How school leaders can respond to 3 common teacher concerns about AI

It seems like every space in education right now is full of chatter around emerging AI technologies, with some educators expressing enthusiasm and others expressing apprehension. In this moment of rapid change, it’s so important for leaders to remember that teachers are learners, too. We need to approach adult learners with a lot of choice, valuing their experience and expertise while acknowledging that leveraging AI technologies is a new field for many of them – and trying new things can feel overwhelming. 

As a digital teaching and learning specialist, part of my job has been talking to teachers through their initial experiences with AI. I provide professional learning and offer spaces where teachers can explore emerging technologies in a supportive environment. It’s inspiring to see how teachers use AI to individualize learning, but I also encounter teachers who feel reluctant or nervous about trying new tools. 

The truth is, even amid valid concerns about how AI might reshape learning, we can’t choose to ignore it indefinitely as educators. At the end of the day, the question we have to ask is not “Do we want to use AI in our teaching?” but “How is AI going to impact our students, and what do they need from us?” 

I’ve been grateful that our superintendent has responded to emerging AI technologies with questions like: “What are our solutions for this? How can we hit the ground running? What decisions can we make now instead of waiting for people to make decisions for us?”

AI is already impacting our students’ worlds. They need a skill set for the digital tools that exist in our reality. I believe that by setting a collaborative tone and meeting teachers where they are, leaders can create conditions where teachers can gain the confidence they need in order to see how AI can improve their practice and their students’ learning outcomes. Below, I’ll share a few of the concerns I often hear from educators and share supportive ways leaders like you might respond. 

3 concerns teachers are expressing about AI – and how leaders can address them: 

Teacher concern: Implementing AI tools will be too labor-intensive.

Leader response: Demonstrate how AI tools can build efficiencies into what teachers are already doing.

In my experience, the intimidation factor looms largest for teachers who feel apprehensive about AI. Teachers already have so much on their plates, and the prospect of learning about AI tools can feel like a tremendous lift.

To decrease that initial barrier, it’s helpful to demonstrate ways that AI tools seamlessly integrate with what teachers are already doing. Showing teachers the efficiencies digital tools create can shift the focus of the conversation. After I model a tool, I often hear teachers remark that AI can help them accomplish something they’re already doing more efficiently or effectively. After these demonstrations, we see teachers tap into their growth mindset and say, “I found success in a coaching cycle, so I can try this on my own, too.” 

Here are a few activities you might consider incorporating into back-to-school professional learning to help build confidence and highlight the efficiencies of AI:

• Try programming an AI tool using a specific document (like a faculty handbook) so teachers can interact with the document quicker and more efficiently.
• Ask teachers to brainstorm all the teaching tasks that comprise their normal work and highlight the distinction between direct interaction with students and other tasks. In groups, invite teachers to explore how AI tools can support preparatory and administrative tasks to free up more time for student interactions.
• In School AI, there is a Video Explorer option where students watch a video and engage with the AI about its contents. Leaders could use this with teachers by uploading a PD video (on classroom management, MTSS, RTI, etc.) and asking teachers to engage with the AI based on their learning from the video.

Teacher concern: The emergence of AI means I have to spend time and energy trying to catch students “cheating.”

Response: Shift the conversation away from the “gotcha” game and toward designing authentic assessments.

The biggest concerns I hear from teachers at the secondary level are around cheating and the risk of students leaning on AI to produce their written work. Teachers worry about the impact on student learning, and they don’t want to play a “gotcha” game every time their students turn in an assignment. 

Those concerns are valid, but I think they’re the wrong frame for this situation. The best metaphor I’ve heard for this moment is the widespread availability of the calculator, which forced math teachers to adapt. Their focus became how to uncover their students’ mathematical thinking rather than to look for the “right answers” in student work. 

The ubiquity of AI tools is forcing us to rethink authentic assessment across content areas. If information is readily available and students can fulfill a learning assignment with a quick Google search or AI prompt, are we truly assessing learning? It’s going to take work and thought to redesign the ways we assess learning, but it can feel energizing to consider how AI can help foster and facilitate the habits of mind that we want to see our students develop. How can consulting AI become a stepping stone in the learning process instead of the end goal?

Teacher concern: The universe of AI tools is too vast and overwhelming.

Response: Narrow the toolset so your entire staff reaches proficiency with a small, manageable number of AI tools.

Teachers who wade into AI in education can feel inundated with the sheer breadth of available technologies. There are hundreds of distinct tools, but they all do kind of the same things. Our approach as a district was to name our “big six” tools for professional learning. 

We let teachers know that they’re welcome to explore additional tools that could work in their classrooms, but our district solution for digital learning or blended learning will lean on these six. In our district, we have a contract with School AI as our Artificial Intelligence tool, which we chose specifically because it still keeps student data private while leveraging the benefits of artificial intelligence. We try to emphasize this fact with teachers and admin so they aren’t introducing new AI tools without fully considering data privacy. 

This makes it possible for us to ensure that all our teachers reach a basic level of proficiency and effectiveness with digital tools and then build toward more advanced skills, using these few tools really well to support students. It’s been so exciting to see how they’re incorporating AI in the classrooms.

Here’s some of what I’ve seen:

• A teacher using a programmed AI space to act as a tutor for students struggling in math. The teacher gave the AI the parameter to help the student with prompts multiple times before showing them how to answer the question.
• A teacher supporting multilingual learners with AI. A teacher uses AI to create rubrics using the WIDA scale for our multilingual learners. The teacher also creates a space where students can interact with their chosen language, typing directly in their native language or using the speech-to-text function. We’ve found that students are more likely to ask the AI tutor simple questions that they might be too embarrassed to share aloud, like “What does _____ mean?” or “How do I say _____?”
• A teacher using AI as a troubleshooting tool to come up with formulas in Google Sheets for better data analysis and visualization.

The key to moving forward together is communicating consistency and support to all teachers. We need to create scaffolded opportunities for every teacher to level up – not just proactive users. As teachers build confidence and experience using AI with their students, I believe the conversations about its opportunities and challenges will become more complex and nuanced, and I look forward to seeing where school leaders take this tool.