In an Oct. 24 email to families, Head of School Tori Jueds announced plans to introduce AI education for faculty and students. According to Jueds’ email, faculty are now allowed to use AI in certain contexts, including to draft student comments and to detect AI in students’ work, while students may not use AI without express permission from their teachers.
In her email, Jueds introduced a tiered pyramid to guide GDS’ policies and educational practices as AI develops. The pyramid prioritizes teaching students and faculty about AI before allowing students to use the technology in class.
While students may not use generative AI without their teachers’ permission, faculty may use AI for certain school-related tasks provided they follow the guidelines in GDS’ AI Usage Guidebook for Employees attached in Jueds’ email. The guidebook allows teachers to use AI to assist with tasks such as drafting student feedback comments and editing letters, but it prohibits faculty from using AI to make major professional decisions, including determining student grades or evaluating employees’ performance.
Sophomore Summer Innanchai said teachers’ use of AI could “undermine student–teacher relationships” and questioned the policy’s different standards for students and faculty. “I feel like teachers should be held to the same standard as students,” Innanchai said. Innanchai said she thinks teachers should choose not to use AI to set an example for their students.
Of the 14 students interviewed by the Bit, all of them said they did not want teachers to use AI to help write feedback on student work.
Of the eight parents interviewed by the Bit, three said they did not want teachers to use AI to write comments, one said they did and four were unsure.
“[Using AI] is a slippery slope,” Joe Governski, a parent of a sixth-grader and a freshman, said. He said he was worried teachers’ use of AI would compromise the relationships between teachers and students that he values at GDS. “A majority of the comments need to be coming from the teachers knowing the kids,” Governski said.
Isabelle Von Kohorn, a parent of a freshman and senior, said she’s confident in teachers’ ability to maintain the quality of student feedback even if they use AI to write comments. “I think that the way the teachers know their students at GDS is really impressive,” Von Kohorn said. Von Kohorn said that because teachers know their students well, she trusts that they will prompt specific comments themselves and closely review the results.
Junior Karrie Hu said she didn’t think AI would do a good job of writing tailored feedback. Hu said she would prefer less frequent teacher-written comments to AI-written comments, “as long as that [teacher-written] comment is productive and genuine and of quality.”
Hu has teachers who have told her they use AI to help them draft comments and study guides for students. “It makes you wonder to what extent they’re using it,” Hu said. “That’s why there’s always mistrust.”
“I really don’t think [teachers] should be using AI to make comments on students’ work,” senior Joy Edwards said. “Especially in English class, students may be writing based on their teachers’ feedback. So I really think that it’s important that [their teacher] is the one reading it and giving comments.”
AI education is now required for all GDS teachers. Teachers must learn how AI works, its capabilities and limitations, potential biases, safety risks and its economic, environmental and ethical implications. According to Jueds’ email, administrators plan to introduce initial curricular materials for faculty in the spring and for students next fall.
The school’s new policy builds on work that the “AI Explorers”—a faculty group led by Assistant Head for Teaching and Learning Debby Previna and Director of Operations and Innovation Tim Lyons—did last school year. The group spent a year looking at the potential benefits and risks of incorporating AI into school life and presented its findings during a May in-service day, which Jueds attended. According to Jueds, she and other administrators reviewed the group’s work and accounted for how AI has developed since May to create the school’s current AI guidelines.
The Family and Student Handbook says teachers may not use AI detectors preemptively; instead, they must first assess whether there is a reasonable concern that a student has used AI without permission. Teachers may then confirm their evaluation by running the student’s work through a school-approved detection tool. The school’s currently approved AI detector is Pangram.
Jueds also outlined plans for “AI Fluency,” or learning with AI, which could involve using the technology in upper-grade classes. Jueds said the initiative would not make AI a regular presence in every class. GDS has not established a timeline for introducing AI into classes because administrators are uncertain about how the technology will evolve.
“I don’t think [the administration] has prepared my senior class to use AI post-graduation responsibly, because we haven’t really had much talk about it,” Edwards said.
Jueds’ email included an AI Philosophy and Approach document that describes GDS’ broader goals concerning AI. The document says students must understand not only how to use AI, but also how the technology may limit original thinking and risk exposing students’ personal information.
“Trying to understand the ethical side and the bias side of AI—that is something that should just be a whole class that’s taught,” Governski said.
Jueds invited parents to attend discussion sessions to discuss the school’s approach to AI, particularly its guidelines for faculty AI use. The first session is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 9 from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. in the lower/middle school library, and the second for Wednesday, Nov. 11 from 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. in the LMS cafeteria.
“GDS sees AI as part of the setting, not the main character,” Jueds wrote. “As such, it changes nothing essential about our mission, values, and educational philosophy.”
Caleb Kurtzer-Ellenbogen and Lucy Newman contributed reporting.