Across the country, school districts are developing AI guidance, investing in educator-specific platforms, and providing professional learning around responsible implementation, writes Timothy Montalvo, assistant principal at Fox Lane Middle School in Westchester, NY, in an eSchool News essay.
Teachers are moving beyond asking, “Can AI write a lesson plan?” and beginning to ask a much more meaningful question: “How can AI help me become a more effective teacher?”
Here are five ways AI can strengthen your teaching while keeping relationships—and learning—at the center.
1) Build an AI workflow, not just an AI toolbox
One of the biggest shifts over the past year is that AI is no longer a single tool or website.
Today’s educators are using different AI platforms for different purposes:
- Brainstorming lesson ideas
- Creating differentiated instructional materials
- Developing formative assessments
- Translating family communication
- Designing visuals and presentations
- Analyzing student work
- Summarizing research
- Organizing instructional resources
Rather than asking, “What’s the best AI tool?” begin asking, “What’s the best AI tool for this task?”
The goal isn’t mastering every new tool that appears. It’s building a workflow that helps you teach more intentionally and efficiently.
2) Differentiate faster—without lowering expectations
AI can now help teachers quickly create:
- Multiple reading levels of the same text
- Vocabulary supports
- Sentence stems
- Graphic organizers
- Extension activities
- Accommodations for diverse learners
- Multilingual resources
The objective isn’t to make learning easier. It’s to make learning more accessible.
When teachers spend less time recreating the same lesson five different ways, they gain more time to meet with students individually, facilitate meaningful discussions, and provide targeted support.
3) Let AI support student thinking—not replace it
Perhaps the most important evolution in AI has been the shift from simply generating answers to supporting the learning process itself.
Instead of asking students to use AI to complete assignments, encourage them to use it to deepen their thinking.
Students can ask AI to:
- Explain a difficult concept in another way
- Identify gaps in their reasoning
- Practice academic conversations
- Revise their writing
- Generate practice questions before an assessment
- Reflect on their own learning
The most powerful AI doesn’t think for students. It helps students think more deeply.
That subtle shift changes AI from a shortcut into a learning partner.
4) Make AI literacy part of every classroom
Just as we teach digital citizenship and media literacy, AI literacy has become an essential skill.
Students should learn how to:
- Write thoughtful prompts
- Recognize inaccurate or fabricated information
- Identify bias in AI-generated responses
- Verify information using reliable sources
- Acknowledge when AI has been used appropriately
- Decide when AI is helpful—and when independent thinking is the better choice
Teaching students how to think critically about AI may prove more valuable than teaching them how to use any single platform.
5) Use AI to create more time for belonging before behavior
AI can help educators reclaim valuable time by assisting with tasks such as:
- Drafting family communication
- Creating rubrics and instructional materials
- Summarizing formative assessment data
- Organizing meeting notes
- Brainstorming intervention and enrichment ideas
- Developing first drafts of newsletters or classroom updates
But saving time isn’t the goal. The real question is: What will you do with the time you get back?
Every minute AI gives back to us is another opportunity to strengthen the relationships that make everything else possible.
Use that time to greet students at the door.
Sit beside a reluctant reader.
Conference with a writer.
Celebrate a student’s growth.
Call home with good news.
Check in with the student whose behavior has suddenly changed.
Laugh with your class.
Listen before you redirect.
Those moments will never be generated by artificial intelligence.
They can only be created by a caring educator.
Technology should never make teaching less human. It should create more opportunities for the relationships that make learning possible. Before students engage with curriculum, feedback, or expectations, they need to experience belonging.
AI is at its best when it helps educators become more present—not simply more productive.
The best use of AI may simply be this: helping us spend more time being the teachers our students need us to be.
eSchool News
