Building Teacher Leadership Through an AI Ambassador Program

Overview

Transforming teaching and learning in large school systems is a complex, slow-moving process. Every district, school, and classroom operates within its unique context, shaped by community needs, student experiences, and local instructional priorities. Broad, top-down initiatives often struggle to account for this diversity, and nuance matters when integrating AI meaningfully into instruction.

Building authentic, sustainable change requires leadership that is rooted in context. Teacher leaders, who understand the daily realities of their classrooms and communities, are uniquely positioned to drive AI innovation in ways that are both powerful and practical. By empowering educators to lead, model, and mentor others, schools can create dynamic, distributed networks that build momentum for thoughtful AI integration, ensuring that adoption is not just about using new tools but about transforming learning for all students.

Example from the School Teams AI Collaborative

At Agua Fria Union High School District, leaders recognized that building AI capacity needed to start with those closest to the work of teaching and learning: classroom educators. To support thoughtful, site-specific AI integration, they launched an AI Ambassador Program, designed to cultivate teacher leadership across campuses and create a strong, distributed foundation for change.

They approached this work through the following steps:

Launching a Clear, Coherent AI Ambassador Program: District leaders began by defining a clear vision and purpose for the AI Ambassador role: to empower teachers as site-based leaders for AI integration. Ambassadors would be responsible for leading schoolwide planning efforts, mentoring colleagues, modeling AI-supported instruction, and contributing to districtwide AI initiatives. To align expectations and support selection, the team developed a formal application process that asked educators to reflect on their current AI usage, instructional goals, and leadership aspirations (examples below).

Collaboratively Building a Shared Vision for AI in Learning: After onboarding, ambassadors engaged in structured vision-building workshops to define how AI could transform learning in their schools. These sessions centered around big questions: How can AI help deepen learning experiences? How can it expand student agency? How do we balance innovation with responsible use? This shared vision helped anchor the program in instructional priorities, not just new technology.
Focusing on Instructional Practice and Peer Modeling: The ambassador program emphasized hands-on, practice-driven learning. Teachers explored AI’s potential through workshops on deeper learning, shared real examples of classroom applications, and collaborated to refine their approaches. The goal was not just to use AI but to reimagine how it could support inquiry, differentiation, feedback, and authentic student work.
Iterating and Expanding Opportunities for Leadership: Throughout the year, leaders treated the program as a living pilot. Ambassadors shared early wins and challenges, offering insight into what was working and where adjustments were needed. In response, the district created new pathways for leadership, offering opportunities for ambassadors to lead PD sessions, build resources, or expand site-based AI initiatives. This iterative mindset kept the program adaptive, teacher-centered, and steadily growing.

By centering teacher leadership and approaching AI innovation as a collaborative, evolving effort, Agua Fria built a foundation for meaningful, sustainable AI integration across its schools.

Applying This Strategy in Your Context

Schools and systems can build stronger, more sustainable AI integration by empowering teachers as site-based leaders. Adapting an AI Ambassador model ensures that innovation remains rooted in instructional goals, driven by educator expertise, and responsive to local needs. Leaders looking to launch similar initiatives can take the following steps:

Define Clear Roles and Purpose for Ambassadors: Start by outlining what ambassadors will do and why their leadership matters. Will they mentor peers, co-develop AI resources, lead sitewide PD sessions, or pilot new instructional models? Set clear expectations early to ensure coherence, momentum, and role clarity across sites.
Design an Inclusive and Reflective Selection Process: Develop an application or nomination process that invites a range of educator perspectives. Ask teachers to reflect on their AI experiences, leadership interests, and instructional goals. Prioritize inclusivity—ambassadors don’t need to be AI experts at the outset, but they should be committed to thoughtful, student-centered innovation.
Build a Shared Vision for AI in Teaching and Learning: Support ambassadors in co-constructing a vision for how AI can strengthen instructional practices. Center conversations on deeper learning, equity, student agency, and responsible innovation—ensuring that AI use is aligned to broader instructional goals, not just tool adoption.
Ground Exploration in Instructional Practice: Create structures for ambassadors to experiment, reflect, and share. Facilitate workshops where they explore practical strategies for using AI to scaffold inquiry, enhance feedback, support multilingual learners, and personalize instruction. Anchor all exploration in real teaching and learning examples.
Embrace an Iterative, Adaptive Mindset: Treat the first year as a pilot. Gather feedback, showcase early wins, adjust structures based on ambassador experiences, and offer differentiated leadership pathways over time. Sustainable change comes from continuous learning and adaptation, not one-time initiatives.

Schools can move beyond surface-level AI adoption toward deeper instructional transformation by centering teacher leadership and collaboration. Empowering educators as ambassadors creates dynamic practice networks, grounds innovation in the local context, and builds the capacity needed to reimagine learning for all students.

This AI-enabled strategy was developed by a member of the School Teams AI Collaborative—a partnership between Leading Educators and The Learning Accelerator (TLA). The Collaborative was developed to bring together innovative educators from schools across the country to share ideas and discover effective ways to use AI in the classroom.

Featured Artifact

Auga Fria’s AI Ambassador Onboarding Deck

This presentation launched Agua Fria’s AI Ambassador initiative, outlining goals, roles, and expectations to align... Learn More