Transcript
Mark Herz: This is GBH's Morning Edition. The use of AI in the classroom has been a growing and contentious discussion in public schools. Some see the technology as a useful tool for students and a way to spark creativity. Others, of course, are raising concerns about the impacts AI may have on a kid's brain development and critical thinking. To learn more about AI in the classroom, we're joined by Mendon-Upton Regional School District Superintendent Maureen Cohen, and the district's Director of Learning and Innovation, Ryan Robidoux. Good morning to you both.
Maureen Cohen: Thanks for having us.
Herz: Let's start with you, Superintendent. What is Mendon-Upton's approach to using AI, and how did you develop it?
Cohen: I think we are still in development of it, and we look at ourselves as being an innovative district, and what I'm excited about AI -- it's just the next tool in transforming education and learning for our students. And so we always approach innovative technologies like this with a way to say, “how can we amplify learning for students?” with an open mind, but also having some guardrails in the process as well.
Herz: Well, what are those guardrails?
Ryan Robidoux: Yeah, I think the guardrails for me, there's two basic ones. One is starting with student safety, so making sure that the tools that we're using with students have assigned student data-privacy agreements. So none of the data, nothing that they put into these systems is being sold off to third parties or used to retrain the systems. And the second one is just a mindset of why and how we use AI, right? It is a tool that is a collaborator. It's a facilitator. It’s a partner in teaching and learning. It's not something that you put in a prompt and it spits something back out and then voila, that's exactly what I'm going to put in turn in, or that's what I'm going to use for my lesson today, right? It's about ‘how can you use this tool as a partner’ to brainstorm, to draft, to work with you, to design something and refine those results to get what you need.
Herz: Superintendent, what do the teachers say in your district? Are they fully in line with what you're doing with AI?
Cohen: I think we -- just like any innovation, you have those that are jumping right in, who say, I'm ready, what's next? What can we do? You have that group, and I think a lot of our leaders tend to be in that group. And then you have those in the middle that are kind of dabbling and wondering, and then you're going to have those at the other end who want to see everyone else and what happens, and it's going to take them a little time to jump into that innovation. And we definitely aren't a culture that is as worried about some of these items. It's nothing that really comes up all the time, compared to what you might read in the news or hear maybe in other school districts. But I think that's because we spent a lot of time building the capacity of our teachers and we're still in that process. And I think the more you understand it, the less you fear it.
Herz: And I think one of the fears is something that Ryan was touching on. There was a recent MIT study that found that students who used AI to write SAT essays were less engaged, and they got lazier as they used AI over several months. And some of them did end up just copying and pasting from the program. I mean, how do you prevent that? How do you prevent AI from making things too easy for students?
Robidoux: I think for me, it's about those practices and mindsets of how and when we use AI, right? So how are we building the systems and structuring them? For instance, one thing we started using last year, we had teachers using Magic School and they have these rooms. So teachers can create these tools that are designed specifically for that activity. So one of them was a persuasive essay that students were writing, and this teacher provided two different tools. One was a sentence starter, and one was a writing feedback. So those tools would give students sentence starters in the persuasive writing, and also give some feedback as to what the goals of the lesson were, because we're able to give the AI exactly what the activity is looking for. Learning objectives, standards, and you can put guardrails on these with the tools that we use. You can put guardrails to say, ‘don't just give them a full essay’ or ‘do not just give them a full paragraph. Provide them feedback and have them work through refining it themselves.’ So that way it's not just a tool where they can put in what they're looking for, get back a result, paste it into the SAT or the essay. And again, it is also a practice. You can use any tool inappropriately. This is a problem we've had with computers since we started putting them in schools. We put guardrails, but we also have practices to teach students responsible use for AI. And that's really where we're at the ground point now. We have, starting in October, an AI for Teaching and Learning Cohort that I'm leading. We have over 30 teachers that are interested. And the goal is to build small pilot programs in classrooms that we will test out with classrooms this year. And hopefully we'll have a whole handful or maybe one handful of scalable ideas that we can roll out to the district next year -- whether it be tools, practices, but always with that idea of using AI as a partner and a tool for collaboration.
Herz: And Superintendent, I'm wondering, what have you learned in your district about AI?
Cohen: I love using AI. That's why I'm so glad that we were invited to talk about it. Every day you just test and experiment and try something new, and you realize that if you're using it the right way, you're able to get greater output, higher efficiency, spend more time with people, get planning done. So I use it as a partner myself, and I find that every time that I learn something new, I try to share it with our leadership team as an example, or with teachers if it’s something that could help them. And so there's lots of ways that we're just looking to say, ‘how can we level up our practices as well, in support of teaching and learning?’
Herz: Okay, Mendon Upton Regional School District Superintendent, Maureen Cohen, thank you, and Director of Learning and Innovation for the district, Ryan Robidoux, thank both.
Robidoux: Thank you very much, it was great being here.
Herz: You're listening to GBH.
The use of AI in the classroom has been a growing and contentious discussion in public schools.
Some see the technology as a useful tool for students and a way to spark creativity, while others have raised concerns about the impacts AI may have on a student’s brain development and critical thinking.
The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education issued guidance on the use of AI in schools last month, including for predictive, generative (content generation) and agentic (action-based) AI.
“AI presents exciting opportunities but also significant risks if implemented without understanding and intentionality,” the report said. “As with past waves of technology, the promise of innovation will be weighed against equity concerns, ethical implications, and system readiness.”
In the Boston area, some public school districts are already piloting AI technology, including Boston, Springfield, Fall River and the Mendon-Upton Regional School District.
Mendon-Upton Superintendent Maureen Cohen said AI is “just the next tool in transforming education and learning for our students.”
“And so we always approach innovative technologies like this with a way to say, ‘how can we amplify learning for students?’ with an open mind, but also having some guardrails in the process as well,“ she said.
The district’s Director of Learning and Innovation Ryan Robidoux said some of those guardrails include student safety, along with clear instructions for the technology. Part of that is having data-privacy agreements, but he said it’s also about agreeing on a shared mindset around AI use.
“It is a tool that is a collaborator. It’s a facilitator. It’s a partner in teaching and learning,” he said. “It’s not something that you put in a prompt and it spits something back out and then voila, that’s exactly what I’m going to turn in, or that’s what I’m going to use for my lesson today.”
A recent study from MIT’s Media Lab looked at the impacts of AI use on brain activity — suggesting that programs like ChatGPT can harm learning, especially for younger users.
The study included 54 subjects, ages 19 to 39 from the Boston area. It found students who used AI to write SAT essays were less engaged, and became more dependent on AI over several months, with some of them copying and pasting from the program by the end of the research period. Robidoux said that’s not necessarily something that’s unique to AI.
“You can use any tool inappropriately,” Robidoux said. “This is a problem we’ve had with computers since we started putting them in schools.”
He added that the programs the district is using are not designed the same way as tools like ChatGPT — mainly because the district can implement its own restrictions.
“For instance, one thing we started using last year, we had teachers using [a program called] Magic School,” he said. The program can be customized, giving a teacher two different ways to help students with a persuasive essay, for example. “One was a sentence starter, and one was writing feedback. … You can put guardrails to say, ‘don’t just give them a full essay’ or ‘do not just give them a full paragraph. Provide them feedback and have them work through refining it themselves.’”
Robidoux is leading an AI for Teaching and Learning Cohort in the district starting next month that will include 30 teachers. He said the goal is to build small pilot programs in classrooms that the district will test out with classrooms this year, to be able to roll out ”scalable ideas“ for next year.
Cohen said she loves using AI as a partner, and is excited to see how it can be used in new ways throughout the district.
“Every day you just test and experiment and try something new, and you realize that if you’re using it the right way, you’re able to get greater output, higher efficiency, spend more time with people, get planning done,” Cohen said. “And so there’s lots of ways that we’re just looking to say, ‘how can we level up our practices as well, in support of teaching and learning?’”
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