September 15, 2025
By Aleta Margolis, Founder and President
Listen to this week’s Hooray For Monday podcast for the audio version of this week’s newsletter.
“The AI Takeover in Education is Just Getting Started”
“An AI Divide is Growing in Schools”
“ChatGPT’s Study Mode is Here. It Won’t Fix Education’s AI Problem”
These are all recent headlines (from The Atlantic, NPR, and Wired, respectively) about the looming presence of artificial intelligence in our classrooms. Whether it’s billed as a revolutionary tool teachers can use to “free up” their time from lesson-planning, or more darkly, a replacement for teachers in general, AI is making its way into schools.
Recent research out of MIT has shown that overreliance on AI may atrophy our ability to think and learn. Participants in the study who relied solely on their existing knowledge to draft an essay demonstrated stronger brain activity than their peers who used an LLM (Large Language Model). When tasked with a similar exercise and this time told to only use their brains, the LLM group continued to demonstrate weaker brain activity, pointing to the possibility that it may be tough to “go back” to brain-only thinking once LLM use is ingrained.
There are no easy answers to the question of if, when, and how to use AI platforms in the classroom. But Inspired Teachers don’t expect easy answers; instead we engage our curiosity and ask good questions.
So here goes.
In considering the use of AI—and all technology—in learning environments, ask:
What is its impact on curiosity?
What might interactions between teachers and students, and students with their peers, look like in classrooms with AI? Pictured: Inspired Teacher Ada Ezeh connecting with her PreK students at Brightwood Elementary School; Washington, DC high school students connecting during a Speak Truth seminar at MLK Library.
Whatever the science bears out in the coming months and years, we know that curiosity will fuel the thinking and learning necessary for a future in which all people can thrive.
With curiosity in mind, here are 4 questions to guide school leaders and teachers in deciding if, when, and how to integrate AI tools into schools and classrooms:
- Does this tool make things easier for students? For teachers? Is that a good thing?
- What will be gained (increased efficiency, time savings, ability to gather and analyze more data, etc.)? What will be lost (opportunity for students—and teachers—to engage in productive struggle, to puzzle through complex problems and devise, test, and refine solutions, etc.)?
- How do we ensure this tool instigates thought, and doesn’t create the illusion that there is one simple answer to complex problems?
- What processes do we have in place (or can we put into place) to include student voice in determining when and how to use AI in our school? How can we ensure students, and teachers, have ownership in decisions about AI so that we are implementing these tools with intention? How do educators ensure that we are the drivers—not the passengers—of innovation?
Curiosity is your innate ability to think critically and creatively, so you can use AI and any other tools to amplify learning, rather than diminish it.
Wishing you a week ahead fueled by curiosity.
For additional insights, resources, and information on Inspired Teaching teacher and youth programming, subscribe to the Hooray For Monday newsletter!
Hooray For Monday is an award-winning weekly publication of Center for Inspired Teaching, a social change nonprofit organization that champions the power of curiosity and is dedicated to transforming the school experience from compliance-based to engagement-based. Inspired Teaching provides transformative, improvisation-based professional learning for teachers that is 100% engaging – intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
