in a recent Front of the Class podcast episode. “The kids, unfortunately, depend on AI a lot.” 

Within just 2 years, Schmidt witnessed a dramatic shift at her school. AI detectors that once worked reliably no longer functioned effectively, pushing educators to adapt their approach to checking and assessing students’ work. 

Through professional development courses, Schmidt has learned how to use AI more effectively in her teaching while also finding ways to save time on some of her daily tasks. Maybe more importantly, though, she has also begun teaching students to use AI as a tool rather than a crutch. During one project, she provided seventh graders with a prompt to input into ChatGPT to create an outline about a historical explorer of their choice, then the students used that framework to develop their own research papers and presentations. 

“It is an amazing tool. I’m not going to lie,” Schmidt said. “This is the new encyclopedia, but prepared: it’s not always correct.” 

Adapting to Different Levels of AI Usage 

“I teach with a lot of extremely talented teachers that do not use AI in any way, shape or form,” Dominic Helmstetter, a U.S. educator, said on the Front of the Class podcast. “They don’t believe [in] it. They think that students will cheat with it. And my first response to them is always, ‘How have you shifted your instruction to match the change in education versus the way you used to do it?’” 

It’s an important question, as teachers are tasked with keeping pace with the students in their classrooms as well as the larger world of education. He followed it up with another question: 

“If I’m in a social studies classroom and I’m asking my students to write a 5-page research paper, am I asking them to just go home and do it alone on their own? Well, then what is that modeling for them or showing them?” 

Helmstetter advocates for intentional teaching methods that incorporate guardrails and skill-building around AI. For the hypothetical social studies research paper, his suggested approach would include breaking the process into classroom stations where students brainstorm with ChatGPT; write an original, unassisted paragraph on the topic; find high-quality resources on their own and revise or add to the paragraph based on those resources; and receive feedback from another student or an AI tool before meeting one-on-one with the teacher. 

“How have you shifted and changed the way you teach?” Helmstetter repeated. “I want my kids to be able to evaluate the work they’ve done with AI. I want my kids to be able to create new, amazing, cool things with AI… I want them to be able to defend their analysis and the analysis that’s been given to them. I want them to have a level of AI literacy that requires me to put a little [feedback] in, so it’s an intentional, constant, daily thing.” 

Addressing Parental Concerns and Uncertainty 

Jenny Mitchell, a Moreland University instructor, is the director of teaching and learning at an international school in Taiwan that has found itself fielding questions about AI from students’ families. 

“We have parents coming in and saying, ‘Are we going to be a hub for AI at our school?” she said. “Well, the answer is we don’t know yet. I don’t think many of us know how AI is going to play a role, but we’re embracing it in a sense that we’re exploring what it could look like.” 

Mitchell’s school is taking a proactive approach by bringing in AI consultants for professional development. The goal is to explore how AI can increase personalized learning and free up teachers to spend more time with students on meaningful activities while focusing more on developing essential soft skills like empathy that will help students become engaged global citizens. 

“What I’m hoping [is] that we’ll move towards it giving us more time, allowing us to differentiate [instruction] for the students even more than we are now so that we can dive into the projects and get back into art and PE and music,” Mitchell explained.

Leading Professional Development 

Teachers can be found all along the AI usage spectrum. Ohio-based educator Jake Knapp is at the forefront of his school, having led professional development sessions to help teachers understand AI’s possibilities. His approach focuses on creating the right conditions in the classroom to enable students to use AI productively while encouraging his peers to “[find] ways to use it as a feedback assistant or use it as a creative thing.” 

“For me, I’ve used [AI] as an assistant to give kids feedback. Class Companion is a huge tool in my classroom,” Knapp said. “That’s instant feedback for the kids, and I use it in a productive way.” 

Knapp’s initiative in getting his school up to speed on AI is part of what he sees as a long-term trend. 

“We as educators have to think about how we’re presenting our lessons and how we can use it as a tool to help kids then use AI,” Knapp explained. “Because it’s not going away, especially for kids.”

Practical Applications for Administrative Tasks 

In Vietnam, Calvin Lewis’ school is also addressing the AI revolution head-on. 

“My school [has] made big pushes to utilize [AI] in certain ways and how we’re going to teach it responsibly, and a lot of places are like that and everyone’s trying to figure out how to make it work,” Lewis said. “I use it for teacher things. It’s especially for idea generation.” 

For his International English Language Testing System (IELTS) students, Lewis found an innovative way to provide personalized feedback without spending excessive time. Without inputting names or other personally identifiable information, he created a series of prompts and instructions to use ChatGPT to analyze student essays and generate reports on common grammatical and punctuation errors. 

“That really helped me out,” Lewis said. “It gives them a little bit of personalized [feedback], like here’s some self-improvement you can do. If I was to do [that report], it would take me three times as long.”

Experimenting with AI Tools 

Working at a rural elementary school in Kansas, Amanda Heilman discovered that AI tools can support teachers who may feel like they’re encountering the same obstacles again and again. 

“I feel like there have been years in my career where I’ve been like, ‘I don’t know if I can be a really good teacher if I’m not super, over-the-top creative,” Heilman said. 

But Heilman knew that her ability to execute tasks was reliable, so she experimented extensively with ChatGPT and Magic School to help her out of the creative rut. 

“If there’s a lesson that I have struggled with in the past like, ‘Every year like this is always terrible. The kids don’t get it. It’s hard [and] I have not found a better way to teach it,’ and just using AI to…come up with better ideas or new ideas [has helped],” she said.

Using AI Ethically and Responsibly and Staying Up-to-Date 

As a U.S.-based higher education curriculum and instructional design specialist who has also taught internationally, Ronald Lethcoe is uniquely qualified to speak about the state of AI in education. In fact, he’s presented on the topic at numerous conferences, taking a lead in helping fellow educators understand the role AI can play in their classrooms. 

“I was setting up how to use ChatGPT and [looking into] different things to consider,” Lethcoe said about his early work with AI tools in his current position. “I created a course on how to use generative AI in the classroom [and] set up a bunch of different stuff on our teaching and learning center resource website.” 

Lethcoe’s focus centers on ethical and responsible AI use, not just in terms of end results but in how educators are interacting with AI tools. 

“You want to make sure that learning is the focus [instead of] focusing too much on the [final] products because you can say, ‘Hey, write me an essay on this topic in 500 words,’ and [AI] can spit it out. That’s great, but the process is, I feel like, where the learning happens,” Lethcoe said. “I think [it’s best to] stay on top of the trends and focus on pedagogy and how that gets affected by what’s happening in the world [of technology].”

Ready to Explore AI in Your Classroom? 

AI isn’t about replacing teachers or compromising educational values. It’s about finding thoughtful ways to enhance teaching, save time, and ultimately spend more meaningful moments with students so that they’re ready to confidently and successfully interact with the world around them. 

Whether you’re just starting to explore AI or looking to deepen your practice, having the right resources makes all the difference. Download Moreland University’s free guide Empowering Educators with AI: 100+ Prompts to Save Teachers Time to access ready-to-use prompts, practical examples, and expert advice for integrating AI into your teaching practice.