How Teachers Use AI

Useful for plans and lessons, local educators say
When Ryan McConville wanted a fun project for his ninth grade Global History class at Haldane High School, he turned to Gemini, Google's artificial intelligence tool.
"I used it as a thought partner," said McConville, a 2003 Haldane graduate who has taught in the district since 2012. "I needed some fresh ideas."
He said he asked Gemini for five ideas for how his students could explore Diocletian's decision in 286 C.E. to divide the Roman Empire. One idea was to have students write a newspaper-style investigation of the emperor. "I had them pretend to expose the crisis of the third century and choose whether Diocletian was a hero or a traitor for splitting up ancient Rome," he said.
McConville is one of many teachers in the Highlands using artificial intelligence, or AI, for a wide range of tasks, including generating lesson ideas, reducing busywork, creating student worksheets and customizing teaching materials. That reflects a national trend: Last year, 60 percent of 2,232 public school teachers surveyed for a Gallup Poll reported using AI, with a third using it at least once a week. The most frequent AI users estimated that the technology saved them nearly six hours a week.
At the Garrison School, math teacher Michael Roman uses the tools in an online service called Goblins, which markets itself as a "math teacher cloning device." His middle school students log into the software on their school-issued Chromebooks, and a virtual teacher provides problems like: "Zoe ran 28 miles this week. Next week, she plans to run 15 percent more miles. If she does, how many miles will she run in total over the two weeks?"
When a reporter tried to answer, the virtual teacher said, "I see a 5 on the board. Where did that come from?" The virtual teacher then taught a brief lesson on percentages.
Roman, whose said his class sizes range from nine to 17 students, said he likes Goblins because it provides "real-time adaptive feedback" to each student. He reserves the tool for the end of class, after he's explained the lesson, demonstrated practice problems and done small-group work.
"It's like an exit ticket: They open up their laptops and try a few problems before they go," said Roman, who has been using the program for two years and will often use it to assign extra study. He said the students like the AI teacher that speaks in Gen Z lingo. "They either think it's fun or cringy," he said. "Either way, they're engaged."

At Haldane, Ashley Linda uses AI with students who want additional academic support. She said that she can feed a reading assignment into an AI assistant such as Brisk, a tool designed for teachers, and ask it to modify the text to match a student's reading level. She said that when she is helping a student with a subject outside her expertise, she sometimes relies on AI to get up to speed.
But Linda is wary about using AI for her 10th- and 12th-grade English students. "I'm not going to use it to generate a lesson plan or to grade student work," she said. "I don't think AI can make a better lesson than I can."
She said she is also wary of relying on a tool she wants her students to avoid. "If I want my students to answer questions, think critically and learn how to write an essay without using AI, I'm also not going to use it," said Linda, who worries about allowing young people to become even more hooked on technology. "A generation of young people has been negatively impacted by screens," she said.
Those concerns prompted at least one state lawmaker to propose regulations. Assembly Member Robert Carroll, a Democrat from Brooklyn who chairs the Committee on Libraries and Education Technology, introduced legislation in November to ban the use of AI in elementary and middle schools except for diagnostic purposes, instructional interventions for students with disabilities and administrative and planning purposes.
In Rockland County, the Suffern school district requires teachers ...