A publication of the Association of California School Administrators

The ABC’s of AI

Remember the human when integrating AI with education

By Carola Castro, Chad Laines and Mike Lawrence | November | December 2024

As districts across the globe grapple with the tectonic shift caused by generative artificial intelligence, ABC Unified School District in Los Angeles County believes it’s the human element — the students, teachers, administrators and community members — that makes education truly meaningful. While some have responded with outright bans and focused on AI detection, ABC has instead embraced a “Human Intelligence + Artificial Intelligence” (or HI+AI) approach to combine the power of asking the right questions and leveraging human empathy while maintaining student data privacy and emphasizing ethical use of technology.

Challenge & opportunity In our AI integration journey, we’ve been careful to emphasize that just because AI can replace something doesn’t mean it should. We cannot ignore the skills that are cultivated through sound educational practices: collaboration, communication, cooperation, critical thinking, problem-solving, divergent thinking and what we like to call “cognitive struggle.” These skills are the bedrock of a well-rounded education and are often developed through human-to-human interactions that AI cannot fully replicate.

Our “HI + AI” approach, which puts human intelligence at the forefront and uses AI as a supportive tool, reflects this philosophy. Just as a rapid series of images deceives the brain into seeing a motion picture, large language model-style generative AI creates human-like responses in its results. It was therefore important that we begin our journey by developing a robust understanding of AI’s role in education, involving our teachers in extensive discussions and reflections. This culminated in a Tech Symposium that brought together over 300 educators to explore the possibilities and challenges of AI in education.

From this unflinching view, we moved into the skill-building phase, we implemented a “teach the teacher” model, leveraging the expertise of our experienced educators and empowered tech assistants. This phase was reminiscent of classroom teaching — a blend of hands-on learning, peer-to-peer teaching and real-world application. It reinforced our belief that teachers are not just content deliverers but facilitators of learning experiences that AI alone cannot provide.

Asking the right questions Central to our approach has been the dedication of our AI integration team made up of curious and skeptical teachers, technicians and administrators from across the district. We met weekly throughout this process, engaging in deep discussions about our vision for AI in education. These meetings were not just administrative check-ins, but vibrant forums where we reviewed the latest research, shared best practices and investigated how universities and even entire countries were navigating the AI landscape in education. This commitment to staying at the forefront of AI developments ensured that our strategies were informed by global perspectives and cutting-edge insights.

A crucial aspect of our strategy was the intentional empowerment of our technology assistants and tech integration leaders. We were adamant in our vision for them: “You are more than just cords and wires. You are the face of our technology team, our boots on the ground.” We invested significant time and resources in equipping them with the knowledge and skills necessary to build excitement around AI integration. Their understanding of AI platforms and district expectations became integral to fostering a positive culture around AI in our schools.

These tech assistants and leaders were tasked with a vital mission: to advocate for and assist our teachers during the critical experimentation phase. Their role went beyond technical support; they became ambassadors of innovation, helping teachers navigate the new AI landscape with confidence and enthusiasm. This approach ensured that our AI integration efforts were not just top-down directives, but a collaborative effort that involved every level of our educational community.

To support this transparent and collaborative use of AI, we introduced an AI badge system. We believe providing these badges will help both teachers and students understand the expectations around AI use and give appropriate credit for any contributions to their work. Each badge describes a different approach to the use of AI and teachers can define which type of use is appropriate for each assignment: created entirely by AI, created by AI, but modified by a human, or created by a human and modified by AI. By acknowledging AI’s role in the creative and learning process, we’re fostering a culture of honesty and ethical tech use, while also helping our students develop critical skills in sourcing and crediting information — skills that will be invaluable in their future academic and professional lives.

(Note: The badge system was created as an open-source effort by Jon Spike, a Wisconsin-based educator and CEO of Gamestorm EDU, who encouraged ABC’s use. View badges and learn more at: https://sites.google.com/gamestormedu.com/attribution-4-ai/.)

Listening & learning In the final phase of our initial journey, we recognized the importance of involving our broader community in this transformative process. We published our AI Guidance Document on the district website and initiated a series of Community Roundtable discussions with our education partners. These open forums encouraged public comment and discussion, providing us with invaluable insights from diverse perspectives. The feedback and concerns raised during these discussions have become crucial considerations as we continue to revise and refine our approach to AI integration. We welcomed representatives from our union partners into the conversation, two local county offices of education (Los Angeles County Office of Education and the neighboring Orange County Department of Education), as well as local educational leaders to learn from their own districts’ AI journeys.

A key insight that emerged from our roundtable discussions, particularly from student participants, was the value of collaborative learning when it comes to AI integration. Students shared that their best experiences with AI occurred when teachers and students were learning together, with an authentic transparency about AI use. This feedback has shaped our approach moving forward. One significant public comment encapsulates many parenting adults’ journeys in understanding the world in which their students will inhabit in the future:

“I originally was against it, but then I attended the workshop that you offered at Artesia High School and learned about it. My biggest takeaway was that it is the future. It would be as if we told people not to use the internet or scholarly articles online and instead only go to the library. It is progress, and it would do them a disservice not to embrace it. There is an art of using AI. It should be taught how to use it responsibly. Assignments should still be written or produced with the student’s voice, and information should always be verified. Tests should not have an AI option, so there is still a way to determine if learning is happening. To completely take away AI is not practical or helpful for the future.” — ABC parenting adult, June 6, 2024

This respondent begins their comment as a naysayer, but very quickly shifts to a cautious optimism with encouragement to ensure that “learning is happening.” As “Evaluation of Learning” is one of ABC Unified’s Four Pillars of Instructional Framework, our team was pleased to see this future-focused outlook from an initially skeptical member of our community. Also instructive for us was that professional learning was the key to making this shift. From this and other comments, we’ve begun planning a series of parent and community workshops to be offered through our adult school on how to leverage AI ethically, and how to guide their students in appropriate use of generative AI.

We are actively encouraging our teachers and students to work collaboratively as they integrate these powerful AI tools in the classroom. This collaborative approach not only enhances the learning experience but also helps demystify AI, making it a shared tool for exploration and discovery rather than a mysterious black box.

Build your own influencers A key strategy that helped ABC gain momentum is empowering teacher leaders to take on roles as AI champions in their own spaces. Not only do they become models of grade or subject-specific implementation, but they become a flywheel of sorts, spinning up more advocates on their campus, which activates more advocates to create and share more use cases.

By leveraging these site, department and grade level “influencers,” AI implementation picks up speed, becomes more practical and stays aligned with our vision of transparent and ethical use instead of spiraling into a futile arms race of detection, accusation and outright banning. Influencers can effectively lead the culture shift needed to keep AI use moving forward instead of retreating into fear-based restrictions that have always plagued ed tech advances in the past.

ABC has also provided these leaders opportunities to speak, share and showcase their AI-enhanced instructional practices through our Tech Symposium, Summer PL, monthly gatherings and other events inside and out of our district and will continue this uniquely human effort moving forward.

... Teachers are not just content deliverers but facilitators of learning experiences that AI alone cannot provide.

Next steps After a thorough vetting process, confirming compliance with all student data privacy requirements, we’ve adopted new AI-first solutions for both student and teacher use, as well as examining the new AI-enhanced features of solutions we already support at the district level. We’ve also provided a regularly updated list of AI-enhanced software platforms to administrators and teacher leaders. This allows for site and classroom decisions on which tools school sites would choose to use and an awareness of when and how students may encounter AI when completing assignments. Combining this with the attribution badges above, all staff can model the effective and ethical use of AI for their students, thereby de-stigmatizing it and laying the groundwork for a powerful conversation about authentic student work and proper attribution of AI collaboration.
We’ve provided specific guidance to administrators, teachers, students and parents for the 2024-25 school year and are providing templates for additions to teachers’ syllabi, and an addendum to the Responsible Use of Technology Agreement. In addition to the parent workshops above, we’re offering a regular series of professional learning opportunities for teachers, along with training for administrators and all classified staff in the fall.
We’ve even launched an ABCs of AI podcast, a student AI use website and made student stickers to affix to their planners with a dynamic QR code available so that we can adapt and change as AI continues to evolve (a suggestion from our administrator roundtables). Each of the above provides guidance, expectations and instruction on the effective and ethical use of AI in our district.
One key to our ability to rapidly adapt to AI is that our Information & Technology Department includes nearly equal halves of instructional (ed tech) and technical (IT). It is also housed within the Academic Services Division of ABC Unified, which affords us the opportunity to readily collaborate with the Elementary, Secondary, Special Education, Professional Learning, Child Development and Special Programs teams, including the Curriculum TOSAs focused on learning at all levels. By working together, we are able to provide a cohesive message to all staff, providing learning continuity during and after school and across our educational community.
Working together, this team will appropriately incorporate AI in site and district professional learning, offered both in-person and asynchronously through our online training platform and through adult school for those in our broader community. And it’s a truly community-enhanced effort. Through our team’s network of educational connections, we regularly partner with the Los Angeles and Orange County offices of education; neighboring districts; nonprofits such as CITE (California IT in Education), CUELA (the Los Angeles affiliate of Computer-Using Educators) and ISTE (the International Society of Technology in Education); and we’re a founding district member of California’s own chapter of COSN (the Consortium for School Networking).
In addition to the regular offering of professional learning, we are planning another ed tech symposium, this time to be held in January 2025 open to all ABC Unified teachers, nurses and administrators. In March, we’ll be offering an all-day training for the district’s classified staff, as they are a group rarely included in professional learning opportunities, but one that is often closest to students with a huge impact on their learning. Also in the spring, we will be hosting the district’s second annual student film festival, showcasing the power of technology (including AI) to empower student voice through storytelling. We’re in early planning stages for these events, but intend to use each as an opportunity to expand our staff and students’ use of generative AI ethically and effectively to increase not only productivity, but creativity as well. To see how ABC implemented and continues to deploy generative AI in our district, visit www.abcusd.us/ai. We will continue to tell the story and welcome feedback from our extended ACSA community.
As we move forward, we remain grounded in our core belief that the essence of learning will always be fundamentally human, with technology serving as a powerful tool to enhance and expand our capabilities, not replace them.

Carola Castro, Ed.D., is assistant superintendent of Academic Services, with ABC Unified. Chad Laines is program specialist, Instructional Technology, with ABC Unified. Mike Lawrence, is director of Information & Technology for ABC Unified.