Is Artificial Intelligence coming for your children’s schools or here to assist?
The director of innovation and fine arts for Hamilton County Schools knows something about that, and he shared his thoughts during an episode of CH-AI Brews, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga student-led podcast for the University’s AI Initiative.
“My generation’s first interaction with AI comes from The Terminator movies, where AI has taken over the world, but our students are ready to cannonball into AI,” said Grant Knowles, also a parent of middle and elementary school students. “As digital natives, (AI) was something they felt kind of inherently comfortable with, whereas there’s been a little bit uncertainty and discomfort with some of the teachers.”
In 2024, the Tennessee legislature acted to require K-12 public schools to have a policy in place pertaining to AI. Knowles and his team have “a fully board-approved policy and that goes through the recommendation process from us as the district and then it’s the Hamilton County School Board. They are the folks who then vote on that and pass it, so we do have a fully active, approved AI policy.”
Knowles said the Hamilton County Schools Office of Innovation’s design principles serve as a filter in the progression AI has initiated. First, the emphasis is on ensuring the use of AI is equitable.
“Not just for the students who are getting further ahead, but really looking intentionally and by design to be able to help close gaps, personalize education, mentoring, things like that,” Knowqles said. He added that he believes AI gives education a chance to catch up in areas that don’t get the attention they deserve.
“I want to be really clear: We’re not looking to replace teachers with AI. What we want to do is try to make sure that the teachers get to steer more into their strengths as teachers and less on the administrative piece,” Knowles said.
Contrary to a concern among some that AI will encourage laziness among students who will harness its creativity more than their own, Knowles said the Office of Innovation seeks “to use AI as a tool to increase creativity and originality, not to replace that.”
Protecting staff and student data also is a priority.
“To be clear, we’re steering into a lot of things that are already in place, like FERPA (federal education rights and privacy act) rights and things like that,” Knowles said. “We just want to make sure that no identifying information for students or teachers gets put out into the broader internet and world.”
Knowles said he also aims to incorporate AI in a way that will serve teachers, not limit them.
“What we’re trying to do is get more information to teachers faster so they can respond to student needs in a more personalized way,” enabling more personalization in the classroom, he said. “We have a whole department that’s dedicated to gap closure, and so they really support a lot of the students who need a little bit of additional instruction.
“They’ve steered into an AI-driven tutoring tool that helps provide personalized leveling for students. You can see the teacher acting as a facilitator and that platform allows the teacher to get quick feedback and be able to connect with students on a faster, more personalized level.”
Plans also include an initiative to create a sense of engagement with the community with AI-led translation, whether through voice-to-voice interaction or with videos. Knowles said this aspect of AI can greatly improve relationships between teachers and students, but only if teachers are equipped with the right AI skills and knowledge.
“Your job is not going to be replaced by AI; however, the person that can use AI and leverage it really well to be four or five times more effective is a person that’s going to be most competitive,” he said. “What I think is the most important piece here is to be mindful as teachers that we need to be lifelong learners as well.”
Knowles said information shared within the school system has taken into account the concern among some about AI-initiated change.
“The communication we’ve shared from the very first is we want to make sure we’re safeguarding our students. That’s first and foremost for us,” said Knowles, also a former classroom teacher. “I always said to my students in the classroom, ‘My No. 1 job is to keep you safe, to make sure you’re learning, but safety comes first.’ ”
Listen to the entire CH-AI Brews episode featuring Knowles in conversation with UTC’s Daniel Duggin, a UTC computer science graduate student, on Spotify, where you can also follow the series. CH-AI Brews also is on Apple podcasts, and excerpts of season 2 episodes air on WUTC-FM 88.1 on Mondays.