{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Margin of Thought with Priten","title":"How Might School Make Sustainable AI Policies? - Joel Sohn","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2612,"description":"In this episode, Priten speaks with Joel Sohn, Deputy Head of School at Head-Royce, a K-12 independent school in Oakland serving roughly 920 students, about how a school can build a coherent approach to AI without retreating into a rulebook. Joel walks through the two-year arc of arriving in fall 2023, identifying early teacher champions, taking them to the Schools of the Future Conference, and using Leon Furze's framework to land a philosophy statement rather than a granular policy. The conversation covers why originality has always been a puzzle, how students have shifted from experimenters to skeptics, and why a simplified nine-word mission is doing more work than any rulebook could.Key Takeaways:Build a philosophy, not a plagiarism policy. Joel draws an analogy to dress codes: the more granular the rule, the more the only thing you see is the violation, not the person. AI use is too varied across math, history, and English classrooms to codify the way schools codified plagiarism a generation ago, and a philosophy gives educators the room to make case-by-case judgments.Trust the team first, accelerate later. Joel chose a two-to-three year change trajectory anchored in building educator trust rather than racing to be first. His worry was falling behind by 2027, but the trust groundwork is what made the eventual rollout move quickly and made families comfortable with the rollout.Originality has always been a puzzle, and AI just forces the question. Joel pushes back on the assumption that pre-AI student writing was somehow more \"original,\" pointing out that Shakespeare cribbed too and that brain science still cannot pin down what original thought really is. Schools have been asserting certainty they never had, and AI is making that hard to avoid.Students are no longer the experimenters they were two years ago. Joel sees the current generation as more anti-AI than in 2023, citing concerns about energy use, corporate ethics, and privacy. Teachers using AI sloppily...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/mIvclI2fK-fQrurJTjPiYoTWWGoNWSdbv1_-Xa6ULdc/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yOTNk/OTcyZTcxOWE5MGIw/ZTY0MjU4ZGNlN2U5/NjM3My5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}