Students are hard at work in Barbie Wigen’s sixth-grade math class, trying to teach a virtual partner how to solve an equation. Texting through a chat window on their computers, Wigen’s students tap out instructions on how they would approach the problem, and they answer questions and offer encouragement to their partners, some of whom express a lack of confidence in their math abilities.
The students are working on a learning platform called ALTERMath, developed at the University of Florida. The idea behind ALTERMath is that students will learn math more deeply if they can teach others how to do it. Ultimately, the goal is for the students to improve their math skills and boost their achievement levels.
“One of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to another person,” Wigen said. “If you can show how your brain is thinking through a problem, then that’s really the next level of learning.”
Asking students to tutor others as a strategy to advance their own learning may not sound like a radical idea. However, the tutoring that’s occurring in Wigen’s classroom outside of Orlando is noteworthy, not because it’s happening, but because of how it’s happening and who is being tutored.
The students on the receiving end of the tutoring aren’t students at all – they’re AI-powered chatbots complete with computer-generated avatars that respond, act, and sound like typical kids struggling with a math assignment. It’s the job of Wigen’s students to walk the chatbots through the equation to the correct answer.
When artificial intelligence made the leap from science fiction to everyday life in late 2022, schools and classrooms were among the first to wrestle with the new technology. Out of fear that it would lead to widespread cheating and plagiarism, many school districts – including New York City, the nation’s largest – banned AI completely. Districts have since eased or reversed those rules, but debates still rage as to whether or not AI should be allowed in schools, and if so, what limits should be placed on its use.
But three years into the age of AI in schools, a large majority of parents remain unaware of how the technology is being integrated into local classrooms. A September 2024 poll by Morning Consult found that 81 percent of parents either don’t believe or are not sure that AI is even part of their children’s education. For those parents, skeptical educators, and leery policymakers, Wigen’s math class offers a window into what AI in the classroom looks like.
“The [platform] takes on the characteristics of people – their strengths and weaknesses – and the students talk to it, just like you and I are talking,” Wigen said.
Three years into the age of AI in schools, a large majority of parents remain unaware of how the technology is being integrated into local classrooms. A September 2024 poll by Morning Consult found that 81 percent of parents either don’t believe or are not sure that AI is even part of their children’s education.
A report from RAND in February 2025 found that only 25 percent of surveyed teachers reported using AI tools for instructional planning or teaching. Educators in high-poverty schools were less likely to use AI than those in more affluent schools.
And while other reports show that the number of teachers using AI is growing, a large swath of educators are skeptical about its impact in the classroom. A survey by Pew Research published in May 2024 found that a majority of teachers “are uncertain about or see downsides to the general use of AI tools in K-12 education.” That survey also determined that one in four teachers felt that “using AI tools in K-12 education does more harm than good.”
For teachers who are experimenting with AI or using it with students, what does that look like? Are students and parents aware of it? Do teachers find that the benefits outweigh the risks?
Interviews with more than a dozen teachers who are using AI platforms reveal three distinct ways the technology is either making their jobs easier or enhancing student performance. First, these teachers use AI as a personalized teaching assistant that helps them plan lessons, brainstorm classroom activities, produce learning materials, and provide students with feedback on certain types of assignments. Second, they use it to make variations of their lessons that will suit their students’ differing abilities and skills. Lastly, they use AI as a tool to help build student confidence and engagement in the classroom, a key to deeper learning.
“This is the progression of technology, and I’m okay with it, and I’m not a techie – I had to have my students help me set up my new iPhone,” Wigen said. “When students are motivated and engaged like they are, it makes my life as a teacher so much easier.”
AI Helps Teachers Reclaim Their Time, Creativity
Many teachers describe AI as a tool that saves time, enhances efficiency, and helps them individualize instruction. Platforms with built-in AI can make it easier to tailor materials to student interests and needs, assist in lesson planning, and even generate new resources almost instantly. Teachers say this lets them focus more on teaching and connecting with students.
Sally Hubbard is a middle school math teacher at Westlake Charter School in Sacramento. Throughout her 20-year career, she has seen it all as a classroom teacher, an administrator, and a trainer-of-teachers. She said AI has the teaching profession feeling like it is “right on the edge of a massive change.”
For Hubbard, one of the biggest benefits of using AI has been its ability to help her quickly assess student work and provide feedback. She uses the learning platform OKO to support her traditional classroom instruction.
The OKO platform is designed to help teachers use small-group learning, one of the most effective ways to differentiate instruction among students with varying skill levels. However, small-group work is difficult to implement because of the time commitment it takes to create different versions of the same lesson. OKO uses AI technology to facilitate small-group and student collaboration, which allows Hubbard to be more efficient with the limited time she has with her students each day.
Many teachers describe AI as a tool that saves time, enhances efficiency, and helps them individualize instruction. Platforms with built-in AI can make it easier to tailor materials to student interests and needs, assist in lesson planning, and even generate new resources almost instantly.
“They’re still working with pencil and paper,” Hubbard said. “I’m still teaching. It’s a supplement in my classroom.”
At Galena Park Independent School District in Houston, middle school ELA teacher Tyneasha Turk has noticed that her students are more engaged, motivated, and they’re writing more than ever since she started using the ThinkCERCA writing platform. The AI-powered platform delivers constructive, personalized feedback almost instantaneously.
“The feedback the students get from AI is very constructive. It highlights both strengths and areas for improvement,” Turk says. “I find myself thinking, ‘I would’ve told them the same thing.’”
Before she started using the platform, her students wrote about four full essays a year – that was about as much as she could reasonably manage, given she’s responsible for 180 students. When interviewed in March, her students were working on essay number seven, and they still had three months of school to go.
At Ruskin High School in Kansas City, Kim Sixta is nearing her third decade of teaching social studies and U.S. government. Like many veteran teachers, she sometimes struggles to make the curriculum seem relevant and exciting.
“I’ve been lecturing government for 27 years,” she said. “I have the textbook memorized. I’m always asking myself, ‘How can I teach this in a different way?’ ”
She uses AI tools like ChatGPT to help her brainstorm ideas and create lessons that will bring a contemporary perspective to a subject that hasn’t changed much in generations.
“[AI helps] give me a fresh look at different ways to work in my classroom,” Sixta said. “It’s also great for helping me take it to the next level by creating scoring guides, project plans, workshop models, and enrichment activities.”
AI Levels The Playing Field In Diverse Classrooms
For special teacher Anna Adl, AI has become an ally in her efforts to meet students where they are in classrooms that are home to a wide range of learning needs and abilities. Adl is an elementary special education program support teacher serving three schools south of Milwaukee.
Adl teaches older students with intellectual impairments. She uses a platform called AI Learners to create personalized reading, writing, and “social stories” – short narratives that teach students how to navigate unfamiliar social situations and classroom expectations.
“There are students with all kinds of different abilities and disabilities and levels of learning,” she said, “and this makes it a lot easier to differentiate the curriculum.”
AI tools like these are helping educators address long-standing challenges in differentiated instruction by expanding their capacity to support every student. For children who often get left behind, these tools can be a gateway to participation, engagement, and academic growth.
Beyond differentiation, AI Learners helps Adl streamline her lesson planning by identifying which academic standards align with her materials – a major time-saver when drafting Individualized Education Plans that are required for every special education student.
“There were days when I would spend hours just looking for the right approach,” she said, “and this will spit it out in 30 seconds.”
In Marble Falls, Texas, Courtney Williamson uses the AI-powered writing tool Short Answer with her social studies students. Her school has a high population of students who do not speak English fluently, and so writing assignments are particularly difficult for them. Short Answer has features like built-in translation and audio tools that allow those students to tackle writing work that might otherwise be beyond their abilities.
“It used to take two to three days to do [a writing] activity versus 20 minutes with Short Answer,” she said.
AI tools like these are helping educators address long-standing challenges in differentiated instruction by expanding their capacity to support every student. For children who often get left behind, these tools can be a gateway to participation, engagement, and academic growth.
Making Students Feel Seen: AI Is Boosting Student Engagement
Williamson also sees AI creating opportunities for her quiet or reluctant students to participate in engage in ways they haven’t before. The Short Answer writing platform allows students to read and anonymously rate their peers’ writing. Williamson said she’s seen students react with joy when their writing gets accolades from their classmates.
“One student literally jumped out of his chair when his peers picked his writing to be the best,” she said. “He was the type of student who never got recognized. This made him feel seen.”
“The kids are invested in it because they know their peers are going to see their writing,” she continued. “They know their peers are going to evaluate it. Even my most reluctant learners are trying.”
Back in Barbie Wigen’s math class, ALTERMath’s avatars have engaged students in ways similar to a true person-to-person interaction. She pointed to one exchange between a student, Avery, and the avatar the girl was tutoring.
During a chat, the avatar told Avery that it liked interior design – something Avery was passionate about.
“She was able to use her knowledge about interior design to explore math concepts like how to calculate the area of a room,” Wigen said. “That was really cool, and we all fed off of that excitement.”
The road to integrating AI in education isn’t without bumps, but educators across the country are finding in AI a fresh source of creativity and connection. They’re using it to plan better lessons and spark engagement with their students. Technology isn’t replacing good teaching – it’s enhancing it. And perhaps most importantly, it’s helping teachers reach students who are too often overlooked.
Kent Fischer
Director of Strategic Communications