How can teachers begin to effectively and responsibly enhance teaching and learning through implementing generative AI tools?

With the increase in generative AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini), teachers can make tasks like lesson planning, giving student feedback, and differentiating lessons more efficient. This technology has the potential to transform what teaching and learning look like, and teachers need starting points to implement it in ways that support teaching and learning.

Without guidance, AI use can undermine instructional quality. As educators begin experimenting with generative AI, gaps in guidance and limited AI literacy can lead to unintended misuse. This may result in materials misaligned with learning goals or practices that unintentionally reinforce inequities. For instance, a teacher might rely solely on AI to generate instructional materials, removing themselves and their knowledge of students from the critical evaluation process. This “set it and forget it” approach can produce resources that are overly generic, developmentally inappropriate, biased, or factually incorrect. In some cases, teachers may use AI to churn out worksheets that encourage passive learning rather than promoting student agency, critical thinking, or creativity.

Teachers are exploring generative AI, often motivated by a desire to better support students and manage workload. Given the newness of the technology, many are determining the best ways to use generative AI while still developing their understanding of the technology. This must happen while vigilantly safeguarding student data privacy and weighing acceptable and ethical use (learn more about ways to safeguard student data privacy with AI). These efforts may ultimately save educators time, but without clear alignment to instructional vision and equity, even well-intentioned use can favor administrative convenience over meaningful instructional impact.

When used well, AI can be a powerful tool to go further. It can reduce administrative burdens while also personalizing and deepening learning, expanding creative possibilities in the classroom. By freeing up time, AI allows educators to focus on building stronger relationships with students and delivering more targeted, high-impact instruction. These benefits could make the teaching profession more sustainable and help retain teachers, critical in light of ongoing turnover and a shrinking teacher pipeline. To fully realize potential, educators need accessible practice entry points for its use in their classrooms.

• K-12 education has one of the highest burnout rates by sector in the U.S. teachers spend up to 29 hours a week on non-teaching tasks (e.g., administrative work). Teachers who are frequent AI users are reporting major time savings.

• A national survey in June 2025 found that 60% of teachers used AI in the 2024-2025 school year. Those who used AI weekly for tasks such as lesson planning, instructional materials creation, and modifying materials to meet students’ needs reclaimed six hours of work per week.

Educators believe that AI has the potential to transform teacher work and learning, but they also want to make sure the teacher is kept in the loop.

As generative AI tools become more accessible, educators should focus on using them to advance meaningful, student-centered learning. Teachers can achieve this by implementing AI in alignment with their instructional goals, starting small and gradually building toward deeper instructional impact. (Note: While teachers can achieve much in their classrooms, schools, systems, and policymakers need to set enabling conditions to realize the transformative power of AI for teaching and learning. Learn more in the accompanying Conditions Problem of Practice.

The following guidance and examples come from the School Teams AI Collaborative, a partnership between The Learning Accelerator and Leading Educators that brought together ~80 innovative educators from 19 schools across the country to collaborate and surface promising ways to implement generative AI into their teaching and learning practices.

Start with Instructional Vision

AI tools are most powerful when anchored to what matters most in teaching and learning — not just what’s possible, but what’s purposeful. AI can enhance core practices like differentiation, feedback, student reflection, and formative assessment. Rather than centering AI itself, effective use should stem from a clear vision of high-quality instruction, grounded in equity, inclusivity, and learning science.

What this looks like in practice:

• Ground AI exploration in teaching goals, not the tools. Start with the why and let that guide tool selection and implementation, rather than having tools dictate how they will fit into classrooms. Consider: what competencies are students working toward, and how could AI help them demonstrate or build those skills more effectively? How might AI support personalized pathways as students progress through standards at different paces? How could AI support formative assessment and feedback aligned to our learning targets?

• Ensure alignment between AI use and broader instructional priorities. Identify the instructional priorities in your classroom, school, and/or school system (e.g., Universal Design for Learning, differentiation, project-based learning) and use AI to support these priorities. This could look like using AI to scaffold assignments for multilingual learners or provide access to adaptive feedback for students with IEPs in order to center equitable access.

Below are examples of how teachers identified the instructional goals they wanted to use generative AI to help them achieve.

Use AI to Support Administrative Tasks

To build confidence and fluency, teachers need accessible on-ramps for trying out AI tools in manageable, authentic ways. Using AI to support smaller-scale changes (such as generating sample problems or brainstorming project ideas) can help teachers move from curiosity to confidence, setting them up for bigger changes in the long run.

What this looks like in practice:

• Differentiate and maximize what technology and teachers are uniquely strong at. Start by identifying which tasks are best suited for automation versus those that benefit from human connection. AI is well-suited for repetitive, time-consuming tasks like grading or drafting feedback, while teachers are uniquely skilled at building relationships and responding to student needs. Look for opportunities that combine these strengths. For example, using AI to streamline feedback so that teachers can spend more time on 1:1 check-ins or small-group instruction.

• Align AI use with your instructional goals. Provide clear, goal-oriented guidance to AI tools to produce an output that helps achieve your instructional goals. For example, if using AI to support grading, upload a rubric and exemplary responses so the tool can model high-quality feedback. This ensures the output reinforces your learning objectives, rather than watering down or working against them.

• Review outputs from AI to verify instructional alignment and to make adjustments as needed. Always keep the humans in the loop by examining AI-generated content to ensure outputs align with your goals and meet your quality standards. AI can produce content quickly, but it’s not always accurate, appropriate, or effective on its own. Examine results critically and adjust the guidance provided to the AI if needed.

• Encourage students to evaluate and challenge AI-generated outputs. Name for students that AI may at times miss the mark, and that while you are reviewing the outputs, you may miss something. Encourage students to disagree with an output, just like they would if they disagreed with feedback or a grade a teacher provided. This also helps build students’ understanding that they should scrutinize AI’s outputs.

The strategies below highlight how teachers have used AI to help them with administrative tasks.

Use AI to Support the Creation and Implementation of Instructional Materials

AI can be a powerful tool for helping teachers efficiently create and adapt instructional materials like lesson plans, project ideas, and slideshows, especially when working with high-quality instructional materials. Rather than generating new curricula from scratch, educators can use AI to enhance the quality and comprehensiveness of existing materials.

What this looks like in practice:

• Provide the AI with additional guidance to create stronger outputs. Upload strong models and provide specific information. For example, when making contextual adjustments to a lesson from a high-quality curriculum, you may include relevant student background knowledge and interests or preferred supports and scaffolds for your multilingual learners, as well as any specific school or classroom context around pacing, timing, or student grouping.

• Treat AI-generated materials as the starting point, not the final product. Carefully review and revise what AI produces based on your expertise and knowledge of students. Use it to jumpstart ideas, then refine for instructional quality, developmental appropriateness, and responsiveness to student needs.

• Build tools to support the development and implementation of instructional materials. Schools and school systems can develop custom chatbots to help teachers create and implement instructional materials aligned to the school or system’s curriculum and instructional vision. AI should enhance, rather than replace or remix, high-quality curriculum by honoring the coherence, rigor, and pedagogical intent of the curriculum. For example, tools such as bots that help teachers pace the curriculum can be valuable supports, particularly for novice teachers still developing their pedagogical practice..

The following examples illustrate how educators, schools, and school systems have utilized AI to develop and implement instructional materials.

Teachers can explore a growing set of ways to strengthen their teaching by leveraging AI. This technology is evolving rapidly, so staying up to date can be daunting. Reviewing case studies on AI implementations in schools and classrooms can help teachers understand generative AI’s potential in teaching and learning while providing guidance on implementing these strategies in their own context. The resources below offer more examples of ways to implement generative AI in classrooms and courses.

• EdTech Insiders Generative AI: Use Cases in Education: This resource provides strategies broken up by categories of how teachers and students can use AI to support their learning. Categories are connected to research from Stanford’s Generative AI Hub.

• ISTE’s AI Courses: ISTE offers online courses for teachers of all skill levels to deepen their knowledge of AI (note: these courses have fees).

• AI for Education’s Essential Guide to AI for Educators- This free two-hour course introduces teachers to ChatGPT and guides teachers in using generative AI to support their instruction.

• Edweek’s Spotlight on AI-Driven Education: Strategies for Enhancing Teaching and Learning: This collection of articles includes ways teachers can use AI to support multilingual learners and students with IEPs.

• The United Kingdom’s Department of Education’s Use Cases of Generative AI in Education User Research Report: The report provides examples of ways schools and teachers can use generative AI.

• Stanford Generative AI for Education Hub Research Repository: This repository is aggregating research around generative AI use in preK-12 education. This includes research describing how the technology is being used in school, along with its impact.