On 27th October, I had a call with a curriculum and #AI expert who shared that the top-tier schools she works with are rejecting AI.

Yes, want their children to be AI literate.

But they also want AI to stay away from their classrooms.

This is in keeping with the New York City parent backlash against an AI-high school, recent mixed reporting on the performance of the Alpha Schools, student reactions to professors’ use of AI, and a Wall Street Journal piece on writers intentionally adding typos (I don’t even have to try for that!).

At the same time, AI is starting to feel a bit like this week’s other hot topic – the #CheesecakeFactory. It’s big, it produces products that feel the same everywhere, and we keep going back for more.

*I’m talking to you, Avocado Spring Rolls.* 🥑

Stay with me on this.

In other news this week, Teach Middle East Magazine released a survey from their recent AI Summit, which revealed that 93% of school leaders support teachers using AI, but only 73% support students using AI.  Their preferred use cases for teachers were creating lesson plans and resources, as they felt less confident using AI for uses such as giving feedback to students.

This makes sense, given workload concerns and that only 68% felt their students have been trained effectively to use AI.  The school leaders could see the value of AI, while asking for standards and support from regulators, in particular.

Like American Presidents, and the rest of us, they’re happy to go to Cheesecake Factory, but they’d like some nutritional guidance for their teams and students.

Students, on the other hand, are pretty clear that they don’t love it when they know that teachers are using AI.

There may be a good - and research-based- reason why.

Learning relationships with one another and teachers are positively associated with student performance. On the TIMSS assessment, students with a strong sense of belonging in school outperform those with a low sense of belonging by 24 points. Students who felt they could ask their teachers questions also outperformed those who relied on the internet for help.

*Access to caring, knowledgeable teachers matters too much to be a luxury.*

A supplemental AI-based app may have the knowledge to guide a child from one skill to the next, but not to do the expert glue work that facilitates transfer, sticky learning, and community.

As school leaders ask for clarity, insights related to the value of belonging, mentorship, and learning relationships - alongside concerns about cognitive offloading - should inform the nutritional guidance on when and how to use AI in schools.

PS: I am not anti-AI, just pro-good conversation. Ask me about the time I sent a Copilot email to my child's school with the wrong name. I do not have a child named Mark.OCTOBER 2026