The Trailblazing School on the Frontier of Artificial Intelligence

In the Classroom

WLA teachers have deployed AI in instruction in a variety of innovative ways.

In Giani Clarkson’s AP Government class, for example, students studied imperialism by designing a country’s resources to resist being conquered by “Clarksonia,” a fictional nation Clarkson controls. They input their country into a chatbot to see whether they could survive a three-year simulated war against Clarksonia, allocating its population across soldiers, scientists, artists, and educators, and selecting a key natural resource. The bot delivered a verdict on each simulated country, revealing Clarksonia’s resources for comparison but not explaining why a country won or lost; this forced students to think through the causes themselves. “It’s not good enough to just tell them, ‘This is how it happened,’” Clarkson said. “They have to see it in real time and kick the tires themselves.”

Beyond teaching students how AI works and how to use it, WLA is exposing students to AI’s limitations.

Niyesha Coleman, the school’s math instructional coach, built a gamified chatbot that walked students through practice problems, offering hints and feedback in a voice trained to sound like hers. Students had to explain their reasoning for every answer, and sometimes, Coleman noted, the bot got the answer wrong, and students had to defend their thinking against the incorrect response. It was a lesson in both mathematical reasoning and the limits of AI.