Session Number Th1-01-In

Th1-01-In Salon A/B 9:00 am - 9:50 am

Struggle or Barrier? Three Ways to Use AI Without Losing the Learning (70) Kristina Peterson, Secondary English, Exeter High School

*  Level: Beginner

Explore three ways your students can use generative AI---as thought partner, research partner, and writing partner---without handing over the thinking we actually want them to do. In this hands-on workshop, experience classroom strategies as a learner first, then adapt one for your own students, content area, or role. Real examples from a high school writing workshop show what has worked, what has not and where the answers still are not simple. You also hear from Sloane, a high school student with dyslexia, who uses AI not to replace her thinking but to remove barriers that have historically made that thinking harder for others to see. Her experience raises the question at the center of this session: when does AI remove productive struggle and when does it remove a barrier to productive struggle? This is NOT a session about writing the perfect AI policy or collecting the newest tools. It is an invitation to decide what learning we want to protect, what barriers technology might help us remove, and how we teach students to make those calls alongside us. Bring a device and one lesson you already teach. Leave with a framework, classroom-ready strategies, and something you can use the next day. No prior AI experience needed.