For more than 10 years, KID’s approach to learning has been guided by the principle that when young people are designing, building, testing, failing, and trying again, they develop critical thinking and problem solving that no amount of instruction can produce.
This becomes especially true when applied to Artificial Intelligence (AI). For example, a student who learns how to discover bias in data develops the critical lens needed to build AI more responsibly. A student who uses AI to solve a problem in their community not only understands how the tool works, but how agency and empathy drive innovation.
The result is a world in which kids are not products of AI, but architects of it.
So, how do we get there? By supporting teachers to confidently instruct their students on how AI works and how to use it to help maximize their learning and thinking.
That’s why KID hosted AI Teacher Collaborative, a hybrid workshop with 20 teachers to think about how we teach students about AI and develop a shared framework for cultivating AI agency in students.
In the process, KID asked teachers, “What is the portrait of a student who successfully uses AI as a tool for making?” Here’s what real teachers told us about AI in their classrooms:
AI starts with the user, and instilling agency now leads to better stewards of the tool in the future.
AI is powerful, but when young people engage with AI in ways that are meaningful, have embedded context, and have opportunities for low-stakes practice, they are more likely to develop a deep understanding of the tool, and therefore take ownership of a technology that will define future career-readiness.
For example, by connecting AI to kids’ personal interests — like video games, dance, fashion, or sports — they start to see these tools as something they can shape and play with, not something reserved for experts. KID equips teachers to help students build confidence and STEM identity, helping participants see themselves as builders, not just users, of tech.
A student who understands AI also discovers the cons of it, including bias and discrimination.
Among the many concerns of how students use AI is the ethical implications, so it’s important that we teach students how to use these tools not as passive users, but as creative problem-solvers and ethical innovators.
In one semester-long project led by KID, high schoolers used tools like Teachable Machine to train image recognition models and embed them into hands-on demos, games, and displays. As they tested their models, students quickly noticed that systems trained only on their own faces often failed to recognize peers with different skin tones, hairstyles, or features. After expanding their datasets to include a broader range of features, their models become more accurate.
These firsthand experiences led to rich discussions about fairness, representation, and the critical role of training data — conversations sparked not by theory, but through making and reflection.
We must change the dialogue from ‘AI is bad’ to using it responsibly as a partner for driving change in the world.
Though headlines will draw attention to how AI can be used in the classroom for cheating or plagiarizing, completely dismissing the tool as bad will only place young people behind the curve in school, in life, and in work. We want teachers and their students to start thinking about AI as a way to generate ideas and expand their sense of possibility. From there, students begin to see themselves as makers and innovators and are prepared for whatever comes next, regardless of how the world keeps changing.
To learn more about teacher professional development or how KID can support your school, visit kid-museum.org/educators or email partnerships@kid-museum.org.
