AI Integration in Schools: A Conversation with Dr. Kecia Ray and Dr. Neil Gupta

Note: This is part of a 7-video series with Dr. Kecia Ray in conversation with industry experts on using artificial intelligence in the classroom.

Welcome back to AI Insights: Conversations with Dr. Kecia Ray where we connect with experts in the educational technology field to stay on top of trends in artifical intelligence (AI).

In this episode Dr. Ray speaks with Dr. Neil Gupta, Superintendent of Oakwood City Schools in Ohio, recognized for his leadership in education and contributions to leadership, assessments, and coaching.

A conversation on AI integration in schools with Dr. Kecia Ray and Dr. Neil Gupta

A full transcript of the episode appears below; it has been edited for clarity.

Kecia: I am Kecia Ray and I am here with the incredible Dr. Neil Gupta, who is a superintendent extraordinaire, EdTech guru extraordinaire, and we are going to talk about AI. Neil, tell us a little bit about where you’re located now, what you’re leading, and how amazing your district is.

Neil: Absolutely. I am in my 27th year of education in the state of Ohio and in my fourth school district after a number of changes in titles, but in my second year as superintendent in Oakwood schools. It’s located outside of Dayton, Ohio. The demographics of the community—this will blow your brain—is that it’s two square miles.

Two thousand students, two square miles is the community. There’s no McDonald’s. There’s no Wendy’s. I don’t have buses. I don’t even have buses. But it’s a walking bedroom community of how they get to school. It’s the cutest thing in the world. You’ve got to come and visit on a beautiful day and the families will come together.

Very high-achieving kids. Our staff is phenomenal and really work hard every day and try to do what they can to do what’s best for kids. 

Kecia: Oh my goodness. They’re so lucky to have you, too. You’re such a visionary. Tell me now, on the technology realm, does every kid have a device?

What’s the classroom look like? 

Neil: Yes, probably like a lot of districts since COVID, we all started handing out all of the Chromebooks and things like that as a way to stay connected with our kids. And then they just stayed in their hands. We’re a one-to-one district and I’ll say that we continue to push what’s the right technology, right?

That’s the question that seems to evolve. Obviously, it’s not just about having that one device. It’s making sure that students have lots of variety of things, technology. To think about what makes sense to them in their classrooms and what prepares them for that next level.

It’s really interesting. And the funny thing is, and this is a brief aside, in the midst of this clash of the phones are due to mental health and anxiety and trying to figure out, okay, how do you still understand how to properly use technology? And we’re going to have a conversation about that when we talk about artificial intelligence, but really just how to make sure that we understand the world that our students live in and making sure that they’re prepared for it in the right ways. 

Kecia: Brilliant. I think that we’ve both been in this game for a shockingly long time. And I think COVID accelerated a lot of things, but it did it in such a way that we weren’t there to shepherd and help.

You know what I mean? Everything we’ve ever dreamed of when you think about technology being in schools and supporting learning happened during COVID without any professional technologists.

That’s why I think sometimes it gets a bad rap, because it might not have been implemented in the way where you or I were sitting there helping somebody. They were doing the best they could with the resources that they had. At the same time, not only was it accelerated in schools, but it was accelerated everywhere.

Like banks. You go to a bank today and they’re like, you don’t really need to be here. It’s a matter of time before we close this branch. Everything has just moved to this digital sphere and space and our kids are so accustomed to it. But I wonder, number one, about the balance.

We can’t live in that space all the time. It’s not really safe for our mental health and our physical health. So, how do we help them understand balance? Because sometimes those tools are so enticing. And then just understanding appropriate use of technology. Like when you probably should just use your human intelligence.

Talk a little bit about that. What are you seeing in your community? What are your feelings on balance and AI versus HI [human intelligence]? 

Neil: Yeah. I think you’re hitting the question right on. Then again, you and I have been around the block a couple of times now. We realized we can’t just run to that next thing.

I’ll be honest with you, early in my career, I really did want that new shiny thing. And I wanted to buy it. I wanted it in my classroom. I wanted it in my building. I wanted it in our district. And then the next thing comes along and then you go, okay, put that other thing down and pick up the next thing.

Then you start to realize now you just can’t keep up. And so you have to say no to things to say yes to others. Then you have to realize we’re going to make conscious decisions on what that looks like. In whatever space it is—hardware, software, the products and resources that are out there–you’ve just got to really be judicious on . . . not just investment of dollars, but what’s the investment of time? And really making sure that you’re still being in a place that’s thoughtful, and knowing that we’re going to continue to put new things out there in front of people.

But being okay to pilot things I think is important. Being okay to ramp up little pockets of things and then being okay to either widespread it or abandon it. I think that’s where we sometimes run into some troubles, is we sometimes feel like we’re on the hook. We’ve put ourselves in that situation of we’ve purchased that.

We put our eggs in this one basket and we’ve got to do this thing. Nobody wants to talk about it. That’s the thing that nobody cares about anymore. But we’ve put so much time and effort into it. And we’ve got to go in knowingly about those things which is . . . I guess I’m setting the stage on how my approach is with this artificial intelligence. We can’t take a blind eye to it.

But at the same time, we have to be careful of chasing all the “free” things that are out there because today they’re free and tomorrow they’re not. I’ll take you down a little bit of the rabbit trail. I’m in second year of superintendency, and I’m finding myself last year . . .

The excited Neil Gupta is sitting and playing with all these apps because I love to be on social media. I’m seeing all these apps come through. And then there’s this other part. Superintendent Neil Gupta is sitting in other meetings that are talking about cybersecurity.

Somebody is asking about making sure that your cyber insurance is covered. And I’m like, what is cyber insurance? It took us a little while to figure out. Just like you probably would have in your home [policy] that if your house burns down and then they assess and find out that it’s because you put 16 surge protectors in one outlet, then you’ve probably negated that. You’re not going to get the fire insurance. You’re not going to get the insurance because you didn’t do things right. The same thing goes with cyber security and cyber insurance. If you put your district in a system where, I don’t know, your student information is . . . oh gosh, it’s free.

So we’re going to go ahead and use all our student information and we’re going to give all this information out there because of the cool things that we get back and we put ourselves at risk, we could be in trouble later. And so how do we manage that tension? We had a professional development day a couple months ago and we brought in a speaker, and I’ll talk about him later through the course of this conversation. But I set the stage with our staff to say, look, we are investing dollars in bringing in a national speaker that’s going to come and talk with us all day long. There’s a tension, though, that I want you to hear from me, the superintendent, that when we leave from here, I don’t want you to think “Oh, gosh, because Neil brought him in that Neil must say that we better jump on the bandwagon.”

Actually, I want you to walk out with tension. I want you to walk out with that uneasiness. It’s okay. Let’s not turn a blind eye to it, but also let’s not run to it either. Let’s live in that awkward space right there. I just wanted to level set with them so that they knew where my heart and head was at with all of this.

Kecia: What was their response to that? 

Neil: Yeah, I think it was good. I heard some great feedback. I had intuitively thought about that. Again, I’m a new superintendent. This was the first speaker that I brought in and I wanted them to level set that . . . there’s this expectation—again, I know that they have seen and heard about my social media presence.

So, I just didn’t want them to think, oh, gosh, now Neil’s taking us in this direction, and we’ve got to put everything else down and run in this direction. But also, I’ve got concerns and questions and things that I want to pause and slow down a little bit as we go further, too. 

Kecia: You want to empower your teachers.

They’re the experts. They’re the experts in learning and teaching, and you want to empower them to identify the tools that they need to do the job that they have to do. But there is a fine line, oh my goodness, such a fine line in empowering them and then paying the cost of a decision being made that wasn’t one you turned over to them. I think I found when I was in that role, helping them understand the complexities of it. I really would love to do that, but here’s the thing. That resonated with them because they do that in the classroom. I would really love for you to have your way every day, but the reality is we’re in a school with 300 kids, so every kid can’t have their single way every day. I think that resonated with them. But how can teachers start to, in your district, think about AI tools that support just their day-to-day practices. Is there a process that you’ve got in play? 

Neil: We don’t have it overt, but I would say that as I’ve talked with the administrative team, first is figure out how does it help you as an adult–you, yourself.

Don’t go straight to how’s it going to help my students. Be in that space in place of I’ll be honest with you, just from a personal standpoint. You’re getting ready to write a letter to . . . I don’t know, your electric company to try to lower your cost.

Outside of your normal role sort of thing, and just see what it does for you. In other words, be a user. And then in one instance, and on the other instance of gosh, I have a student in my classroom that really has this certain interest and I’m having trouble connecting him or her with the curriculum that we have right now, but he or she has this interest.

And try to combine those together to create some kind of differentiated lesson that might work out. It doesn’t mean turn on the computers and start having the kids jump on a certain app or anything like that. Just you yourself start getting comfortable with some of those things is a great first place to start because your comfort level has to lie first.

Kecia: Absolutely. And do you provide . . . you mentioned the kind of session that you offered with the speaker, but are there other kinds of PD that you’re thinking about around integrating AI into their teaching? 

Neil: So again, not overtly. We’ve adopted some new resources in the state of Ohio.

There’s something called the science of reading, and so our teachers are doing a lot of work around that. They’ve got a new resource that they were implementing. I also wanted to level set with them as far as this artificial intelligence does not leap over and become the new number one thing. I always think about the imagery of spinning plates sort of thing. I can only spin a couple of plates at a time. I can’t spin them all at the right time and do it justice. It’s one of those where I maybe—I actually said to them in that morning—we don’t have to run towards the certain destination, but we just have to move in that direction. Move in such a way that you’re not going backwards, and being okay to pause and stop at times is okay.

But just know that we can’t turn a blind eye to it. We’ve got to move forward in that position for it. That day was like an overt level setting for all of us. Our curriculum director a year ago also did a book study. Matt Miller has a book. And they adapted that and that was, by choice, that the teachers could jump in to get the book and read it and be part of the discussion along with it. We didn’t want it to be so overt or that we were all adopting this thing and everybody’s got to learn how to do it. Instead,I would say we’re in that investigate stage. 

Kecia: And helping them feel comfortable with, if this is something you’re interested in you have permission to explore it, so to speak. Which is big, because otherwise the climate and culture is affected because of these unsaid things.

In your expectations of lesson planning and creating assessments and things like that, are you open to teachers using AI to create their lessons or to create their assessments? Or are you like, you can start there, but let that not be the finish point? What’s your take on that?

Neil: Yeah, so I’ve not had the conversation with them overtly, but if we sat down and obviously, if any of our Oakwood teachers and staff get a chance to see this, I wouldn’t be opposed to them using it. My hope is it’s in whatever stage they’re at. Let’s say if they’ve drafted their own lesson plan and they just want to run it through to see if there’s some areas of refinement, that’s fine. If it’s to help them to get things started and then they’re going to refine it later, that’s okay too. Could be that there’s some student differentiation pieces that they might want to do with that.

Or something specific around a specific strategy or action step, that could be fine. But turning it on and having it run its way through . . . not that I’m saying that you better not do it or you’re in trouble. It’s more of I’m not really sure if that’s the best thing yet.

I think that we can’t replace and I hope our teachers and know that. We talk about teacher burnout. We talk about those things. But at the same time, I want to affirm there’s no computer system that’s going to replace you. You know your kids the best. No computer is going to come in . . . it’s going to write something, but you’ve got to know that you’ve got students with different passion and different ways of learning and different things that, to the culture of your classroom, that you have to modify that. Plus, because it’s probably going to make you more passionate about it, if that’s the case too.

Kecia: I feel exactly the same way. I think it can be a great tool to inform what you craft and finalize. But you shouldn’t hand it over to the computer because the computer doesn’t have your expertise and certainly not your content-area expertise. Yeah, I agree with you a thousand percent.

And then on the side of assessment, like creating assessments, so many of our assessments have AI already part of them. I think many teachers and definitely many parents don’t realize that. They’re like, oh yeah, I’m going to take whatever has AI. These things have AI and they’ve been very transparent from the beginning. Anytime it says adaptive, that’s code.

How do you help your teachers? Or how would, you probably haven’t done that, but how would you help your teachers wrap their heads around that use of AI in an assessment instrument and the benefits or not of that. 

Neil: I used to teach high school math and I actually I’m going to say that probably where this isn’t true, but I wasn’t great at math when I was in high school. I didn’t think I was great at math, let me say it that way.

But some things that I think comes easy and should be natural. And how you create an assessment or how you even create that lesson plan . . . If you sat down by yourself and said, I’m going to create these questions, you might end up going down one pathway, one avenue, one way of putting things in there.

And so being able to use the artificial intelligence to round out your questions that help you to elicit . . . the whole point of the assessment is to figure out what do our students know and are they able to do it and what do they not do? And so just helping it, to helping yourself to be able to again reflect on your own assessment practices to say, gosh I seem to ask a lot of questions in this certain realm that seem to leave this side pretty open and I’m not rounding things out like I could.

Or, I’m not able to think some . . . I used some depth of knowledge, for example, type of questions, and I can’t think of some questions that might get to that level or a stem at least that might help me to . . . a question stem that might help me to elicit that by asking it to do that, will help you to put that all together.

If we really think about backwards design, for example, starting with that question first is going to help me to figure out where some things are going. And again, getting yourself to . . . I guess maybe I should say it this way, using it to be that third party person that’s challenging yourself so that you’re not just thinking in one realm.

Kecia: Yeah. And the use of AI in assessment has been very beneficial. The use of AI in many of the software tools that we use has been very beneficial for our students. We just didn’t call it out before. In my mind’s eye, I just want teachers to not think it’s a dirty word.

It’s been there for a long time: many years, over a decade. So let’s just embrace it, love it, keep it going. And then use what you know to adapt your teaching. And then if you see that the kids aren’t performing well on an assessment, but they’re performing well on their classwork, again, that’s where you as the teacher come in and you’re like, maybe this isn’t a way of assessment that they can thrive in. What else can I do? And again, you could probably use AI for that too. It should be like a co-teacher. 

Neil: We brought AJ Juliani in for a full day. AJ is phenomenal. He is just amazing. He did our keynote.

I think why our staff loved him was because he did our keynote. Then he led four other sessions throughout the day for elementary and intermediate and high school range teachers. And he just kept their attention with, number one, lots of examples, but he actually gave them so many tools and resources to take a look at. Gave them practice time on using it. Let them collaborate and talk about it. And then he was hilarious and put in some jokes and that sort of thing. It kept everybody’s attention. But what he did in one of his sessions was just talking about the idea of . . . let’s cut to the chase.

We think that AI is like cheating. It’s either cheating the adult or cheating the kids and that sort of thing. But then he does these scenarios of a student is at home and asks their parents to give them feedback on one of their drafts. Is that cheating or is it not cheating? And he had people put like a number system, that the audience had a number system of five, four, three, two, one of this is cheating on it.

This is a five, a major cheating or zero is not cheating at all. And people are all over the place with that question right there. And then he talked about, okay how about the next day you ask a classmate to proofread your paper and give you feedback: Where’s that number at?

Okay, now you ask your teacher during study hall, where’s that at? And then he goes into the questions that student at home doesn’t have parents that are able to help him. What do you do? And that other family, by the way, that other student does have family members that can help them.

You’re getting this idea about leveling the playing field sort of thing. And when we talk about “back in the day”, and we’re still doing this too, you might have some peer editing going on. And is peer editing cheating? If you’re having the AI do some peer editing, is that cheating?

Is it, or is it doing something different? 

Kecia: I also think that these are skills that kids are going to need to have, especially if you’re elementary right now or middle, even by the time they get to high school or college in the next two years, those skills are going to need to be sharp when they enter those grade spans.

And if we haven’t done a good job exposing them to that and helping them know how to use the tool and when to make the decision to use it and when not, et cetera, then when they get to those higher grades they’ll freeze. They won’t know what to do. I think it’s so important.

And I love AJ: just clever and funny and very practical advice. He’s phenomenal. I’m glad your teachers had the chance to hear him. What a great blessing that was. I know they’re thankful. Two last questions. One, how can educators prepare to integrate more AI tools into their classroom?

Neil: I think first investigate that tool for yourself. Spend that time getting to know it. Don’t go straight to implementation. Just do some practice work, do some work of what that might do. Maybe it might be working with one student that you just want to do some work. It doesn’t have to be the at-risk student. It might be just taking another student to another level. It might be just working with a student that is not as much engaged. But I also think having that gut check of what do I really think about AI and really making sure you have that perspective of where’s your stance on that and you’ve got to take a look at that.

AJ, for example, will talk about how ChatGPT is not something that he considers in his top things that he would have with his class with a group of students. He would use ChatGPT and talked about it and was positive about it from maybe using it as a preparation of a teacher thing. But he cautioned and said, you’re not able to follow the script, for example, of the students editing—the teacher is not able to do that. 

You showed some other examples of how a student got an answer wrong, but was able to quickly see what misconception that they have in order to address those things and do it from a classroom level. I think you just have to start to really get to know those apps, and have those conversations with other educators.

Sitting down possibly with your grade level group or a department to have a conversation about what might this look like. And let’s just try it out really slow. 

Kecia: What about families? That’s the final question before we close. What about families? How do we need to help our families understand the use of AI in our schools? 

Neil: I think it’s just letting teaching . . . I used to say that I teach kids and now I just say I teach because it could be adults too. There are scary things. I think we’ve talked about that. There are scary things with artificial intelligence.

We don’t want to say, hey, we’re doing this lesson on AI, as far as we’re going to talk about it. That gets back to that idea of how, we’ve got to somehow . . . it doesn’t become the main stage thing. But it also helps to explain and explore to our teachers or to our families that this is something that we’re not turning a blind eye.

For example, after AJ came, I wrote a blog and shared it with our community that we had him in for. It was an investment and a lot of positive feedback from the community saying thanks for still pushing forward our limits.

And again, we didn’t have an answer. We didn’t have a stance. We didn’t have anything that we were concrete holding. But just to say that this is something we’re investigating I think it’s just good enough as far as that first step goes. I know that for me I’ll write blogs and I’ll run it back through the AI. There are times where I’ve said, nope, I like what I said better here.

Most often I say, gosh, it’s starting to capture my voice and it becomes something that’s easier for me to share with families. Sometimes I’ve been able to . . . I get a parent email and I’ve got to make a response. So I draft out my response and then I’ll put it through AI and it’ll make it a little bit cleaner.

It makes it a little bit nicer, a little bit more clear. And I’ve used it in that realm too. 

Kecia: Oh, that’s awesome. And it makes your job easier too, because you can put a good message out and help have great communication and spend less time doing it. Sometimes when we don’t have enough time, things get swept under a rug. Don’t ask me how I know. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed our time together and our conversation. And I really appreciate you highlighting the work that AJ did in your district and sharing that his work is so wonderful. Thanks for sharing that with everybody. I’ll make sure that they know how to get in touch with him as well when we post this. Is there anything that you’d like to share before we end that we haven’t discussed? Check out the Neil Gupta blog. 

Neil: Yeah. It seems like I’m getting lots of emails. I don’t know how much spam everybody’s getting.

I get lots of emails about webinars on AI. I’ll tell you, the great thing is it happens sometimes over the lunch hour, and I am starting to watch a lot more webinars and it piques my interest. I’m still able to do other work, but it’s in the background. I guess I would just leave it to make sure you’re learning.

Everybody goes to ChatGPT as the AI. It’s not the only one out there. You should be able to really see what’s out there. It’s like a Swiss army knife. There are certain things that are good for certain things, but you’ve got to be able to know what’s out there and be informed about that.

And it’s constantly evolving. It doesn’t mean go attend it for one hour last year and you can check a box sort of thing. I really encourage everybody just to stay on the forefront. This is the thing that’s . . . maybe I’ll say it even this way. My dad is an eye doctor and we were talking about, okay, what’s the next evolution of the next medical thing.

And then I’ve got my son who’s working for a medical sales company, and I asked the question to both of them and they both said AI. It’s not just in education, but the medical field is working that way. I would say industry is working in that way. We’ve got to make sure we’re staying on the forefront of it.

Kecia: Yeah. Agreed. And maintaining the human element when it needs to be maintained. Let’s not turn that over to AI. I’m pretty sure you can use your head for that. I have to remind my five-year-old of that frequently. Thank you for being my guest. Thank you for being my friend.

And I am going to come up there and visit your district. I don’t know when, but I’m going to put that on my list of things to do for sure. Maybe next school year. 

Neil: I love it.

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