› For underfunded schools
AI literacy with a photocopier and 45 minutes.
Your students will spend their working lives directing, checking, and living alongside AI. They don’t need a laptop cart to start. They need a good question, a structured argument, and a teacher who doesn’t have to be an expert — so every lesson brings the expertise with it.
What you need: A printer or photocopier. One class period. No devices, no logins, no training day.
- No device per student
- No student accounts or data
- No PD day or AI background
- No purchase order
› The plan
Four steps, all free.
01 · This week
Run one debate lesson
Pick your grade band, print the teacher guide and student handouts, and run it. Background, vocabulary, timed agenda, and rubric are all in the PDF.
Pick a debate lesson →02 · This month
Keep the exit tickets
Every lesson ends in an exit ticket. A stack of those is your evidence — for your principal, your PTA, or a grant application.
See the lesson format →03 · This season
Hand after-school a full season
Request a free season bundle: ~12 sequenced sessions and a facilitator season map, delivered as a ZIP you’re licensed to copy.
Get a free season bundle →04 · Any time
Level up the adults
The 48-lesson First Principles course gives teachers and volunteers the fundamentals, one short email a day.
Start First Principles →
› By grade band
Debate lessons ready to print.
Grades 3–5
ages 8–11 · 4 lessons
Short rounds, concrete examples, lots of moving. Fairness and friendship are the live wires.
Grades 6–8
ages 11–14 · 5 lessons
Evidence enters the room. Students can hold a position they don't believe, and that's the point.
Grades 9–12
ages 14–18 · 5 lessons
Stakes are real: college, jobs, creative work, civil rights. Students can steelman, cross-examine, and write policy.
› Can't print a class set?
Get a printed set covered.
Every bundle is free to download and photocopy. If your school, library, or co-op genuinely can't run a copier for a whole class, a sponsor can cover a printed, bound set instead — either someone you already know, or someone we help find.
Have a PTA, business, or donor who can help?
Copy a link with your school and bundle filled in, and send it to them. They land on hibot.space/access/sponsor. No payment on that page — a real person follows up by email. We never email your contact for you.
Need us to look for a sponsor?
Tell us which school and bundle. We'll follow up by email when a sponsor is ready.
› What “AI-ready” means
Four skills every kid will need.
Having an AI app isn't the gap — nearly every family has a phone. The gap is knowing how these systems work and how to work with them. Every free resource here builds one of these four skills.
- Understand
- AI predicts from patterns in examples. It doesn’t know things the way people do — and that explains most of what it gets wrong.
- Direct
- Break a job into steps, ask clearly, and give the machine the right examples. Directing well is the new version of doing it yourself.
- Verify
- Fluent isn’t the same as true. Check claims, follow citations to the source, and notice when a confident answer is wrong.
- Decide
- When to use it, when not to, what data you’re handing over, and who gets hurt when a system is unfair. That call stays human.
The thinking isn’t the expensive part.
Tutors, coding academies, and prep programs sell AI readiness by the hour or the semester. The thinking underneath — how a model predicts, why it sounds sure when it’s wrong, how to check it, when to say no — fits on a sheet of paper. So we put it on paper and made it free.
Free stays free. The paid Activities Pass and the Richmond clubhouse keep the lights on. Printed class sets for schools that can’t run a copier are covered by sponsors — either one the school already knows, or one we help find.
Questions people ask
Are the lessons aligned to standards?
Each debate lesson includes a standards section in its teacher guide, so you can map it to your speaking-and-listening and digital-literacy requirements.
How long does a lesson take?
Most run one class period, about 45 minutes, with a timed agenda in the teacher guide. Formats include four corners, structured debate, Socratic seminar, and fishbowl.
Can our library or after-school program use this?
Yes. The season bundles were built for after-school programs, camps, and libraries, and they ship with a license to photocopy and give them away.
We can’t afford to print a class set. Can you help?
Printed-and-delivered class sets are a paid add-on. If you already know a PTA, business, or donor who can help, copy the invite link on this page and send them to hibot.space/access/sponsor with your school prefilled. If you don’t have someone yet, use “Request a sponsor” and we’ll look for one. Digital download and photocopy stay free either way.
Is it really free?
Yes. Some downloads ask for a grown-up’s email so we can send the file. Nothing asks for a card, and no child needs an account.
› Pass it on
Know a school, co-op, or family who needs this?
Send them the link, or print the one-pager for a front office, library desk, or PTA table.
hibot.space/access/schools