Schools across the country are navigating AI under pressure and without a map. I help teachers, administrators, and organizations build the deep, lasting literacy they need — not just tool fluency, but critical understanding, ethical grounding, and genuine student empowerment.
"The goal isn't to keep AI out of schools — or rush it in. It's to help students, teachers, and institutions engage with it thoughtfully, critically, and on their own terms."
Real AI literacy goes far beyond learning to prompt a chatbot. It means understanding how AI works, who controls it, what it does to attention and cognition, and how students can engage with it as informed, empowered thinkers — not passive users.
What Makes This Different
Most AI training teaches people to use tools. This work builds something deeper — the understanding and judgment to navigate a rapidly changing landscape for years to come.
Every workshop, curriculum, and program is designed with one question first: how does this serve student agency, wellbeing, and long-term development?
Understanding AI's impacts — on cognition, equity, relationships, and democracy — comes before instruction on how to use any specific tool.
No off-the-shelf packages. Every engagement begins with listening: to your teachers, your students, your institutional realities, and your goals.
AI is not equally risky for all students. This work keeps a sustained focus on who bears the greatest costs — and designs accordingly.
The goal isn't fear of AI — it's the kind of clear-eyed analysis that helps schools make deliberate decisions rather than reactive ones.
The landscape will keep changing. This work helps build institutional muscle — so your school can keep making good decisions long after our engagement ends.
About
I taught Government, Philosophy, and Student Leadership for more than three decades. Those years gave me a particular kind of education — not in theory, but in how institutions actually function, how young people actually learn, and how often the gap between what schools say they value and what they actually reward shapes everything.
That experience is the foundation of this work. When AI became the thing every school was suddenly supposed to have a position on, I noticed the same patterns I'd seen with every previous technology wave: urgency without analysis, adoption without equity review, and professional development built around tools instead of people.
I believe schools can do better. The ones that will are asking harder questions — about attention, agency, student wellbeing, and what kind of thinkers they're actually trying to develop. That's where I come in.
I now work with teachers, administrators, districts, and organizations to build AI literacy that is comprehensive, critical, and genuinely centered on students. Not because AI is the enemy — but because students deserve educators who understood it deeply before they were asked to teach with it.
What Guides This Work
These aren't talking points. They're the principles that shape every workshop, curriculum, and conversation.
Every decision — about adoption, curriculum, policy — should begin with a clear-eyed look at how it affects student agency, wellbeing, and development. Not what's convenient for institutions.
AI is moving fast, and schools need to respond. But speed without deliberation produces harm. The goal is thoughtful urgency — moving with intention, not just with the current.
Every technology carries values, incentives, and power dynamics. Understanding what AI actually does — not just what it promises — is the starting point for any honest literacy program.
What AI encourages students to become matters more than what it enables them to produce today. Long-term habits of mind are the measure, not short-term task completion.
The students who can least afford cognitive dependency and surveillance are often the ones most exposed to it. Equity analysis is built in from the start — not appended at the end.
Teachers shouldn't be handed a tool and a tutorial. They deserve the full picture — how AI works, what it does to learning, and how to make genuinely informed decisions in their classrooms.
Work With Me
Every engagement starts with listening. What's the actual situation? What are teachers worried about? What are students experiencing? What does your institution need to build — not just today, but for the next five years?
Half-day, full-day, or multi-session workshops for teachers and instructional coaches. We go beyond tool training: how AI actually works, what it does to attention and cognition, how to spot institutional hype, and how to build genuine literacy into existing curricula. Participants leave with frameworks, not just tips.
For principals, curriculum directors, and district leaders navigating real institutional pressure around AI. We work through equity implications, policy development, teacher concerns, and how to build coherent institutional direction without outsourcing judgment to vendors.
A structured program that puts students at the center of their school's AI response. Students research, deliberate, and develop recommendations around AI's impact — on their learning, attention, relationships, and futures. Includes full facilitation guides, session plans, and adaptable handouts.
Custom curriculum development for schools that want to build AI literacy into their program rather than bolt it on. Drawing on a full semester-length AI Social Impact course, I help schools design units grounded in media literacy, philosophy, civic reasoning, and student inquiry.
For federal agencies, nonprofits, and corporations navigating how AI is reshaping knowledge work, team culture, and decision-making. More than a decade of facilitation informs this work — with emphasis on critical thinking, ethical leadership, and structures that preserve human judgment.
Talks for faculty meetings, conferences, and convenings that move past the usual AI debate and help audiences think more carefully about what they're actually deciding and who it affects.
How It Works
Context-first. No assumptions, no off-the-shelf packages.
We start with your specific situation — teachers, students, concerns, and goals.
I design the engagement around what you actually need, not a standard template.
Sessions are interactive, discussion-based, and built for genuine engagement.
Participants leave with frameworks and tools they can actually use — and the understanding behind them.
Writing
On AI, education, power, attention, and democratic life. Written when there's something worth saying — not on a content schedule.
We've heard the promise before: instant access, personalized learning, global connection. We know what we got. The question is whether we've actually learned anything from it.
When we outsource the beginning of thinking to AI — the wandering, the confusion, the false starts — we don't save time. We give up the part where learning actually happens.
Most school AI policies were written in response to vendor pressure, not deliberation. Understanding that distinction is where a serious institutional response begins.
The teen mental health crisis and the AI adoption wave are arriving at the same moment. That's not a coincidence — and schools are the ones who have to decide what to do about it.
The students most exposed to AI dependency and algorithmic surveillance are often the ones with the least institutional protection. Equity has to be the frame, not a footnote.
Over ten years ago, I started asking students to go a week without their devices. What they discovered — and what I learned watching them — still shapes everything I do on AI literacy.
Get notified when I publish.
No newsletter cadence. No content calendar. Just writing when I have something worth saying.
Contact
Not every inquiry becomes an engagement, and that's fine. If you're genuinely trying to think this through — and not just looking to check a box — I'd like to hear from you.
"I work with organizations that are serious about thinking carefully — not just checking a box. Come with real questions and we'll have a real conversation."
Thanks — got it. I'll read your message and respond within 48 hours if it feels like a good fit.