Local educators navigate the use of AI in classrooms

This story first appeared in STEM in Iowa 2025, an annual special section distributed in The Gazette that provides an in-depth look at how this educational pathway is having an impact in the classroom as well as in future workforce pipelines.

Artificial Intelligence tools — such as ChatGPT, Copilot and DALL-I — offer many opportunities for schools: individualized tutoring, research guidance and assistance in creating lesson plans for educators.

Many local teachers already use generative AI to create materials for their classrooms. Chris Martin, who teaches math and computer science at Marion High School, uses AI to generate answers to math and computer science problems.

“I have AI write the code,” Martin said. “Then I ask students ‘How would you write it better? What would you change?’”

But Martin’s students themselves cannot access generative AI websites on their school-issued Chromebooks. Those sites are blocked for now while the school is creating an AI policy. The goal is to make sure students use the programs ethically and safely.

As the director of technology at Marion Independent School District, Peggy Murphy was involved early in learning about integrating generative AI into schools. She attended a seminar for educators at Iowa State University in 2023, the summer after ChatGPT burst onto the scene.

“We realized then that teachers were going to need training,” she said.

However, resources supporting digital education have recently become scarce.

“Because of the HF2612 legislation [which reduced funding for Area Education Agencies], our involvement in professional learning for AI as well as our support of it in districts has slowed greatly,” said Leigh McEwan, director of communications, talent management and creative services at Grant Wood AEA, which serves seven counties in Eastern Iowa.

School districts like Marion Independent School District were left on their own to figure out how to support teachers and students as they navigated a new world that included generative AI.

In response, at Marion Independent School District, Murphy has headed up a year-long task force consisting of teachers dedicated to learning all that they could about how best to integrate generative AI into K-12 education.

Chris Martin was one of those teachers. “When she asked me, I said yes,” he said. “It was a no-brainer.” As a user of AI himself, Martin was aware of the promises and pitfalls of the tool.

The Marion task force took a collaborative approach to some of the big questions: what do we want AI in education to look like in Marion? What do our teachers need? What do our students need?

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Their goal was to refine policy surrounding the use of generative AI and to create professional development education for teachers.

The group delved into books and research on using AI in schools, and drew on teachers’ classroom experiences as they tackled the challenges and opportunities surrounding AI. The ethics of AI use was one of the topics they discussed.

“We talked about rethinking plagiarism and the boundaries of what’s plagiarism and what’s not,” Murphy said. The group discussed various scenarios involving the ethics of students using AI.

“If a student plugged a writing prompt from a teacher into AI and submitted what he got, is that cheating?” Murphy said. “If a student got stuck when writing and used AI to get some ideas for what’s next, is that cheating? Or a student wrote the essay, put it into AI for a grammar check. Is that ok?”

It turns out that the best way to handle AI plagiarism is similar to how teachers have always handled cheating: know your students’ abilities. Talk with them about their choices if something looks suspicious. Find ways for students to learn from the experience rather than only inflicting punishment. And make the boundaries for AI use clear to students.

Another important discussion for the task force was data privacy. Many teachers were unaware that AI collects input data. The essay submitted for a grammar check goes into the AI’s data set, and it doesn’t stay private.

“I pay particular close attention to student data privacy,” Murphy said. “Many teachers didn’t even consider this issue, but as a tech director, that’s something that I have to think about.”

Some schools have purchased special generative AI software designed for schools, such as Magic School, that have special privacy protections for the children who use it. But for schools which have not purchased such software, teachers need to be extra careful to be sure students’ personal information isn’t shared.

Of course, AI tools are only as good as the data they are trained on: material from the internet. Not everything on the internet is true. Plus, generative AI is notorious for “hallucinations,” when the AI perceives patterns that are nonsensical or untrue, like making up sources in a researched report.

Teachers already have experience teaching children about the importance of thinking critically about digital output.

“We compared it to early digital citizenship instruction, using the internet,” Murphy said. For years, teachers have been instructing students to check sources and not believe everything they read.

“We used to have them look up the Northwest Pacific Tree octopus,” she added. The animal doesn’t exist, but a spoof webpage for it does. “Kids would look at the site and believe it to be true. The lesson reminds them that you have to check and double-check the source to make sure it’s true.” That kind of healthy skepticism is important when kids use AI as well.

When Murphy and a colleague visited teachers all over their school district last spring, they reminded them that AI “is already everywhere.” It’s in the predictive text on your phone that completes your sentences as you type (not always accurately), and it’s in grammar-checkers that many teachers require students to use.

“We encouraged all of our teachers to dive in and experiment with it themselves,” Murphy said. Teachers are also responding well to opportunities to learn more: at the Marion Independent School District’s Summer Institute, which is well-attended by staff, 15 percent of the breakout sessions will be about AI.

Marion Independent School District’s plan is for at least three lessons on generative AI each year. Lessons geared to the ability of each grade level would cover issues such as what generative AI is, what are its limits and biases, and how to use it responsibly.

“You’ve just got to give them those experiences with AI, and talk them through it,” Martin said.

Murphy also plans to bring knowledge about generative AI to parents, perhaps at a special parent night at the schools, or in a newsletter.

Education and policies about AI will be ongoing. There are constant advances and changes in the field, and teachers will need to keep up.

“We are continuing to learn more about effective use of AI in the classroom, as well as for efficiencies to support staff in various daily tasks,” said Janelle Brouwer, superintendent of MISD.