Artificial Intelligence can help teachers be more productive, adding time back to their day by assisting with everything from lesson planning to writing recommendations and even providing curriculum development ideas.
Questions remain, though, about how to use these tools responsibly, securely and effectively. Schools, and teachers themselves, need a proactive approach to responsible AI use as they look to enhance teacher productivity.
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Evaluating and Governing AI Tools for K–12 Teachers
Responsible AI use starts with selecting the right tools.
“We’re looking for elegant, clean solutions that are very user-friendly, and Google just checked the boxes,” says Daniel Mateo, assistant superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. “It has everything in place to make sure that our users are able to use AI in a way that is very secure.”
Security is just one piece of the puzzle. It’s also important to ensure you’re buying an AI product that aligns with classroom needs.
“You need to make sure you have the voice of the teacher in those decisions around what you are considering leveraging and adopting,” says Jenny Maxwell, head of education at Superhuman (formerly Grammarly). “What are the grand challenges that district is trying to solve for, and how does any particular solution help achieve that goal?”
From there, it makes sense for schools and districts to formulate consistent governance, to ensure teachers can use the tools effectively.
“It’s really important that they evaluate their existing policies that govern ed tech tools,” says Jessica Garner, senior director for innovative learning at ISTE+ASCD. “Take a look at where those apply — where AI tools fit right in — and where they need to expand those policies.”
In a rapidly shifting AI landscape, districts may find guidelines more useful than policies.
“Guidelines can be adjusted more quickly than policy,” Garner says. “With the world of AI changing as quickly as it does, it’s helpful to be a bit more nimble.”
Types of AI Tools for Teachers and Their Benefits
As schools and districts evaluate the offerings, they’ll likely find a number of AI-driven capabilities available to enhance teacher productivity.
“AI can help teachers be more efficient by acting as a thought partner for educators and giving them back time to build meaningful relationships, offer targeted support and inspire their students’ innate curiosity,” says Jennie Magiera, global head of education impact at Google.
Here are some examples of solutions that can help teachers overcome the time challenges they face every day:
- AI lesson planning tools like those offered by Google, Microsoft and Canva can help teachers generate lesson plans based on their own classroom needs, while accounting for factors such as state standards and ISTE guidelines.
- Quizzes and tests generated by Google Gemini and Jotform, for example, can help teachers quickly create assessments that align with their classroom objectives.
- Design tools like Canva AI, Microsoft Designer and Adobe Express offer templates and other design-oriented capabilities to help teachers create engaging visuals without starting from scratch.
- Writing companion tools like Grammarly, Canva Magic Write and Google Notebook LM can help teachers clarify their thoughts and polish their writing, accelerating everything from creating emails to drafting letters of recommendation and other written communications.
In many schools, the expectation is that teachers must complete lesson planning and grading on their own time because the time available during the traditional school day is insufficient. With AI, “teachers are actually getting some of their personal time back,” Garner says.
For example, some teachers need to turn in lesson plans to their administration in a specific format. AI helps speed up that time-consuming process, enabling teachers to take the plans that they already have and to give them to the administration in the format that they need, Garner says.
Leveraging AI Responsibly in Teaching
Even as they look to take advantage of its benefits, teachers must approach AI thoughtfully to ensure they’re using it appropriately and effectively.
“Really make sure that they know and understand their school’s and their district’s policies,” Garner says. This includes knowing and understanding which tools are approved and how they are allowed to be used.
“Am I allowed to use student names in the tools? Because that’s going to vary based on the tool and what the district has agreed to with that company,” Garner says. “Am I allowed to put assessment information in there to do some analysis? Those are all questions that teachers need to be able to answer before they use the tools.”
Districts also have a role to play in prepping teachers for responsible AI use.
“The most effective way to ensure appropriate use of AI tools is to support teachers with professional learning from the beginning,” says Magiera.
Leaders can work with vendors to support teacher training. Google is a good example of this.
“We hope to empower educators through AI training — which can help them better understand our products — and communities of practice that connect them with others so they can explore how our tools can be used effectively and efficiently,” Magiera says.
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As teachers work to ensure that they and their students are using AI appropriately, they can leverage the capabilities of the AI products themselves. Grammarly, for instance, has built-in guardrails for policy enforcement. For example, imagine that the policy states that students can’t use AI to do their writing, and a student prompts the AI to create a five-paragraph essay.
“The guardrails within our tool says, ‘Hey, it sounds like you need some help. Let’s talk about how to create a great outline. Let’s talk about what your thesis might be,’” Maxwell says.
Responsible AI use also demands a level of transparency from teachers, who should communicate with their principal and with families about how they’re planning to use AI in their classroom, Garner says.
“AI is literally everywhere, and it is somewhat controversial, with people having varying opinions about it,” she says. “Whenever there’s something that could be perceived as controversial, proactive and transparent communication is the way to head that off.”
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It’s important, too, that teachers be able to measure the impacts of AI use in the classroom. They can track their own time, formally or informally, to see how new efficiencies have freed up time for them. And they can look to vendors for data on student impacts.
“On the Grammarly side, we actually work with a third-party research team who can be the conduit between the data that we see around how students are leveraging Grammarly, and then what the data says about their course performance,” Maxwell says.
At Google, meanwhile, “we worked with Digital Promise, a global nonprofit, to create a framework that could be used across the industry to guide development and assessment of ed tech tools,” Magiera says. That framework encourages teachers to use meaningful measures to define learning outcomes and to plan for iterative improvements.
By taking a proactive interest in emerging AI tools, teachers can find efficiencies across a range of tasks. Doing so will save time, allowing teachers to focus more closely on students’ learning needs while simultaneously delivering some vital work-life balance.
