AI for Teachers

Eight lessons for schoolteachers anywhere who now have to teach and use AI, usually without training. How to explain it to a class that asks hard questions, plan lessons without handing over your judgement, build worksheets and differentiated versions that actually differentiate, mark without being unfair, handle AI-written homework when detectors do not work, redesign the assignments that matter, teach students to use it honestly, and run all of it with chalk when the power is out.

1. 1Explaining AI to a class that argues back7 minIt predicts likely next words from human writing, so sounding right and being right come apart.
2. 2Planning with AI, keeping the judgement8 minAI supplies breadth; you supply the class. Ask it for misconceptions, not for whole lesson plans.
3. 3Worksheets, and three versions of them8 minName the axis — support, representation, extension — or you get dilution, and always work the sheet yourself.
4. 4Marking: what a machine cannot fairly judge9 minA machine can give feedback; a grade you cannot explain to a parent is not a grade.
5. 5Why detectors fail, and what to do instead9 minDetectors flag careful second-language writing as AI; use process evidence and conversation instead.
6. 6Assignments AI cannot do for you8 minDifficulty does not stop AI; specificity to your room, your week and your students does.
7. 7Teaching students to use it honestly9 minSet a permitted level per task and require one line of disclosure; bans only make use invisible.
8. 8An AI lesson with no screen and no power9 minThe mechanism — prediction, confident error, learned from us — can be taught with chalk and voices.