AI reminded me to lead in my classroom, not follow

By Al Rabanera, especially for CalMatters

This comment was originally posted by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Guest Comment written by

Across the country, school districts are discussing the placement of railings on artificial intelligence and drafting precautionary policies. Google simple announced a three-year partnership aims to train up to 6 million educators in AI tools, calling it its biggest education effort in two decades.

Meanwhile, teachers like me are already in the classrooms real-time decision making what AI really means for students. The larger conversation about who will shape the future of teaching made me look inward.

I didn’t realize how much free choice I had lost as a teacher in California until AI showed me what I had been missing. Not because AI was disruptive, but because it revealed something that was harder to face: how comfortable I would feel waiting. Awaiting district guidance. Approved curricula are pending. They are waiting to be told not only what to do, but also how to think.

Over time, my work shifted from lesson design to compliance. I had adopted academic programs instead of adapting them, applied decisions made elsewhere instead of exercising my professional judgment. Scripted curricula, high-stakes testing, and top-down mandates have slowly emptied the space where my professional judgment as an educator once resided.

AI did not create this model; it laid it out.

When Samantha, one of my students, asked, “When will we ever use math in real life?” the question remained.

It was the question that the culture of conformity had taught me to deflect rather than sit with. But this time I couldn’t turn it away. I knew the lesson I was teaching wasn’t landing.

The textbook examples did not reflect my students’ lives or the problems they were navigating.

I wanted them to look closely at what was happening in their own communities, engage with the material through a critical lens, and see themselves in the learning.

It was around this time that I decided to explore how AI could actually help my teaching, so I opened ChatGPT. Since AI is still new, no one holds a monopoly on expertise. For me, this created a rare opening.

I wrote what I was trying to design: a lesson based on the local context, focused on real problems and requiring students to think critically instead of passively complying.

ChatGPT offers possible lesson plan structures, topic angles, and guiding questions for consideration. I did not copy and paste his suggestions; I evaluated, revised, and shaped them into something that reflected my students and my professional judgment.

I co-designed. I chose ideas that related to my students’ voices and what was happening in the world around us. I asked what the tool generated, rejected suggestions that didn’t fit, revised drafts, and asked him to repeat.

AI sharpened my professional judgment and make my point clear. It helped me transform my rough idea into a more focused, student-centered lesson. The result: a poster project in which my students explored how math helps them understand the world around them by analyzing current events in their own communities.

I ran it by modeling the process itself, choosing a news article, explaining why it stood out to me, and showing how mathematics can deepen our understanding of it. We identified the numbers, data, and patterns embedded in the story and connected them to real math concepts. We talked about why this math matters and how it has shaped our lives.

Samantha was one of the first students to complete her poster. She chose article to prevent a projected $20 million budget deficit in Fullertonthe city where he lives and goes to school. Leaders considered raising taxes, making life there less affordable.

In Samantha’s mathematical analysis, she explored a potential 2% tax increase, charted trends over time, and questioned why low-income residents would be hit harder than others.

Mathematics was not abstract to her. Any increase in taxes or fees can directly affect her family and those around her.

This experience with AI revealed how much of my agency was latent, buried under years of compliance.

This moment is not about technology. It is about whether teachers will reclaim their role as instructional designers or wait to be told what to do next. Teachers do not need permission to lead; they have to remember how.

Samantha never again asked if math was relevant. She already knew.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.