By Brett Roer, Founder & CEO of Amplify & Elevate Innovation
I was on AmpED to 11 with Rachelle Dene Poth, an educator, author, and attorney who works with schools across the country on instructional technology and AI ethics. She told me a story I keep coming back to.
She had gone into a school to deliver a three-hour training. As she walked into the room, a teacher came up beside her and said, “I just want you to know I have absolutely no intention whatsoever of using AI.”
Rachelle’s move was simple. She asked the teacher to name one challenge from her work. The teacher said: glue sticks. The kids never remember to put the caps back on. They roll across the floor. Every week she is replacing them. Rachelle opened her laptop and typed a short prompt: give me some fun ways to help young students remember to cap their glue sticks. She watched the teacher’s face as the ideas appeared.
That scene contains almost everything I want to share here about how AI lands well in a classroom. It starts with the teacher’s expertise. It starts with a real problem she carries. It starts with one meaningful task. From there, the rest of the conversation has somewhere to live.
The Meaningful Task as the Doorway In
When I sit with educators about AI, the move I keep coming back to is the meaningful task question. It sounds like this. Is there a meaningful task in your work that you would happily offload if a tool could help? Something that takes time away from the work you actually want to be doing with your students?
If the answer is no, the conversation is over. The teacher is doing what she wants to be doing and AI does not need to enter the picture. If the answer is yes, the next move is to find one. Just one. Sub plans. Email drafts. A first pass at a unit outline. Reading-level adaptation for a specific student. One task is the doorway in.
What happens next is what Rachelle’s glue stick story shows. The teacher sees the tool work on something real, in her own classroom, for a problem she actually carries. The shift from “I have no intention of using AI” to “oh, I could try this tomorrow” happens in about ninety seconds. The shift is not about the tool. It is about the recognition that AI can serve something the teacher already cares about.
What I Want Every Teacher to Know About Tool Choice
One of the moves I have learned from this kind of classroom work is how to keep it portable. Whatever AI tool a teacher first opens, the skill is transferable. If the school uses Google for Education, the same prompt works in Gemini. Microsoft district, the same prompt works in Copilot. Claude, ChatGPT, the same thinking applies.
This matters because teachers worry, reasonably, that they are committing to a specific platform or workflow. They are not. The thinking they are building, what to ask, how to give context, when to push back on the output, transfers across every tool they will ever use. The mental model belongs to them. The tools come and go.
This is also one of the reasons I built the AI Sandwich Strategy™. Three steps. The teacher brings the foundation (her expertise, her students, her context, her purpose). AI helps in the middle (drafts, expands, organizes). The teacher comes back with judgment (reads, edits, owns). The structure is the same whatever tool she opens. Her professional judgment is the differentiator at the end.
Modeling as Teaching
One of the things Rachelle named in our conversation has stuck with me. She talked about how students are watching their teachers, even when teachers do not realize they are being watched. The way an educator uses AI in front of her students teaches more than any lesson plan ever will. If she is transparent about using it, students learn that AI use is something to be open about. If she demonstrates judgment and editing, students learn that AI output is something to question and refine. If she trusts her own expertise visibly, students learn that human thinking sits at the center of the work.
The practical move I take from this is to encourage teachers to narrate their AI use out loud. “I used AI to draft this rubric, and here is the part I rewrote and why.” “I asked AI to give me three different ways to introduce this topic, and I chose the one that fits our class because.” Modeling is teaching. Teachers who let their AI use be visible give their students a complete picture of what responsible practice looks like.
Making AI Use Visible in the Work Itself
A related move I have been recommending in classroom-level work is to make AI use part of the assignment itself. The expectation goes in the assignment description. Did you use AI on this assignment? Which parts? What did it produce that you kept? What did you change? What did you reject and why?
The answers are not graded as right or wrong. They are part of the work. They make the process visible. They give the teacher a window into how each student is thinking about AI use, and they build the habit of being honest about it. The skill of articulating how you used AI and why is going to be a transferable life skill in every workplace these students walk into. The classroom is where they learn it.
Start With Conversation, Not Policy
A principle Rachelle returned to throughout our conversation is one I would put on the wall of every superintendent’s office. She said it about classroom challenges, but it applies to every level of AI work in a school: start with a conversation, not a policy.
What is the issue? What does it feel like for the people closest to it? What have we tried? What are we curious about? What would help? The answers shape the policy that actually works. The reverse, policy first and conversation second, tends to land like a directive nobody chose.
In AI work, this is the difference between guidance that teachers carry into Tuesday and guidance that lives in a binder. Conversation first.
A First Move You Can Take This Week
If you lead a building, the simplest first move I would recommend is the meaningful task one. At your next faculty meeting, in the first ten minutes, ask every teacher to think of one meaningful task in their week that takes time away from the work they actually want to do. Just name it on a sticky note. No commitment to use AI on it. Just naming it.
What you will see on the wall by the end of those ten minutes is the entry point for every educator in the building. The next conversation has somewhere to start. The teacher who said she had no intention of using AI may well leave with one idea about how she would. The teacher who is already using it has a clearer sense of where she could go next. Both move forward together.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do teachers start using AI in the classroom?
The most effective entry point I have seen is the meaningful task one. A teacher names one task in her week that takes time away from the work she actually wants to do with her students. AI is introduced as a way to help with that one task. From there, the teacher experiences AI as something that serves her work, not something layered on top of it. The doorway is one task at a time.
How should teachers model AI use for students?
Teachers model AI use by making it visible. Narrating when they used AI, what part they kept, what part they rewrote, and why. Students learn more from watching their teacher’s judgment and transparency than from any explicit lesson on AI ethics. Modeling is teaching.
How should AI use be referenced in assignments?
AI use can be part of the assignment description and part of the student’s reflection on the work. Expectations are clear up front. The student then shares which parts of the work involved AI, what they kept, what they changed, and what they rejected. The skill of articulating AI use is a transferable life skill the classroom is the right place to build.
Should districts start with policy or conversation on classroom AI?
Conversation comes first. What is the issue? What does it feel like for teachers, students, and families? What have we tried? What are we curious about? Policy that is built from those answers tends to be policy that teachers actually carry into Tuesday morning.
Bring This Work Into Your School
I partner with school districts on classroom-level AI practice that meets teachers where they are and respects the expertise they already bring.
If your district is shaping classroom AI practice this year, I would welcome the conversation: brett@aeieducation.org.
