Brooklyn Buddies Faculty addresses synthetic intelligence as a instrument for academic fairness moderately than a menace to conventional studying. Head of Faculty Crissy Cáceres frames the expertise debate inside her establishment’s broader dedication to offering assets that improve pupil capabilities whereas sustaining values-based determination making.
“Every little thing that’s in service to the scholars in a manner that’s values-aligned could be allowed,” Cáceres states relating to expertise insurance policies. “So the larger reply that I’ll at all times offer you is, in assessing any instrument, as long as it isn’t in violation of the values that we maintain as a college, is developmentally minded and guided, and is in service to the expansion and growth of their studying, then we benefit to make manner for that to be utilized.”
Brooklyn Buddies Faculty, which serves roughly 705 college students from ages two by way of twelfth grade, addresses AI integration by way of the lens of Quaker ideas that emphasize integrity, group, and stewardship. Somewhat than blanket prohibitions or uncritical adoption, the establishment develops insurance policies that align with its academic mission and values construction.
Know-how as Equalizing Pressure
Cáceres views synthetic intelligence by way of the attitude of her background as a nationwide debate champion, an expertise that shapes her understanding of how instruments can stage aggressive taking part in fields. “I imagine that synthetic intelligence utilized in its finest type is about equalizing the taking part in area,” she explains.
Her perspective displays Brooklyn Buddies Faculty’s dedication to range, fairness, and belonging—one of many establishment’s three foundational pillars. Faculty management acknowledges that AI instruments can present college students with completely different studying wants and backgrounds entry to assets which may in any other case require monetary funding or specialised tutoring.
Equalizing potential of AI extends past particular person pupil help to broader questions of academic entry. Cáceres sees expertise as doubtlessly addressing systemic inequities in academic alternative, in line with Quaker testimonies of equality and social justice that information institutional decision-making.
Director of Know-how Ray Shay leads Brooklyn Buddies Faculty’s AI integration efforts. Shay brings related expertise as a former nationwide debate champion, sharing with Cáceres an understanding of how instruments and assets can improve moderately than substitute human functionality and demanding pondering.
Values-Primarily based Implementation Pointers
Brooklyn Buddies Faculty permits AI use in educational work with express necessities for transparency and academic function. College students could make the most of synthetic intelligence instruments for analysis papers offered they doc how they employed the expertise of their work course of.
“We don’t bar college students from using AI in a analysis paper as long as they’re crediting how they used AI,” Cáceres explains. Faculty management distinguishes between applicable functions—equivalent to increasing ideas or exploring concepts—and inappropriate makes use of like producing full assignments with out pupil mental contribution.
Necessities educate college students to develop vital fascinated with expertise use moderately than merely following prohibition guidelines. Brooklyn Buddies Faculty guides kids to guage when AI serves their studying aims and when it would undermine their academic growth.
Transparency necessities replicate Quaker values of integrity that permeate all facets of college life. College students study to acknowledge their use of technological help simply as they might cite human sources or collaborative contributions to their work.
Age-Acceptable Know-how Integration
Brooklyn Buddies Faculty implements expertise insurance policies that reply to developmental concerns throughout its 4 divisions: Early Childhood, Decrease Faculty, Center Faculty, and Higher Faculty. Cellular phone use in center college was discontinued 9 years in the past, nicely earlier than broader public conversations about smartphone impacts on adolescent growth.
Higher Faculty college students additionally face restrictions on mobile phone entry all through the college day, although this coverage implementation occurred extra lately. Choices replicate the college’s dedication to creating studying environments that prioritize human interplay and group constructing.
AI insurance policies observe comparable developmental constructions. Youthful college students obtain extra structured steerage about expertise use, whereas older college students steadily assume higher accountability for making values-aligned selections about digital instruments.
Cáceres emphasizes that expertise insurance policies should serve kids’s developmental wants moderately than grownup comfort or concern. “It isn’t about sure to this and no to that as a result of there’s a fear-based stage of engagement round that. This isn’t our journey, we had it. It’s theirs. Our job is to find out about how they’re assembly the world tomorrow, not how we met it.”
Pupil-Centered Know-how Studying
Brooklyn Buddies Faculty acknowledges that kids typically possess higher familiarity with rising applied sciences than their educators. Somewhat than positioning this information hole as problematic, the establishment embraces alternatives for intergenerational studying.
“They know greater than we do. So so long as our vanity is out of the way in which, educators particularly have the stage on the stage, what’s it referred to as? Stereotype of desirous to be a sage on the stage,” Cáceres observes. Her perspective challenges conventional energy dynamics between academics and college students relating to expertise experience.
Round classroom preparations help collaborative expertise studying the place college students share data with friends and educators. Fashions encourage lifelong studying practices whereas honoring the Quaker perception that every individual possesses invaluable insights and capabilities.
Cáceres actively seeks pupil steerage about modern digital platforms and instruments. “I need no extra as companions for TikTok than my center schoolers. I’ve been begging. It’s time that I do a TikTok dance,” she shares, illustrating her dedication to studying from pupil experience moderately than dismissing their technological fluency.
Important Evaluation of AI Programs
Brooklyn Buddies Faculty teaches college students to look at the societal implications of synthetic intelligence moderately than merely specializing in particular person use functions. Important views replicate the college’s dedication to international social impression and social justice schooling.
“Our best problem is the way in which society is aiming to have AI affect the lives of younger folks and adults alike. It’s primarily based on algorithms. It’s primarily based on techniques of social management. It’s primarily based upon cash. It’s primarily based upon capitalism. That’s the reason AI exists,” Cáceres explains.
Evaluation connects AI schooling to broader curriculum themes about energy, fairness, and social accountability. College students study to query who advantages from specific technological developments and the way digital instruments may perpetuate or problem present inequalities.
Brooklyn Buddies Faculty attracts connections between AI and historic examples of how technological development can serve varied social functions. Cáceres wrote her faculty essay on “Schooling As a System of Social Management,” bringing this analytical perspective to modern expertise discussions.
Brooklyn Buddies Faculty prepares college students to have interaction thoughtfully with AI growth all through their lives moderately than merely studying present functions. Academic objectives replicate the establishment’s dedication to educating kids who will contribute to creating extra simply and equitable technological techniques.
Moral expertise use serves as important preparation for citizenship in an more and more digital world. College students develop expertise to guage new instruments by way of values-based approaches that can serve them lengthy after they graduate from Brooklyn Buddies Faculty.
