If your students are like mine, they’ve heard about AI. They may even be experimenting with it already – asking ChatGPT to help with homework, trying to write essays, or seeing what it can “get away with.” AI is everywhere, and if we don’t guide our students toward responsible use, they’ll develop poor habits fast. That’s why I decided to intentionally teach my students how to use AI for good – not evil.
Here’s how I introduced responsible AI use in my middle school classroom:
1. We started with a brainstorm.
All of my students came into this with different levels of understanding. Some thought AI was just for cheating. Others had no idea what it could do. A few had already experimented with tools like ChatGPT or image generators.
We held a class discussion around prompts like:
- What do you already know about AI?
- What do you think AI can and can’t do?
- How could AI be helpful in school?
- What are some examples of using AI that aren’t okay, are cheating, or break a rule?
This helped me assess their understanding and gave students a safe space to ask questions and voice concerns. It also set the tone that we were going to talk about this honestly and openly.
2. We discussed real-life scenarios.
Next, we walked through different scenarios and decided together whether the use of AI was okay or not okay. For each scenario, we read it and talked about what was good use of AI, and what, if anything, crossed the line. We focused heavily on what could happen next based on the person’s actions, including the obvious given consequences, but also the natural consequences as well, like feeling more confident and less stressed.
Examples we used:
- Asking AI to summarize a long article for understanding
- Using AI to write a full essay and turning it in as your own
- Asking AI to help brainstorm a project topic
- Using AI to generate answers on a test
We talked about intent, honesty, and learning. The goal wasn’t just to catch “cheating”. It was to help students develop critical thinking around how they use tech tools.
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3. We created and signed an AI use contract.
Now that students had a clearer idea of what AI could do, we needed to set clear expectations. So, we wrote an AI use contract as a class. We defined:
- What AI is and isn’t allowed to help with
- How students must credit any use of AI
- What consequences would follow if the contract was broken
Every student had to sign it in order to use AI in class. If they chose not to sign, they agreed not to use AI at all – at school or at home – for any school-related tasks.
Having a clear, written agreement gave us a common language to refer back to. If someone crossed the line (for example, by turning in an AI-generated essay), we didn’t make it personal – we simply referred to the agreement and followed through with the consequences.
4. We practiced using AI in meaningful, guided ways.
Around the same time as we wrapped up our AI contract, students were assigned a large social studies project that would be due in eight weeks. We used this as a real-world opportunity to model positive AI use.
Here’s how we used AI:
- Brainstorming ideas: Students who felt stuck could ask AI for topic suggestions.
- Creating a timeline: We asked AI to help us break the project down into weekly tasks, and emailed the weekly plan to parents.
- Generating guiding questions: Students used AI to come up with questions to drive their research or topic outlines to help guide student research.
Just as importantly, we emphasized what AI couldn’t do:
- It couldn’t replace actual research or give reliable sources.
- It couldn’t interpret primary sources or create a fully original presentation.
- It couldn’t replace their thinking, effort, or voice.
We talked often about the why behind using AI: not to do the work for us, but to help us do the work better, meaning more efficiently, more clearly, and more creatively.
5. We reflected on our AI use.
After several weeks of incorporating AI tools into our learning, we paused to reflect:
- What worked well when using AI?
- When did it feel helpful?
- Did you ever ask AI for something you really could have done yourself?
- Did AI ever give confusing or incorrect results?
- How did using AI affect the quality of your work?
This reflection process helped reinforce the idea that AI is a tool, not a shortcut – and that it’s our responsibility to use it wisely.
Teaching students to use AI responsibly isn’t a one-time lesson. It’s an ongoing conversation. By giving students the tools, structure, and language to talk about AI use openly, we’re empowering them to navigate a world where this technology isn’t going away.
Students want to do the right thing, but they need our help understanding where the lines are and how to stay on the right side of them.
We can’t ignore AI. But we can teach students how to use it for good.
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