Episode 9: Back to School with Gabriel Elias who Built His Own Classroom with AI

A high school history teacher explains why the best AI use in education looks nothing like ChatGPT homework.

Geoff Livingston August 9, 2026

Gabe Elias teaches at Alexandria City High School, and has spent the four years since ChatGPT launched treating AI as a personal design tool rather than a classroom compliance problem. 

He jumped in the way he jumps into any new technology, testing that first release on history essay questions before it had many guardrails. Gabe was struck by how good some of the answers were even as he started poking holes in the rest.That instinct sets him apart from most of the teachers he talks to, who tend to write off AI the moment a student uses it to skip an essay. 

Gabe draws a sharper distinction by pointing to Teacher Pay Teachers, the marketplace where educators sell lesson plans to each other: for a decade, the best sellers weren't the most rigorous. They were made by teachers who happened to know Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, because polish sells even when the underlying content doesn't change. AI puts that same design capability into the hands of any teacher, not just the ones with a design background. 

NotebookLM was a real breakthrough for Gabe, since it only draws on sources he uploads, so it won't invent standards or wander off the curriculum. He used it to build short explainer videos in his ESL students' own languages, learning the Pashto and Dari scripts himself just to caption them correctly.

Then he found Claude Cowork, and the scale changed again. Instead of the fragile shared Google Docs his school runs on, where one stray keystroke wipes out a student's work, he started building entire lessons as standalone HTML apps: 

a decolonization scenario game where students make choices and earn points

his old study guides embedded as interactive toggles

an export console that sends everything a student does straight back to him. 

Asked for his vision of AI in education, Gabe gives two answers. The hopeful one is that skilled teachers will finally be able to differentiate content for every learner the way they've always wanted to but never had time for across 150 or 250 students. The harder one is that he sees real risk in schools using the same capability to thin out the workforce and hand curriculum design to companies that don't understand how kids actually learn. 

His big hope is that capable teachers stay in the loop as guides. Teaching remains a human-to-human skill no matter how good the tools get, and the difference between using AI as a design tool and just turning kids loose on ChatGPT is the same difference that existed between using the internet well and having kids Google random answers.

Listen today on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts!

0:57 The ChatGPT Moment That Hooked Him 

2:16 Why This Is the Inflection Point for AI in Education 

3:58 Discovering NotebookLM 

5:17 Vibe Coding an Entire Classroom with Claude Cowork 

7:22 The Nice Answer and the Mean Answer on AI's Future in Teaching 

10:01 Where to Find Gabe

What is AI Hope?

What's your AI success story? What made you realize you had to change? And what does a hopeful future with AI look like to you? AI Hope with Geoff Livingston asks three simple questions of people doing the hard work of adapting and thriving in the AI era.

Gabriel Elias
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[00:00:00] Hey, everybody. This is Jeff Livingston with AI Hope, and this week I have Gabe Elias with me, who is, ~uh,~ a friend of mine in the Alexandria area. He is a teacher at Alexandria City High School, which used to be T.C. Williams for those that are local. ~Uh, ~long live the Titans. Yes. ~Uh, ~and ~uh, ~you guys have a blue field, don't you?

Yeah, we have a big blue field. ~I mean, ~it's like you and, ~uh,~ Boise State, right? I don't know. Yeah. That's what we have in common. That's about it. Some AI chose that. ~Um... ~Yeah, for sure. ~Which brings, ~which brings me to today's conversation 'cause we have you here because you, at least as long as I've known you, have always been on the cutting edge with embracing technology and bringing it into the classroom, and I know that's true of AI as well.

~Uh, ~really, given where we are now, it's been about three and a half years since ChatGPT launched, ~uh,~ as a-- the big generative AI boom, and of course we had all the analytics before that. ~Uh, ~what-- Do you have ~like ~a moment where AI really kinda set-- where you played with AI and you [00:01:00] said to yourself, "Wow, this is, ~uh,~ uh, something that I really need to have in the classroom"?

~Uh, ~yeah. ~I mean, ~from the beginning, I've always been interested in technology in, not necessarily from a teacher perspective, but just interested in it. So I've never been the type of person who's like, ~uh, you know, ~"Oh, I can take advantage of this for the classroom. What are the implications?" Et cetera, et cetera.

I usually just dive right in. ~Um, ~so ~uh, ~I remember when it came out, and I remember the first thing I did with that first release of ChatGPT, I forget what the, the version ~was, ~was I just started having it answer history questions. ~Um, you know, like ~write an essay to see how it would do, and I was pretty shocked at how good some of the answers are.

But then, ~you know, ~you start poking holes in it, and you start seeing what some of the limitations are. But I was on board with it from the very beginning just because of my interest. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. ~Um, ~has there been like a home run or like [00:02:00] an, a clear use case where it's made a big difference for you in the classroom?

Yeah. ~I mean, ~I could go year by year, but really I think this is the year, this is the year and it's-- where, ~um,~ I can see it as the absolute future in how we design educational, and I'll use the word content even though I hate that word, it's like a cliché. But, ~um,~ this is the year where it's clear to me that this is gonna be the future in the design of educational content.

And I kinda wanna differentiate first between like what I use it for and what people think about when they think about AI in education. 'Cause whenever I talk to other teachers about it, they're like, "Oh, I freaking hate AI, like ChatGPT. These kids are not learning anything with it." And that's really not what I'm talking about when I'm trying to teach them to use some of these tools.

~Um, ~and I go back to tell them about the site Teacher Pay Teacher. And Teacher Pay Teacher, if you've not heard of it, ~you,~ you can buy other teachers' products on there, ~um,~ like educational products. ~Like ~if you, [00:03:00] if you're- It's quite helpful for lesson planning, right? ~Right. ~So ~like ~let's say I don't have something planned about the American Revolution and I see this really awesome online thing, I can buy it there.

But what I noticed from Teacher Pay Teacher is the top sellers, and this is ~like ~10 years old by now, were always those who knew how to use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. It was the people who had a design background- ~Right ~... not necessarily the great sort of educational content. ~Um- ~It just looks better, so people buy it.

It looks better. Yeah. And it's, ~and it, ~and it's appealing. So this is the year where- Welcome to the internet. Oh, exactly. Welcome to the internet, like the song. So like this is the year where you see-- where I've started to see, ~um,~ besides the capabilities, like the ability to design things how I want. So I'd say the two big things that I found this year, first, I was in heaven.

I found NotebookLM. ~Um, ~and our- Great ... that's-- Yeah, that's-- I, I love it. And so you-- with NotebookLM, you put what you want into as sources. So it's not gonna hallucinate, it's not gonna make up crap or take stuff that's like way [00:04:00] outside of the standard. So I can put the standards that the kids need to know and my materials and ~sort of ~work off of that.

Are you saying you don't like Reddit as source material? I like Reddit if I want to buy something, but other than that- ... ~not, ~not as a source material. So like-- But it's got amazing features as well because it, it's got this, ~uh... ~The first thing that I used the heck out of was the video, because you can make these sort of like explainer videos, and it happens to have all videos in all sorts of languages, and I teach ESL students.

So I could make, ~sort of ~put my content in, ~uh, you know, ~make, tell it what I want, ~like,~ make an introduction to this lesson, or if I was out for whatever reason or if I was putting something online, ~you know, ~these are the steps, this is the content, and then it would put it in, I can make it English, Spanish, Dari, Pashto.

I had to learn the Arabic letters for Pashto and Dari, but so I'm pumping out these videos in all sorts of languages, and the kids are taking notes on it with blue books, and I'm like, "Wow, this is amazing." So that [00:05:00] NotebookLM, I thought was, like, the highest it was gonna get this year, but then I used Claude Cowork.

Yeah. And I'm like- It's really crazy the way we went from ChatGPT in the summer to NotebookLM in the fall to boom, Cowork drops in January, right? Yeah. And so the thing with Cowork is I have n- I made a GeoCities site back in 2000, and I learned a little bit of HTML coding, and then I forgot about it. And I didn't realize, ~like,~ what you can do with, I guess they call it vibe coding, like if- That's right

what you can do in an HTML file is insane. So schools run off of Google Docs. ~Like ~if you, ~I mean, ~you look at your kids' stuff, it's ~like ~make a copy, share it with your teacher, and then if you press enter something get, they, gets messed up or they delete the whole thing. And if it goes to another site that doesn't exist, then, ~you know, ~the link doesn't work and everything messes up.

But with an HTML file, you can embed an entire wiki and an, ~uh,~ videos, ~um,~ toggle buttons where you bring down Spanish and, [00:06:00] or other activities. ~I mean, ~the sky's the limit. And then I learned you can even, ~like,~ turn it into an app that the kids download on their phone. ~Um, ~so Cowork has just been like- ~I, I'm, ~I'm not even there yet.

~Like, ~I needed a break for a couple of weeks because ~I was, ~I was making little scenario games and I was making apps for studying for AP Human Geography and just all kinds of stuff. Like- It really unleashed your inner creative, didn't it? Yeah. B- ~I mean, like, ~for example, ~uh,~ when we were on decolonization- Yeah

and as a unit, ~uh,~ teaching History too, and I made this whole scenario game, and I started by uploading the standards 'cause that's what the schools really want. ~You know, ~you gotta upload the standards. Made a Claude MD file with all the specifications. "Here's what I want you to do. Here's IT. Here-- ~You know, ~don't...

This is not for AP, this is for ESL students. Here's what a WIDA level is." And then I made this scenario where this time travel goes to different areas of, ~uh, you know, ~the places that are decolonizing and, ~you know, ~there's choices that he can make, you get points. And then all my old stuff, which was ~sort of ~like your standard [00:07:00] study guides, I embedded as toggles in, so it would come in and ask questions and then at the end an export console where they export everything they do and send it to me.

And I was just like, "Whoa, this is amazing." ~I mean, ~like I, I- I'm just in heaven with what can be done, and I'm ~sort of ~still in awe. ~Hmm. ~Impressive. So ~I mean, ~we like to keep this short, so ~you're, ~you're on a short leash on this one. We're at two minutes. ~Uh, what's your, ~what's your AI vision for the education space or at least the, ~uh,~ grade school space?

~Uh... ~Okay. So there's a, there's two answers to this. There's a nice answer and there's a mean answer. Okay. So the nice answer is individual teachers should be able to and will be able to use this to adapt and differentiate to, to their different populations. Like if you're teaching SPED or you're teaching ESL, ~um,~ you could be able to use one sort of material and use it for, ~uh,~ all sort-- ~uh, ~adapt it to all sorts of different learning styles.

You can adapt based on data on how the student does. ~I mean, ~you can keep plugging in the same thing and changing it for each [00:08:00] learner. ~Um, ~and I think that- Many teachers are capable of doing that once they learn. Now, I say the mean answer because, ~you know, ~as a teacher, one of the frustrating things is, ~uh,~ it do- doesn't feel like there's a lot of room for advancement.

~You know, ~the way you would advance in your career and your salary ~is, ~is just survive, ~you know? You, ~you get a step and you get a little bit more money. And with this- You don't do it for the, ~uh,~ the 401k. Yeah. But at the same time, living in northern Virginia, ~like, you know, ~you get to a certain point and you're like, "Look, I can manage 250 students now.

I can give them each differentiated content. I can take a text message from a student who's having trouble, ~you know, ~and adapt something to them." ~Um, ~whereas some... ~You know, ~there's some staff who, ~you know, are, ~are really good teachers in traditional ways, and that's completely fine, but then there's some, some classrooms that are just like babysitting.

So when I say the mean answer, ~I,~ I think I do see a future where they ~kind of ~reduce the workforce a little bit and push out things using AI and online. ~Um, ~and I hope through capable teachers who are able [00:09:00] to guide the process instead of just what may happen, which is like farming it out to companies who don't really understand how students learn.

~Well, ~don't you see teaching, though, as really a human-to-human skill that- For sure ... people learn? Yeah. ~I, ~I think you c- I think it's a little bit of both, but you definitely need a human guiding the process, and you need-- And one of the big things in teaching ~is, ~is that human-to-human, ~uh,~ connection and motivation, and not just that, but just adapting ~to, ~to, to things that only another human bemi-being can tell.

And I think that a skilled teacher who's skilled with AI would be able to do that, and hopefully they'll have, ~uh,~ opportunities for those type of teachers to advance in their careers, ~kind of ~like in other industries where ~you, you know, ~you get higher and higher, you make a little bit more money, you have more responsibility, instead of one size fit-fits all.

Makes sense. Very good. Gabe, how can people find you? ~Uh, ~I'm, ~I ~I'm ~on, ~on the internet. I'm on the internet. I have an Instagram. You're on the internet. Get out of here. Yeah. Do you have a, do [00:10:00] you have a MySpace page? Yeah, I got... You know what? I don't-- ~I, ~I'm just a teacher, so I'm just a teacher, so honestly, like I, I don't.

I just have my own personal stuff, like- You got Facebook- ... ~you know ~... right? You're on Facebook and Instagram, right? I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. Gabriel Elias with a three for the Elias and, ~um, you know, ~maybe I'll launch my consulting company at some point and sell something back to my own school district, but who knows?

~Well, ~if people wanna hire you, now's the time 'cause you're cheap. Yeah. Until you launch that company. So folks- Oh ... reach out to him and- Appreciate it ... I really want, I wanna thank you, and thanks for that really refreshing lens on what's actually happened through the K-two swal- K-12 space, ~uh,~ with AI. It's really interesting.

Thank you. Yeah. I think I just leave you with ~like, ~just remember, there's a difference between using AI t- as a design tool and throwing kids on ChatGPT, just like there was a difference between using the internet and having kids Google random stuff. There you go. Separate things. Different things. Thank you.

All right. [00:11:00] Thanks.