Navigating AI Integration in Independent Schools

Hey, everybody.

Welcome. Happy July.

I can't believe we're already like halfway through

July, by the way.

Um, I, I need like another six months of summer.

I don't know about y'all, but, um, I am not,

not ready for it to be July yet.

But, um, thank you for being on today.

This is an interactive session.

We do anticipate kind of a smaller group, uh,

with it being summertime and a lot going on.

Uh, but we're gathered here today

and we're gonna talk about ai.

And if you have any kind of burning questions

or things you wanna talk about or ask, uh,

we definitely welcome that as well.

Um, these meetups,

the whole meetup series is sponsored by Tattle.

So I wanna just let Cindy say hello to you guys.

So, Cindy, you wanna tell everybody? Hi. And how's it going?

Hi, Atlas. Um, it's, it's been so fun to be part

of this series and to learn alongside you.

I was lucky enough to be one of the moderators.

Um, and just to let you know,

if you checked out Title AI a while ago,

we've made quite a few changes in the last few months,

especially in the, the grading area and assessments.

Um, and I'm also working on an AI literacy course

that's gonna be like for teachers

and students to do together and have thinking organizers.

So keep an eye out for that.

Um, if you ever have questions about AI

or how TA can support you, feel free to reach out

to me on LinkedIn or at email.

I'll drop it in the chat. And

yeah, thanks for having me here.

Awesome. Thanks Cindy.

Thanks for joining us, and again,

for TA just sponsoring this entire, uh, series.

And so y'all, today we have a fantastic,

uh, facilitators.

So we have Jennifer, Jennifer is the director of

of technology at the Mount Vernon School in Atlanta,

Georgia, uh, which is an amazing school.

They're doing really innovative things there,

and they have a whole, like, innovation arm.

Um, and like a Jennifer, tell us a little bit about, uh,

first of all, you and your school

and then, uh, help us out today in just

guiding us through these questions.

Welcome. We're so glad, uh, you're here with us.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

It's, uh, uh, it's a little difficult to, um,

to get back into the mindset I was, uh, painting earlier,

my painting my house earlier today

because I'm off, uh, today, so I'm gonna, I'm trying

to be intelligent for the rest of the call.

Um, but the, yeah,

Mount Vernon is an incredible organization.

We, um, it's wonderful to work here.

I have a great group of colleagues.

I'm sure you guys know many of them.

Um, and so we, we do try to, um, we joke

that we're not on the cutting edge sometimes.

We're on the bleeding edge, um, of technology.

Uh, and we do love to learn from each other.

So today isn't, um, I'm, I'm excited to be with you guys

and learn what you're doing and what you're thinking about,

especially as we are wrapping up summer unbelievably

and starting another school year.

Um, this will be my 27th in education,

so don't thank you for the filters.

Um, zoom, appreciate the filters.

Um, so we, you know, I just excited to be here, excited

to chat with you guys and see what you're up to and, uh,

and look forward to the next school year.

So, would you like me to take it over?

Yeah, that sounds great.

Um, so I have all kinds of things like questions.

I've got some very simple questions to get us going.

I also have some, uh, deeper provocations

to get us thinking about some things.

So maybe let's start light and see how we feel.

And, uh, if we're all in the mood for something heavier,

we can go a little bit deeper.

But, um, one of the, the fun things

that we've been doing is, um, sharing all the new tools.

I've been actually interviewing for EdTech positions.

And one of our questions is, what do you,

what have you just discovered recently

that you're intrigued by?

Or, um, what new tool or, or what concept

or what expansion of something that you're already working

with have you discovered recently or been working with?

So anybody wanna to share what they're playing

with in the world of technology right now?

Be brave.

I tried to play with the video makers to,

with very little success.

Um, I try to use just the Sora version,

not the, the expensive one.

And I just find the videos to be really awkward

and I'm seeing things that others are creating.

And I'm wondering if you have to have like an editorial

or like director lens to be better,

anybody thriving with the video making?

I keep wondering if I need like, lights

and certain cameras, and what do I need to make it look

as good as it looks for other people?

'cause I don't, it doesn't, it never looks that good for me.

I'm sure it's me. Anybody else working

with something cool that they wanna share?

It's only been playing around with, um, Google Vids.

Um, that's interesting.

It's something that I think was recently, um,

kind of made open for everybody.

Um, and that's, it's very intuitive, very quick

to pick up on, and, and, um, myself

and a colleague of mine were playing around with it

because it's essentially like a Google doc where you can,

um, live, edit anything you want to, um,

and you can have multiple people collaborating.

So it's, I can see implications for that in the classroom,

um, for any teacher that wants

to have collaborative video editing.

Um, but it, I think it could also go crazy really fast

with like middle schoolers.

Um, so I've been kind of dabbling with

that a little bit just to get some knowledge there.

Um, as well as, um, some of the AI tools in Canva.

Um, so that's, I haven't done a lot with that yet,

but that sounds like it's very promising.

That sounds great. Um, yeah, I wonder about tools

with in the hands of middle schoolers all the time,

what should we give them access to

and what should we maybe hold back a little bit?

Absolutely. It's a dangerous world.

Anybody else?

I hear you. Uh,

using existing tools in deeper and more meaningful ways.

Um, that's one of the things that we've been trying

to focus on too, essentializing, the tools that we're using

and making sure that we're using them to the maximum, uh,

before we go out and look for something shiny

and new, even though we all have a tendency to, to be very,

be very squirrel like.

Um, I'm super curious.

One of the things that we're struggling

with at my school is creating, um, creating an onboarding

that makes sense, especially

during pre-planning when it's already, uh, packed and full,

but creating an onboarding around AI for our teachers.

Uh, so I'm super curious.

Does anyone else have maybe a plan

or, you know, a way

that you're looking at onboarding teachers new to the school

and maybe some that have been around, uh, in terms of ai?

Is there anybody working on anything like that?

No, We're by ourselves

Actually. Uh,

most of our administrative team is away, um,

at this particular point in time,

but I do have meetings scheduled the last week of July to

plan for our touch points.

So we, we will be doing some within our,

with our new faculty who arrive on campus on August 5th,

and then our existing faculty.

But it's really more in the planning stages

and I high idea rather than specific

Anyone else? Yeah, same with

us. I've added it as a bullet point

to new faculty training,

but, um, haven't quite developed it yet.

So

Is that the idea mainly for most of you guys, is just

to find a place to kind of put it into the pre-planning,

onboarding, uh, sort of blend it in instead

of it being separate and pulled out?

Yeah. Uh,

Cindy's got a great question.

Anyone working with, uh,

the new European commission code.org curriculum,

Did you all get the notification about, um,

turning on Gemini and Notebook LM for your schools?

Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about that a

Little bit. I imagine the decision is

a little bit different

for high schools than it is for, um, K to eight schools.

Yeah. Just to make sure everybody's, uh, tracking that,

and especially maybe if you're not a Google School.

So, um, Google basically, pretty much at in line

with Isti this year announced that they,

they now have their Gemini product open for all ages.

They've turned off the age restrictions.

They've been working on making the model a little bit more

appropriate, um, for the youngers youngers, the,

the little, the younger kids.

Um, so yeah. Where, where did y'all land with that?

For the schools that are Google?

Are you allowing and enabling student use for that, or No,

That's part of those late July conversations for us.

No, we, no, Cindy, we're not shooting it and pushing it off?

No, we actually met to set the dates in June,

um, when the announcement came out.

But again, everybody was ramping up

because July is vacation month, typically.

And so therefore we knew that we would be wrestling with

that and trying to determine what our stance was gonna be.

And everyone deserves a break.

I was totally kidding. Mm-hmm.

I understand that. We're just not

putting it down the road.

Yeah, we're a Google school as well,

and, um, we had been having, uh, a lot of requests

for Notebook, um, to be, you know,

and we kept having to express that it was, you know,

there were some age requirements, uh,

and some restrictions around it.

So I think a lot of our middle school teachers are excited.

Um, but I, we too haven't sat down

and really discussed what that might look like

for our middle school students, um,

because there, there do need

to be some parameters in our mind, um, for safety

and to, to ensure that we can, uh,

support the proper use of the tool.

But, um, I think the teachers are incredibly excited

that this might be a tool that they could use.

Yeah, we've had, uh, Gemini

and Notebook turned on for teachers.

Our big conversation is which students, when and why, right?

Because we invested in with Flint.

Part of that is teacher comfort to be able to see

what the prompt is, is from the student

with those Google tools.

You lose that visibility.

That's Right. And so that's part

of the bigger conversation

For us. It's likely gonna

be, um, uh, Gemini available for eight

to 12, um, from the very beginning.

And then we're gonna review with Notebook.

Lm I think it's very interesting that, uh, with, um, Gemini

as well, the integration into Google Classroom as well.

That's what we are, that's

what we're using at the moment as well.

So it'd be interesting to see just how well

that's gonna be integrated, um, together.

Absolutely. Um,

so I wanna bring up something that I,

I'm gonna shift my screen a little bit here.

So, um, I was on LinkedIn the other day,

and this post came up from a professor of economics

and he was talking about generative ai, uh,

and its use with students.

And he made a reference to, um, 12 Angry Men,

which I was a former high school English teacher.

So of course, I love it when folks make literary

references super exciting.

Um, and he was talking about that.

This story, of course, if you don't know it, is, um,

there's a teenage boy accused of murder,

and the jury of 12 men have to decide his fate.

Um, and right from the beginning, everyone is ready

to convict except for one man, juror number eight, uh,

who believes that more conversation is needed, um,

around this, uh, for this young man.

And so, one of the things that, uh,

was wonderful about this post is he was connecting

or comparing, uh, juror number eight, the voice sort of,

of dissension to what generative AI could be

for our students, thinking about, uh, generative AI

as something that could be, uh, a source of disruption

or friction or inte inte, uh, intellectual resistance.

Um, a way for kiddos to slow down their thinking instead of

speed up their thinking, their thinking.

Um, and so I'm super curious if anyone else is, uh,

looking at tools

or if you're looking at maybe, um, an approach,

I won't say policy, but maybe a position around

how your teachers are using AI in the classroom.

And if you're monitoring that or, or,

or maybe what you're, what you're doing to ensure that, um,

you know, students have this sort of approach, um,

or have multiple approaches in their tool belt,

if you, if you will.

I'm the curriculum nerd in the room.

So the, the literacy framework, I'm just gonna drop it here.

They outline seven skills,

and I think that's a cool framework

that I haven't seen elsewhere.

It's like the seven skills of working with AI is creativity,

computational thinking, whatever.

And I just think it'd be really cool for teams

to start thinking of that as a toolkit.

And almost like we map, um, like SDGs

or different things to assignments.

If we could map one of these AI skills

to summative assessments, I think could be a cool way

that we start doing it less piecemeal, less random,

and more documented.

We, um, we were also looking at changing our LMS, um,

we've been doing that over the summer, changing our LMSs

for two of them for grade six through eight,

and then one for nine through 12.

And in doing so, you have to sort of take your standards

and of course, kind of create, put them in their CSV files

to be uploaded into these new systems.

And what it's done is it's forced us to really kind

of look at what do we think about digital literacy

that is different now in this moment than it was when we

first started putting our standards in our systems.

And we have this great opportunity, um, I,

I'm looking at me be positive about this, uh,

this great opportunity to kind of revamp, revamp,

and rethink about how we want di Digital Literacy

to be part of the standards and where they fit best, um,

and how we can help support teachers in intentionally

assessing for those particular skills.

Um, and it's interesting

because we have always had digital literacy skills embedded

within the standards, but AI changes the nature.

Um, and so it's an, it's an interesting thing

that we're working on right now.

I'm gonna also drop in another resource. This was shared.

Uh, it's from the learning accelerator

and uh, it was shared in our AI summer workshop,

but, um, just something else to take home.

Very cool. Thank you.

Um, I'm super curious, are other folks trying

to incorporate AI into their strategic plan,

or is it just simply a part of what you're already doing?

Are you adding components of it into the strategic plan?

Are you talking, uh, about using AI

to build the strategic plan,

or are you talking about the fact that you are incorporating

and including elements of that within the strategic plan?

Um, I was going for question number two,

but I really like question number one better.

So are you guys using AI for something so, so beautiful

as building your strategic plan?

We start our planning process in September.

I'm on the committee, and we've gotten some background

materials that I'm in the midst of building a notebook LM

for people to explore those concepts.

That's very cool. That's neat, Benny.

That is really cool.

Oh, I love that emergence.

Uh, so Stacy's saying

that they created an emergency technology

statement last year.

That's a, that's an a mouthful. And

Emerging technology, not emergency,

but it's emerging technology. Sorry.

I was like, wow. Emergency, It's not emerging.

Yeah, it felt like an emergency.

AI is AI's in there, you know,

because we don't know where it's gonna go.

So we didn't wanna use ai,

we wanted to use emerging technology.

So yeah,

I think that, um, that's some of the things

that we're working on too, is shifting away from policies

and more about positions because policies feel so,

so stringent, right?

And so unchangeable, um,

and technology said so changeable right now.

Um, one of the things I love

that you put like a tech portrait of a graduate, um,

do you already have that flushed out?

Do you, are teachers using that?

So we, I just submitted it for approval.

Um, it's in pretty good shape.

The, the, the sticking point right now is the title

of all things, which is crazy.

Um, because we, we really like to use digital literacy

and not technology and people,

but people are feeling like portrait of a digitally literate

graduate feels condescending.

And so we're like, all right, do we go back to tech?

Like, what do we do? So we're stuck on that right now.

And so I'm trying to drive that forward,

but if you have any ideas for

what we should call this document, I'd love it.

We, uh, we have a portrait of a graduate

for the entire school, but then each department has their

own portrait of a graduate,

and that's what we map our, our Atlas Rubicon to instead

of like state standards

because we're independent school, so

we don't have to do state standards.

So we've created our own.

That's wonderful. Um, Cindy

and I did a really cool, um, activity with the D school

around, and, you know, there's the portrait of a graduate

and we've all sort of participated in that and we loved it,

but this was, um, it was portrait of an ancestor.

And so what it did was it made you really think about the

nature of education in this moment versus the education

nature of education for let's say, your great-grandchild

or, um,

and so what would we, what could we do now in education

to be preparing for that portrait of an nces, right?

So, um, it's a really cool idea to be thinking about, um,

you know, what do they need right now,

but then what do they need three years,

five years, 10 years down the road?

And what does that mean for us, um, in terms

of our planning and preparation?

And, uh, I don't think that any of us have a golden answer

for that, but we're all working very,

very diligently toward that.

So, but I think that's cool.

Really Long title. Go

for the really long title and just, you know,

So I dropped a link in the chat.

It is very specific to ai.

So if you're looking for something broader, again,

this is not gonna be your silver bullet,

but maybe some inspiration, um,

as you're considering different approaches.

And so this one was by Richard Colla.

Richard is the, believe his title is like CEO

and President of Isti and, uh, A SCD.

And, um, anyway, they created,

or he worked on the profile of an AI ready graduate.

Um, so that's an interesting one to just take a look at

and to consider as you're looking at skills

for emerging technologies.

I think you're gonna find a lot of alignment there.

He talks about, uh, really the students being synthesizers

and, uh, where they can I, uh, go through

and connect and, um, storytelling.

There's lots of different great

things in there, so check that one out.

That's very cool.

So one of the things that we're, um,

we are also working on at Mount Vernon is, um,

we have a consulting side of our school.

Um, so we have of course the day school

and we have our online school, um,

and then we have our consulting arm

and we live all, all sorts of versions of that.

And one of the things that we've been struggling with is

creating experiences for the online students

that will support the work that the,

the day school students do.

So that there's this sort of seamless movement.

So let's just say a kid, um, was taking classes

and then wanted to be able to, uh, double up maybe on math

and take a match class online at the same time.

And so trying to keep those experiences in line.

And so I was just curious if anybody else is doing anything

with online, online school, and if so, how technology

or ai either one of those is helping to support that work.

Um, I'd love some, you know, just

to hear what other folks are doing.

If, if you're doing online, um, support with your students.

Jennifer, do you know, uh, LDA Blood Flow?

The name is familiar, but I'm can't see a face in my mind.

She works, uh, so at, at her school they have like a brick

and mortar, but she's in charge of like the online arm.

And so I'd be happy to connect you guys if you're

interested in just learning more.

She's reached a grad of the A LI program

and is doing some really cool stuff. That'd

Be awesome. Yeah. Thank

you.

Um, okay, next question. 'cause we're also quiet today.

It's okay. It's summertime.

You don't have to be, you don't have to be on.

Um, and another piece that we're, we're contemplating is,

um, we do a lot of parent universities to help with

our parents learning how to use our systems

or how to learn, uh, more about, you know, whatever it is

that they're, that we feel is

important at that particular time.

And so we're, um, we're curious about maybe some

of the best ways that we could do some parent

education around ai.

Um, and, and maybe not just ai,

but how AI is a part of the systems that we currently use.

Um, for instance, um, we use tottle

and they're the AI tutors within tottle.

Um, there's the AI grading that,

uh, Cindy mentioned earlier.

Uh, and so it'd be really, I'm really curious, like,

are you guys doing intentional te parent training

around technology, specifically ai?

And if so, how does that look for your school?

Are you doing it, uh, you know,

as information that goes home?

Are you inviting them on campus?

What does that look like for you guys?

We did a parent forum last year, um, and,

and in the DMV, there was a showing of the, the name

of the movie's escaping me,

but the, it was an AI movie that came out last year.

Um, it'll come to me anyway, they did a, a showing of that

and our PTA

or whatever we call that here, um, I can't remember.

Um, sorry, my brain is really fried today.

I've been doing policy documents for like the past two days

and I can't see straight.

But anyway, um, so I did a, a parent form around that.

I had two of them actually, where parents were able

to come in and ask questions

and we were able to talk about like what,

what things they were curious

about and what they wanted to learn.

And so my hope is then that this year we'll work

with our parents association to then do some, um,

either asynchronous classes, which I haven't quite worked

through that yet, or just some online forums for them

to join and, and to ask questions for me

to show them how to do a few things.

Because we have a really wide range of tech executives

who are actually working in AI to people who are,

oh, this is really scary.

I don't ever wanna touch it. So

In your forms, are they led by you

or are they led by somebody else in the school?

What does that look like? They're

Led by me, but it's sponsored by our parent association.

So it's president of the PTA who reached out to me,

and she starts it as a PTA meeting,

and then I come in and do the form.

Everything is online because we're a boarding school,

so we're international.

Um, and so people need to be able

to join from all over the world, so it's all online.

That's awesome. Any,

oh, that's a really great idea.

Showcases of student, student and teacher work.

Like, ha have you done that before?

A showcase of teachers, teacher work to parents? Vinny?

We have, uh, a little bit not in, in other areas,

not necessarily ai.

And so we, this year we are launching our

center for stem, which is the third

of our three new centers, uh, the first being the Center

for Leadership, entrepreneurship

and Finance, um, as well as, uh, wellbeing

and success is the second.

And so we're cross

doing some cross programming with them as well as just STEM

and AI only, uh, within that particular context.

And so do the, do the students

and teachers present live

to the parents or how does that work?

That's correct. We've done that in

through a science symposium that we've done, um, each

of the last, what, four year, three years.

Um, with a little bit of the AI work.

We're just putting some more formality

and tying it together with these new areas

that we have identified and been putting together.

That's really awesome. Love that.

Me too. I'm, I'm thinking how that could look.

Uh, you know, I'm thinking, I, I was an IB teacher for years

and I love the showcases and, uh, of learning.

And so I'm thinking, wow, how could we really showcase

what our teachers are doing for parents so

that they could see just how incredible

and how much work they are are putting into this thought

into the thought of AI and technology.

That's really awesome. I would love to see it.

Um, and, and then steal your ideas after that.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I wonder if we could have some kind of like showcase,

like we do some of this during the AI workshop,

but it would be cool if we had just like a informal,

basically what Vinny was just talking about,

but like for other schools.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

That's really cool.

Um, I don't know if anyone else is, is having a little bit

of, um, angst around this,

but as the tools are coming in, we're having a bit

of a hard time, uh, managing the requests for new tools,

vetting these new tools, um, curating these resources, uh,

in a way that is effective for teachers

and transparent for teachers.

You know, we get, can I have this, can I have that,

can we use this here or that?

And, um, it, it seems to be growing.

Last year was manageable, this year's already started.

And so I'm just curious if anyone else is looking to, um,

how you're curating your resources for teachers,

or if you are, or if you're, um,

do you have a team that helps you vet?

What does that look like for your school when teachers are,

are just constantly asking for, Hey, can we have this?

Or, Hey, can we have that? What

does that look like for you guys?

I just had, go for it. No, sorry. It's okay.

Uh, pony Frontier was on my podcast.

Have you guys read his book or seen his book?

Such a cool guy. Um,

and he shared his framework

that he like outlined for doing that.

And he says it's like three steps, fidelity, transparency,

explainability, and

that whoever the stakeholder is who's requesting the tool.

So like Fidelity, how, how well does this align

to our school, this value to our curriculum,

to those things.

Transparency, like what's the chain of command?

Where's the human in the loop?

And then explainability that you can

like justify the AI's output.

And I thought that was just really cool language

that you could use with families, with teachers, like,

I don't know, across the board to kind of

give transparency to that process.

I, I like that the, the explainability, right?

Anybody can, as long

as we can tell them the why they're usually on board,

even if they don't agree.

Um, but I, I'm super curious about this because,

and I'm, I'm struggling with, um, just the volume right now.

I think it, it is just, there's so much coming in.

Um, and,

and again, you know, everyone's looking at the shiny new

tools and they want to try that,

but hey, there's a membership for this one,

or this one's free for 30 days.

And, um, and so managing all of

that without stifling anyone's creativity and,

and honoring their autonomy, um,

but still vetting these sources

and making sure that, you know, there's a level

of data privacy and security around them, um,

that we can live with.

And do we have redundant systems?

It's very interesting right now, um,

yeah, to be able to do that,

That, that's similar kind of thing with us as well.

So, um, we, uh, at our school we created,

it is just a Google form that, uh, teachers

or the head of the, the, the department would fill outs

and then, um, myself as the director at it

and the ed tech director will look at the request

and, um, just see what, uh, what's required, uh, at first,

and whether it's the cost

or data privacy, security, uh,

if we already have something in place that's very similar,

um, the ed tech director will, uh,

usually will look at it from, um, the perspective of, uh,

you know, the education rationale behind, uh, the request

and whether or not it makes sense to use

that in the classroom, um, the amount

of professional development that's required to, um,

to use it as well.

Uh, and then,

and then from there, we'll, we'll come together

and make a decision on whether or not to pursue it.

But I do agree with the fact that there are a lot of, um,

a lot of requests that come in, especially the beginning

of the school year, uh,

and especially from, um, uh, faculty members

who may have used a specific, uh,

software tool at a previous school

and they want to use it here as well.

Um, so we kind of are we, we, we do, I, for me,

like I do find that I need to pump the brakes

and a little bit for the people.

I kind of temper their, um, you know,

their enthusiasm a little bit,

but also making sure that they feel supported in a way

where, uh, we're not trying to stifle their, their, um,

their enthusiasm in any way,

but we kind of need to look at it from a perspective,

where does it meet all these, uh, requirements as well?

So for me, I would look at it from a perspective

where does it also align with this, um,

the school's privacy statement as well.

Um, and that kind of provides, for me, that kind

of provides a little bit more grounding on whether

or not we can pursue it from, um, the provi, uh,

for data privacy and security perspective.

And do you guys have like a, a way that you share

that information back out to your

Property? Yeah, right now

it's very little small,

so we just have it on a Google sheet

that we share on Vera Cross, uh, to the, to the faculty.

Um, uh, but I'm looking at tools to provide that as well.

I know there's tools online that do a lot of

that vetting process for you, uh, already.

Um, we haven't invested in that just yet,

but it might be something that we might need

to do if there are more and more requests that come in.

Yeah, so you need software too, huh?

Yeah, Maybe

Software to kind of help with the software, manage

Your software. Yeah,

Gerald, I love that.

So you've got, you know, the data privacy thing,

but also I think reminding people of the parent

and student experience.

You know, we had worked at a school where we had a set

of twins, and so they were in different classes

and all of their stuff was on different systems.

Like it was ridiculous for the parents.

They're like, wait, your homework is over here,

but you need to go over.

Like, it was so overwhelming for them to be able to even

navigate all of the different systems.

So kind of remind gently reminding people of, of

that Mike can help get 'em on your side a little bit.

Mm-hmm. Um, it's been really interesting

because I've heard more, I put this in the chat,

but I've heard more rumblings of consolidation

and people looking as the suite of tools

and all your new things that you have as they continue

to roll out more features,

people are actually looking at scaling back this year is

kind of a trend that I've been hearing

and picking up on from some of these conversations,

like these, um, an example

that I thought was interesting in an approach specific

to ai, uh, from the Mary Institute and St.

Louis Country Day School,

they are doing a bifurcated approach

that I think is just brilliant, where basically

they have a rollout

of like one standardized AI tool for their faculty.

And it was a, a more, uh, accessible tool that was easier

to learn, easier to use.

So like everybody got that tool.

And then for their select power users because of cost

and just again, feasibility here, they upgraded them

to a more of a frontier level model.

But again, it was only like this really

small handful of people.

But I thought that that was a fascinating way to like,

let your people that are, you know,

really far ahead have access to powerful models.

Um, but then let the others go and, and, and run with it.

But it's been fascinating too of all

of these different AI tools

that are now working off of the frontier models.

You may have connectivity and built into some really,

really powerful things as well.

So definitely worth examining.

I agree. We, um, one of the components, like I said,

we had to emergency uh, com, you know, it was a, we were

sunsetted with 30 days notice from our current LMS to,

and so for the last, uh, couple

of months we've been working on moving to a new LMS

and one of the things that we were considering was,

you know, when we are purchasing this very important piece

of software for our faculty, does it do more than one thing?

And so one of the components that was a requirement,

a non-negotiable for us, was having that built in ai, right?

I don't wanna have to have this tool

and then purchase another tool to do something else.

And so now we don't even really consider tools

unless, um, they are serving more than one purpose.

And so, um, which is really important for us.

Um, and I, and in that vein, something interesting happened.

So we, we, we have AI built into our systems

and we've now had a lot of pushback from teachers

who don't want to use the AI features at all.

And so it's really interesting, some

of our former rock stars

that were really pushing the envelope around, um, using, uh,

AI and trying it in their classroom have now really kind

of shrunk back and are pulling back on the use

and are showing a little bit more hesitation

and resistance to using AI in the classroom.

And really not sure how I feel about that yet.

I I think I've gotta see more, um, and hear more from them.

But it was a real curious thing to me

because they were so gung-ho, they were so fascinated by it,

and they were so excited about it at the beginning

of last year, but recently toward the end of this year,

they've been really pulling back away, um,

from AI in the classroom.

So I'm anybody else seeing that?

Or is it just the few that I'm noticing,

super curious.

Why

Have, has there been any kind of trend in the answers

or just kind of like themes emerging?

Um, they, they are hesitant to use any AI feature

around grading right now.

That seems to be the part

that they're hesitant, most hesitant about.

Um, and we had a, a strong push.

They still, uh, like the AI tutors,

but they are very,

they're becoming more selective on how they use those.

Um, but they are very hesitant with using AI

to assess student work.

And so I don't know if it is that they just need to, um,

have more, uh, experience with it or, or what,

but that's the, that's the theme

I'm, I'm noticing right now.

So I think it's worth digging into a little bit more

to figure out where their hesitation is coming from

and if it's something that, you know, we need

to collectively address

or if there really is something here that, um,

is worthy of discussion.

So we'll see. Nobody else is having that.

I think we have, we have kind of a gamut of folks where,

um, some people are pushing and pushing

and wanting to use more AI depending on what it is

that they're doing in their classrooms.

And then we have others that are extremely hesitant

and, um, are probably grateful

that we don't have a specific policy or something in place

because they don't want to, um, go down that path.

Um, and then we have an everybody else in between as well.

So I think that it's, um, I don't know, like

for me, in speaking with our deans of academics, um,

I think they're kind of going along with

what Ashley was saying earlier,

and they are wanting to scale back

on tech that we are using.

Um, and it's, it's in it,

it's gonna be interesting this year

because we, it sounds like some of you is,

are in the same boat as some of some of you where, um,

we are creating an AI

essentially like development team to talk about

where we wanna go and how we want to incorporate things.

Um, and that was just kinda sprung on me, I think yesterday.

So, um, so it, it will be interesting to see

we're, I think as a school we've kind of waited to see

how the waters were gonna calm down and

or if they were gonna calm down

and what was gonna happen in the end.

Um, and then we're just kind of pretty hesitant with

where we're going, um, with things.

So it doesn't really give a lot of answer to your question,

but it's kind of an explanation of how we're, um,

slowly moving along.

I like that you have a whole team dedicated to that.

Who would be on that team besides you, Scott?

Oh, is that a trick question? I

Don't know.

I don't know that yet.

Sorry. Very often it's a team of like me,

hello, I'm the team, you know, so

I, I know there's gonna be others.

I just don't know who it is yet.

Gotcha. I would be curious to see, you know,

if you're gonna pull teachers

or if parents come in, things of that nature.

It'd be interesting to see.

Um, one of the other pieces that's coming up a lot from our,

our parents is the, um, is conversations around, um,

the security in ai.

And so what are we doing as a, as an institution

to provide security when students are engaging with ai.

Um, and so we've had a, we've had a lot

of parents forming their own committees, um,

and coming together to try to, Cindy's eyes got huge.

I was like, I know it's a little scary

when they do that, isn't it?

And they banned together and they

have conversations without us.

Um, but they are having conversations around

what they think is appropriate.

And some of it's been great in terms of, you know, um,

they understand like they don't want their

middle schoolers to have phones.

They don't want their, uh, their, their littlest

to have smart watches in the classroom and,

and they wanna make sure that there's a certain amount

of time dedicated to play and to non-tech.

Uh, and so it's been interesting to see parents starting to,

to become more involved around this, uh,

even though they're not necessarily heavy users themselves,

um, of, of ai.

Uh, so it's, I'm curious, is anyone else, um,

and having parents come to you or,

or having parents band together

and have, create their own committees

or anything like that with you guys?

How's that working for you?

Uh, we work with some parent committees.

Um, some parent committees want us to present,

and by us it's usually like my team as well

as the library team, just

'cause we have been in the last few years really pushing

for our digital literacy curriculum,

so at least they're trying to evolve this.

But we definitely get a share of parents who are like,

I want no tech in school.

I'm like, that's just not realistic.

You know, that's not really helping the kids be prepared.

Um, and you know, we also have the issue of like,

there's still budget teachers with PTSD from the pandemic,

and so we do get pushback in those areas,

but I think if you just tie them all to kind

of the greater theme of digital literacy

and like, this is all related

to help kids just be more prepared in our online world

where, you know, there's just constant updates

and constant misinformation.

Like, I, I think that's kind

of the approach we've been taking

that's been getting a little bit of traction.

That's great. We, um, one of our,

our parent committees is called Tech Wise.

Um, I think it's a great name.

I wish we could have used it for something else,

but they have been very instrumental in

supporting us, which has been great.

Um, and uh, part of that is, um, they

as a group are now moving up in the, they were elementary

and now they're, those parents are

now moving into the middle school.

And so, um, what we have found is

because they are getting to have so much conversation

around this with us, they're actually more supportive

of the tech decisions that we're making.

Um, and so, uh, I think it's, there's been,

there's definitely a positive spin here.

Um, but they, uh, they do need more, um,

they need more support in terms of education, uh,

of the tools that we're using.

And so, um, I think that's something that we're gonna have

to, to focus on this year is supporting our parents

and their knowledge and understanding of how we use a,

how we use AI and then where it lives in our systems.

Because right now, you know, we could say, oh,

we use this tool for this particular purpose,

but the truth of the matter is the AI

lives in all of our systems.

Um, and so having, uh, parents and,

and even our faculty understand the extensive, uh, presence

of ai, um, I think is something that we don't,

we haven't done a good job of in the past.

Um, maybe even because we, ourselves as our teams are

so kind of isolated and siloed, we don't know just

how pervasive it is.

Um, but I think that as we are essentializing,

as we are trying to streamline our systems, uh,

it's incumbent upon us to kind of help our, our folks, all

of our folks understand just how much, um, we rely on it

and the ways in which we rely on it.

Um, 'cause it's in everything. Can we,

Can we talk about, uh, digital literacy for just a second?

So you guys kind of touched on that, but I'd love to stop

and dive in and hear what are you using

to help educate your students kind of in our current world

and when, and who does it?

'cause that's been an issue that has seemed

to evolve a little bit in the, the last couple of years

of like, who owns it?

Like, do you guys have, um,

like a early morning like advisory

period or something like that?

Like where does it live in the schedule?

And then what type

of curriculum are you using to address this?

We are approaching this from three different ways.

Um, we have a ninth grade student life program

that I am one of the teachers of.

And, um, I teach, um, I teach that in the fall, um,

maybe in the spring to be determined if they're gonna allow

that or not, but we'll see.

Um, and then we have an advisory program.

Um, the hope was that I would not be an advisor this year so

that I could travel to all of the different advisories

to have small group discussions.

Um, that has not, um, come to reality.

And so what I'm doing is creating short, um, modules

that are very detailed that a teacher could run

and have some discussions about with, um, an exit ticket

so I can see what the kids are, are getting from those.

And then we also have what we call programming days.

They're like teacher work days,

but the kids still have to come in

and, um, we're gonna be doing some programming on that.

And, and I'm using a variety of different tools

and resources to build this curriculum on my

own, essentially.

So

We do A pretty extensive program.

Um, it's computer skills starting at third grade

with my colleague Dove on the call.

Uh, and then in the fourth grade,

I see the kiddos once per semester, fifth grade,

twice per semester, so four times for the year.

Sixth grade, I see them once a week, the entire grade

for the full year.

And then we pause. And then in the ninth grade,

I have a six week cycle in the spring as an attend,

as an extension of their health class into digital health.

And I touch, basically the entire spring semester

is building up, um, literacy skills, starting

with algorithms and like data collection

and data science to machine learning

and how machines are trained

and whatnot, to, um, like playing

with like machine models to like,

like a teachable machine situation.

Uh, and then we fully vest into playing with AI

and then like digest it, uh,

and then move forward into online communication and whatnot.

Very cool.

Um, we take like a bit more, um,

we do have like standalone technology and library classes,

but we do, in our upper school, we do more, um,

based on advisory as well as assemblies.

And, uh, we do a really big, um,

dive into our RUP at the beginning of the year.

'cause that's kind of like the basis of our digital

literacy, uh, I guess standards.

Um, they tie with our school values.

Um, and then we, so

multiple teachers cover digital citizenship,

so it could be like the English teachers

or it could be your homeroom teachers in lower school,

or it could be the library teachers were myself.

Uh, we did like a really big spreadsheet a few years ago

that were like, okay, who owns which.

So, um, we're still, it's still a work in progress.

There's like a lot of gaps, especially with AI work.

So people are still kind of, you know,

taking ownership of different things.

Um, curriculum wise, we do follow common sense, you know,

um, disclaimer, I don't love their curriculum.

I don't know if any of you agree.

Uh, I have really enjoyed day of ai, um,

and I've actually adapted a lot of their curriculum to,

like our advisories as well as, um, like kind

of our older audiences.

Um, yeah, everything is still, still a work in progress.

I, I like Google's digital literacy curriculum as well.

Thank you. Yeah, we, um, we are trying, we,

we definitely have computer science courses

and of course we, we are trying to have that progression

of learning from, uh, from pre-K through 12,

but what we are trying to do is integrate the digital

learning, digital learning skills, um,

and attributes in all subjects

and in all grade levels, uh, which makes it more complex,

of course, when you're trying

to develop curriculum around that.

Um, but what we have d done is, you know,

we have borrowed the best, um, from, from the,

from the experts and we have, uh, taken

what is already there and sort of, um, added it

to our curriculum where,

where it makes the most sense for it to be added.

And it's still a progress

or a work in progress for us as well.

We are struggling with a few things of, you know,

who's gonna teach that specifically.

Um, how do we ensure that it's been taught,

I think is the hardest part of that.

Um, you know, it's one thing to have a math standard

and you know, you can't go on until

that math standard has been mastered.

And, uh, but with the digital literacy skills,

it's a little bit more soft and a little bit more vague.

And so we're trying to be very intentional about, um,

you know, this skill must be taught at this level so

that we can teach this skill.

Um, but ensuring that it is taught, um, is a,

is a more difficult piece of it.

And so, um, we're,

we're still struggling with that a little bit.

I think it helps if like your, um,

senior admin make it a priority.

It's like one of your, uh, like pillars

for the next five years, you know,

I would agree with that. I

think that one of the hardest parts of all of this,

all the conversations that we've had so far are who owns it

and, uh, who's on the team,

and then how do we make sure that it comes to fruition?

And, uh, so it's, it's one thing to have, uh, a great idea

or to have a plan, but, um, you know, who's at the table

and who's, who's participating.

And then, um, you know, where's that accountability

and follow up and follow through.

I think it's really difficult.

So it looks like we just have a couple minutes left.

Anybody else have questions

that they'd like to ask of the group

I have to head out, but I would love to get a recording

of this, especially if any of you talk about kind of

what your AI committees are doing.

Thank you all.

Thanks Mimi. Yeah, so let's dive into that.

So if you have an AI committee at your school,

what are they doing this upcoming year?

What's the plan?

I could answer that. We've, um, this is Connie.

We've had an AI committee, um,

since AI really became a big deal in, was it November

of 2022?

So we started that committee in February of, um, that year,

was it whatever it was.

And I guess this is our third or fourth year.

So initially we started developing policies of, of, um, fa

for faculty and students as far as, um,

that we would involve the safety.

We, we address different things and then that was modified.

Um, and then we've launched certain tools

that our committee has

provided training for teachers on that.

And we're currently working on identifying, um, faculty

and student competencies of things that we want them

to be able to do, whether that be, um, create a prompt

or for teachers, it would be productivity

or using the tools that we own, the AI tools

that we have subscriptions of.

So that's what we've been doing.

I did have a parent group that met with me in the fall, um,

that wanted, uh, to be, wanted us to

do more AI training in the school day.

Uh, especially for the older, for the younger,

we didn't allow teachers to use, um, AI in sixth grade

and below, except with one particular safety tool

that was a tutor, the Flint, and now the title.

So only things that have a walled garden,

that's the only thing we use.

So that's some of, of what we've been doing.

I did do lead parent, uh, workshops.

I've written articles and things,

so just, just sharing that.

I don't know. We're all trying and it keeps changing.

Connie, who was on your AI committee?

Like what was, what, what did

We, yeah, we had our tech specialists on the committee

from each school.

We, not the lower ones, but more of the middle, the upper,

and then teachers who had a passion.

So our physics teacher wanted to be on the committee.

It was a volunteer thing.

Um, some, you know,

the thing about committees, sometimes people leave.

I've, I've got to, at our admin retreat, recruit a couple

of teachers from each school to make sure that we have

teachers that, um, are interested

because it does take a lot of work and research.

But that's who was on our committee.

We didn't have parents, we didn't have students.

Although we talk to students,

I think we need to add students.

Um, so I think it, you know, we're all trying to, to change

and to migrate and to, um, things keep changing.

You know, we're talking about curriculum

and we had a very concrete curriculum

and then we had turnover, and then we tried pushing in,

and then we did classes again.

So I think we just have to be flexible, uh, to make sure

that we can ensure that the students have those skills.

One thing that I wanted to ask the group, you know,

in the state of Georgia, there's now a

mandatory computer science course.

How are independent schools responding to that?

Um, do we feel increased pressure?

You know, is that a question

that you guys are thinking about?

Anybody? Just wonder, do you feel pressure, Jen?

I I do. I feel pressure.

I feel pressure, um, to have a full,

like we only offer computer science skills, speci, you know,

in the traditional sense of what that means as a class

in our upper school, you'll see elements

of computer science taught in our middle

and lower, uh, in various classes,

but there's no, uh, you know, it's not like math

that runs all the way through or a different subject.

And so I, I wonder sometimes if we

don't dedicate enough resources there, um,

or if we're only looking at, um, at the classes

as electives, as optional types of courses instead of

as part of the core, as part of what it means to,

to be a well-rounded student.

So I'm with you there.

I I'm not sure that we have a, I don't know

that we feel pressure, but I feel as an educator,

there's some pressure to, you know, to have that.

Any other questions that anyone has?

Well, y'all, I think that that wraps us up.

I want to thank Jennifer for leading us today.

You have been a fantastic moderator.

I think I, I don't know about y'all,

but I've taken like a, a whole page of notes here of,

of things that I wanna follow up in some action items.

So great job everyone.

Um, Cindy, thank you for being here

and for Todd for sponsoring us.

We appreciate the support through this workshop.

I hope you guys all have a fantastic

start of the school year.

Um, one last thing before we go.

I did wanna let you know Atlas is in the works right now

with, um, offering some additional support

around this topic.

And so we are going to be, um,

releasing coming soon some courses around ai

and this is actually in partnership with Ed three Dow.

So a lot of, you know, re from over there.

So we actually have three courses

that we're gonna be rolling out.

One is Project-Based Learning and ai.

One is Design Thinking and ai,

and Last Critical Thinking, media Literacy and ai.

So, um, those are something to keep an eye out for as again,

you're looking for support, resources,

professional development for the upcoming school year.

They're gonna be asynchronous courses

that are just available, um, anytime,

but it's gonna be a cohort of like independent school

people going through those.

So, all right everyone, well hope you have a wonderful rest

of your day and we'll talk soon.

Everybody take care. Thanks for coming.