Professional learning · Leaders, Coaches · 75 minutes
Ban, Allow, or Teach?
A leadership team works the ELE five-question check to craft a defensible stance on generative AI, moving past the headline fight over school AI moratoriums to decide what their own evidence, equity, and families actually require.
Districts are being pushed to pick a side: some have declared broad AI moratoriums, others are racing to put AI in every classroom. Headlines reward the extremes, but a leader's job is a defensible stance, not a slogan. This session walks a leadership team through the ELE five-question check, vision, evidence, instruction, who's left out, and families, to reason toward a position on generative AI that fits their own context. Teams weigh the real tension in the news (concerns about cognitive offloading and weaker critical thinking against the risk of banning a tool students will use anyway and widening gaps for students without support at home). The outcome is not a predetermined "teach it" answer; a time-boxed, grade-banded moratorium can be the right call for a community, as can structured adoption. What the ELEs require is that the choice be driven by evidence of learning and equity, communicated to families, and revisited, not chosen by whoever is loudest.
In this packet
- Handout A: The Five-Question Check (worksheet)
- Handout B: Four Real Stances (reading)
- Handout C: Our Draft Stance + Family Message (worksheet)
TCEA ELE indicators
- L1.1 I know how to create and communicate a compelling vision for technology integration in the school.
- L4.2 I can develop policies that support equitable access to technology and digital resources.
- L2.3 I am aware of research-based approaches to technology-enhanced pedagogy and their applications.
- AI2.1 I know how to apply ethical principles when using or developing AI for education.
Full facilitator guide: mglearn.github.io/eles/activities/ban-allow-or-teach.html
Handout A for Ban, Allow, or Teach?
The Five-Question Check
Work these five questions for YOUR context. You must consider at least a time-boxed moratorium option and a structured-use option before you decide.
VISION: What learning do we want for our students, and where could generative AI genuinely help it, or quietly harm it (e.g., cognitive offloading of the thinking we're trying to build)?
EVIDENCE: What will we watch to know if it's working? (Student work, reasoning, growth, offloading patterns, NOT tool-usage counts.)
INSTRUCTION: What changes for teachers under each option, and what training and support will they get?
WHO'S LEFT OUT: Under a moratorium and under structured use, which students gain and which lose (no home access, emergent bilinguals, students with disabilities)?
FAMILIES: How will we explain our choice so a worried parent understands and trusts it?
Handout B for Ban, Allow, or Teach?
Four Real Stances
Four fictional districts chose differently. For each, note what evidence drove it, who it helped, and who it left out. None is perfect.
1MAPLE HOLLOW ISD (time-boxed K–8 moratorium): Worried about young students offloading early reading and math thinking, Maple Hollow paused student-facing AI for grades K–8 for one school year, while training teachers and piloting uses to revisit in spring. Strength: protects foundational skills and buys time to plan. Risk: students still meet AI at home with no guidance, and the pause can harden into a permanent ban nobody revisits.
2RIO VERDE HIGH (teach it, with disclosure): Rio Verde allows AI in most courses but requires students to disclose how they used it and to defend their thinking in person. Strength: builds judgment and keeps the human in the loop. Risk: uneven teacher readiness means some classes do this well and others rubber-stamp it; students without home access start behind.
3CEDAR FALLS ISD (allow for busywork, not graded thinking): Cedar Falls permits AI for formatting, brainstorming, and study support, but bars it from the graded thinking a course is meant to assess. Strength: a clear, teachable line between smart delegation and offloading the learning. Risk: the line is hard to police and depends on teachers redesigning assessments to make thinking visible.
4NO-POLICY DISTRICT (did nothing): This district never issued guidance. Teachers improvise wildly different rules, students are confused and sometimes punished inconsistently, and families have no idea what's allowed. Strength: none, really. Risk: doing nothing is itself a choice, usually the least fair one, because it leaves the most vulnerable students and least-supported teachers to fend for themselves.
5Discussion: Which of these is closest to where your district actually is today? Which trade-offs could your community accept, and which could it not? What would you borrow from more than one of them?
Handout C for Ban, Allow, or Teach?
Our Draft Stance + Family Message
Draft a stance you could defend to the board, a worried parent, AND an enthusiastic teacher. Then write the family message in plain language.
OUR STANCE (one paragraph): what's allowed, for whom, by grade band, and why:
The TWO pieces of evidence (about learning, not usage) we will monitor:
The hardest trade-off we accepted, and who it affects:
MESSAGE TO FAMILIES (exactly 3 plain sentences a worried parent would understand):
Date we will revisit this stance: