Staff meeting
Keep generative AI on the teacher's side of the desk.
Ban it and you ignore what teachers already do after hours. Put a chatbot on every student device and you pretend a fluent guessing machine is a tutor. Both dodge the only question that helps.
Prepare the lesson.
The chat box
Answers the kid.
The chat box
Who sits in front of the generative interface: the chat box, the "make me a…" panel, the thing that invents new text on demand?
The chat box is not placed yet. Press Next to start (arrow keys work too).
Same model, two jobs
"Using AI" is not one activity.
There are at least two jobs, and they fail in different ways. Same underlying technology. Opposite roles in the room.
Job one · Production
An artifact you edit
An adult who already knows the content asks for a draft structure: a worksheet skeleton, three exit tickets, a cleaner lab sheet. Students eventually see a PDF, a printed page, or a slide. Not a chat transcript.
Job two · Tutoring-by-chat
A paragraph that sounds like knowing
A student types a question into a live model and gets a finished answer in a confident voice. The model is not handing back a source the kid can argue with.
Jobs run: 0 of 2
The placement table
Pick the better default. Four times.
Treating both jobs as the same "AI policy" is how schools end up terrified of worksheets or casual about chatbots.
What this rule is not
Assistive tools a student needs under an IEP, 504, or language-access plan (read-aloud, dictation, translation) are not the same as open-ended generative chat answering content for them. This is about where the invent-on-demand interface sits. It is not a ban on accessibility.
Four failure modes
A chat window is not a gentle private tutor.
We are not allergic to AI. We are allergic to pretending kids who cannot yet reject a fluent lie should learn from one. Match each scene to the failure.
For the safety lead
A packet on a desk has a surface area. A chat thread is private, fast, and easy to hide inside a tab. Our safety posture is built around supervised rooms, not private oracles. None of that gets easier when the activity is the unsupervised conversation.
Teacher-side templates
The kids never see the chat. They see a clearer lab.
You already know tomorrow's science lesson cold. Last year's lab sheet is pasted in. Ask for structure only.
The win is not "the AI planned my unit." The win is rapid, consistent production of materials you still own. The model is a layout and remix engine. You are still the author of record.
The cascade
One slightly wrong example, photocopied for thirty kids.
These tools work best when you already know the content well enough to spot the slipped definition. Without that, the mistake gets a week's worth of layout.
The seed
1copy on your desk
Nothing has shipped. Read it before it multiplies.
Where the gut comes from
Forty hours of honest personal use teaches you what fluent wrongness feels like. That gut is what keeps a template helpful instead of contagious. You can't teach a tool you've never used.
The boring leaks
Most leaks are logistical, not dramatic.
The generative interface arrives on the kid's side of the desk without anyone deciding that was the pedagogy. Press a leak. Then close it the boring way.
The chat, while you prep.
Nothing here yet.
Older students building with AI
If your school wants older students building with AI under supervision, that is a different activity with different design constraints. It is not the same as opening live chat as the default way to finish a worksheet. Don't smuggle one inside the other. Age-appropriate access is the longer version.
One practice loop
Pick a lesson you already know cold.
Ask for structure only. Then read the draft like a hostile editor and fix the pattern, not the typo.
Nothing you type leaves this page. Paste the prompt into your own model, on a lesson you already know.
This week
Five steps
Say it out loud
One rule for the staff meeting.
Generative AI may help adults prepare materials. It should not be the live tutor answering for students, especially when they are still learning to tell a fluent sentence from a true one.
A clean test for any new tool demo: does this put the generative interface on the teacher's desk or the student's? If you can't answer, you are not ready to buy it.
Keep the chat where the prep happens. Keep the lesson where the learning happens
Read the full post on Hi, Bot How we think about safety For grown-ups Free printable library