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AI Policy for Schools: A Practical Guide for Teachers

Creating Effective AI Policies in Schools: Part 2 of the AI Teacher Toolkit

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Is your school struggling to establish a clear policy for AI? Are your teachers overwhelmed by the rapid integration of AI into classrooms? In this video, Aaron Makelky, a classroom teacher, shares his insights on developing effective AI policies in schools. This episode, which is part two of a five-part series called the AI Teacher Toolkit, breaks down the process into four key parts: policy, skills, tools, and applications. Learn how to navigate state guidelines, understand federal laws like FERPA, CIPA, and COPPA, and establish a layered, transparent AI policy for your classroom. Discover the importance of explicitly labeling assignments for AI use, handling IEP accommodations, and ensuring students know how to properly cite AI tools by using chat logs. Join Aaron and equip yourself to teach effectively in the post-AI world.

00:00 Introduction to AI Policy in Schools
00:37 Understanding AI Policy Framework
02:15 State and District AI Guidelines
04:51 Federal Laws and AI Compliance
06:39 Creating Classroom AI Policies
08:57 Transparency and AI Usage
11:37 Conclusion and Next Steps

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AI Policy for Schools: A Practical Guide for Teachers
Is your school scrambling to figure out an AI policy? Are your teachers feeling overwhelmed in all the AI craziness? AI is exploding into classrooms, and without a plan, it quickly becomes chaos.
I know because I'm a classroom teacher. It doesn't have to be that way. Let me help you come up with some effective AI policies in your classroom and in your school.
I'm Aaron Makelky, and this is part two of a series called the AI Teacher Toolkit, which is going to help teachers to be effective in the post AI world. How do we move from AI chaos to AI clarity in your classroom? It starts with a framework.
To make creating effective AI policy manageable, I break that process down into four key parts:
  1. Policy
  2. Skills
  3. Tools
  4. Applications
This framework will help you introduce AI to your students, use it effectively, and not be dependent on any tools.
Step One: Policy
What's my responsibility as a teacher now that AI is here?
The biggest thing I want you to take away on AI policy is that it's not just one blanket rule. Effective policy comes in layers. I think of a hierarchy:
*State *District *School *Your Classroom (Your Syllabus)
Let's do an example. Does your state in 2025 currently have AI guidelines? It's a flip of a coin because 25 states do, and 25 states don't.
A lot of teachers that I talked to didn't even know their state gave guidelines.
Of all the stuff in your state's guidelines, here's the most important thing: How should students be using AI?
Here's what Wyoming says:
"To prepare all students for the AI rich future, it is imperative that they all learn about AI and have opportunities to learn with AI."
AI is really an equity thing. All students should be learning to use this.
Why does that matter? If somebody comes at me and says, "How come you're teaching my kid AI?", I say, "Well, have you read my state's guidelines? Because I'm following that guidance."
Guidelines are not mandates. However, if the person questioning knows more than a bunch of experts, I'd love to hear their side of the story. It protects me in my classroom practice.
Now, I can't help you with your district and schools policies, but most of them have the big three: FERPA, CIPA, and COPPA. What do those mean? You have to protect students' identities online. They shouldn't be sharing their name, address, phone number, or email.
Your school district has to have a way to filter harmful content from the AI tools.
With COPPA, don't have students sign up for accounts if they're not over 13. You can ask AI tools, "Are you guys CIPA and COPPA compliant?"
Most teachers I work with say, "I don't have any policy on AI." A lot of them are just leaving it up to the schools and even the individual teachers to figure out.
If you're in that boat, here's my advice if you're in an AI vacuum: Ask your administrator, does the lack of policy mean I can't touch the AI topic, or does the lack of policy mean I can responsibly start doing these things?
Most educators recognize in 2025 we should have AI guidelines, at least at the school level. But a lot of us don't. You're probably just going to be responsible for your syllabus and classroom policy first. Let's focus on that, because it's what you have the most control over.
How do I handle that in my own classroom? My state has guidelines, so I follow them pretty much word for word. I use the term shall. Students shall share links. Students shall include a disclaimer statement.
The big takeaway for you as the person in charge of your classroom policy is don't be using one flat, static policy. You can't be saying "no AI" in 2025. You can't be saying "AI's okay for everything" in 2025. You should be specific. You should explicitly label assignments with which level of AI, if any, you can use.
If you say "no AI," think about what you're excluding: spellcheck, Grammarly, Google Search, voice typing. How many students have an IEP that lets them do voice to text? If you want to fight federal law and say no AI, good luck. Know what you mean when you say no AI, and know what you mean when you say AI is okay.

Transparency: Citing Your Sources
The final aspect of AI policy is, how are you going to address transparency?
What not to do: Please don't have kids cite the AI tool. That's like citing a library.
What you should do instead: Make your students turn in links to their chat logs. I started it in 2024, and it's totally changed the use of AI in my classroom.
No matter how a student uses AI, they turn in a link to that chat log. It gives you x-ray vision into their head. What were they thinking? What content did they know? What did they not know?
Here's an example of a student just using AI to copy and paste ideas. How do I know? They had to turn in a link to that chat.
Here's an example of a student who really knew what they were doing. I can go through and tell.
Please, try it with your students, and you will be blown away.
How do you get a link to a chat? You're going to have to show your students. With ChatGPT.com, there are two ways. Go up to the name of the model, or share by their account picture. Have your students test the link. Make sure it loads everything.
All of the large language models do this, except SnapAI.
What does all this mean for me as a teacher? We have to change. Not the fundamentals, not the content, but some of the skills and tools.
We have to learn how to incorporate those into our classroom.
The only alternative is let your students keep spamming your submissions with AI generated slop. Can we please stop doing that?
I'm Aaron Makelky. Thanks for joining me in building an effective AI policy for your school and classroom. Check out my link, I'll give you samples of syllabi, the integration scale, and lesson plan ideas. If you have any questions on AI policy, put a comment. I'd love to hear those. You can also send me a DM. My handle is just my name, at Aaron Makelky. If you want me to help you or your school, send me a message.

See you in the next part, where we're going to be talking AI skills to teach your students.

Creators & Guests

Host
Aaron Makelky
Teaching ⭐️ AI Education ⭐️ Content Creation ⭐️ Entrepreneurship

What is That’s Not Crazy, That’s History!?

We don’t learn history, we do history! Chronicles from Mr. Makelkys World History Classes. We go through history in reverse-chronological order, we learn by doing, and we are the only history class that MAKES HISTORY!

AI Policy #yt
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[00:00:00]

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link: Is your school scrambling to figure out an AI policy? Are your teachers feeling overwhelmed and lost in all the AI craziness AI is exploding into classrooms and without a plan it quickly becomes chaos. I know because I'm a classroom teacher and I've been through that same process. It doesn't have to be that way. In the next few minutes, let me help you come up with some effective AI policies in your classroom and in your school.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link: I'm Aaron Makelky, and this is part two of a five part series called the AI Teacher Toolkit,

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link: which is going to help teachers equip themselves to be effective in the post AI world.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera: how do we move from AI chaos to AI clarity in your classroom? It starts with a solid framework. To make creating effective AI policy and teaching and learning with AI manageable, I like to break that process down into four key parts. policy, skills, tools, and applications This framework will help you introduce AI to your students, use it effectively yourself, and not be [00:01:00] dependent on any tools.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera: step one is policy. What does that mean when it comes to AI, and what's my responsibility as a teacher now that AI is here and I know I need to change, but I don't know where to start.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: The biggest thing I want you to take away on the topic of AI policy is that it's not just one blanket rule. You're probably not the kind of teacher who's saying no AI on anything, but even if you are, I don't know why you're watching this video, you shouldn't be using the same blanket statement for everything.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: You also shouldn't be saying use AI however you want, go crazy on every assignment or assessment in your classroom.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: Effective policy really comes in layers. I'm a history teacher, I think of a hierarchy, like federalism. You have the top, middle, and bottom levels that are making these rules. And we just want to make sure we know what those are for us as teachers so that we can be in compliance with those other levels of rules.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: the way I want you to think about this [00:02:00] is going from state to district, to school, and then the one that you have the most power over and is definitely the most important, your classroom, which is your syllabus.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: let's do an example so you can see how these hierarchies work together. Does your state in 2025 currently have AI guidelines? it's a flip of a coin because 25 states do. 25 states don't.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: here's where you can find out if your state has guidelines. Check out this map. If your state is green as of January 2025, they do give you some advice. on how to use AI. And if your state is gray You got nothing there.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: Now, not all the states are the same, so if you go down to the link in the description, I have a link to where this map comes from, AI Education, and you can go under each state that has given the guidelines and read what yours says. so you can see that for yourself.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: A lot of teachers that I talked to didn't even know their state gave guidelines because their states are [00:03:00] so bad at communicating that.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-1: if you haven't already subscribed to my channel, I'd love to see you do that so I can help bring tomorrow's technology to your classroom today.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: Of all the stuff in your state's guidelines, or stealing from a different state if you're one of 25 that doesn't have any, here's the most important thing in there. How should students be using AI? All of them address this. Here's what Wyoming says. I'm going to read this word for word from their guidelines in July of 2024.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: Quote, To prepare all students for the AI rich future that awaits them. It is imperative that they all learn about AI. and have opportunities to learn with AI in increasingly interactive and complex ways. The big takeaway there is AI is really an equity thing. How many times did they say all students all learn with AI?

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: It's very obvious that it shouldn't be something that some techie nerdy teacher like me does and then the rest of teachers in the school just ignore. [00:04:00] It shouldn't be based on what subjects they're in like computer science versus history. All students should be learning in increasingly complex ways to use this stuff.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: Why does that matter? if somebody comes at me and says, how come you're teaching my kid a prompting framework? Or how come you gave them an assignment where they can use AI? It's evil and bad for the environment. I say, well, have you read my state's guidelines? Because I'm following that guidance.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: It is important to know, guidelines are not mandates. They're not saying everyone has to do this in your state. No state has done that. Most states probably won't.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: However, if the person who's questioning me knows more than a bunch of experts who came in and helped craft this policy for my state Department of Ed, I'd love to hear their side of the story, and it protects me in my classroom practice. So I just use it as backup.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: Now, while I can't help you with your district and schools policies, most of them have the big three. If you're in a public [00:05:00] school, FERPA, SIPA, and COPA. What do those mean, and what's that have to do with AI? Basically, You have to protect students identities online.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-2: They shouldn't be sharing their name or their address or their phone number or their personal email. That's FERPA. Then with CIPA, your school district, if they get federal money, has to have a way to filter harmful or obscene content from the internet connection. The AI tools.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-2: Indiscriminately, not because you're tech guy's going in and saying BlockChat, GPT, it's bad. It just gets put on a list by whatever software they're using. With COPA, basically, don't have students sign up for accounts on websites if they're not over 13. but you can ask AI tools, Hey, do you guys have an IT packet that explains this stuff that I can send to my tech people? Or are you guys SIPA and COPA compliant?

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-2: Now, while these are federal laws that apply to everybody, most of the teachers I work with say, but I don't have any policy on AI. My school handbook doesn't say [00:06:00] anything. My district doesn't say.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-2: A lot of them are just leaving it up to the schools and even the individual teachers to figure out. if you're in that boat, and your school, your district, have nothing for AI guidelines or policy, Here's my advice to you if you're in an AI vacuum.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-3: Ask your administrator, does the lack of policy mean I can't touch the AI topic?

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-2: If it's not explicitly written in there, you can't do it?

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-3: Or does the lack of policy mean I can responsibly start doing these things in accordance with my state or a different state's guidelines? Now most educators recognize in 2025 we should have AI guidelines. We should have policies in place, at least at the school level. But a lot of us don't, and unless you have the power to wave your wand and make that appear in your school handbook, you're probably just going to be responsible for your syllabus and your classroom guidelines and policy first.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-3: let's really focus on that, because it's what you have the most control over.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-4: Now how do I handle that in my own classroom? My state has guidelines, so [00:07:00] I follow them pretty much word for word.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-4: These are guidelines. They use the term should. Students should. I'm a government teacher. I make my kids do it. It's a mandate in my classroom. I use the verb shall. Students shall share links. Students shall include a disclaimer statement.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-4: That's really the only thing that I change, but I keep the diagrams and the color and everything the same as my state just to protect me We'll go through an example of each of those integration levels on assignments in the application video at the end of this series.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-4: But for now, the big takeaway for you as the person in charge of your classroom policy is don't be using one flat, static policy that never changes. You can't be saying, no AI in 2025. You can't be saying, AI's okay for everything in every conceivable way in 2025. If you're saying that, you probably don't know what it means because it opens an entire can of worms on [00:08:00] either end of the spectrum and you should be specific.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-4: And you should explicitly label assignments and assessments with which level of AI, if any, you can use on those assignments.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-4: If you're somebody who likes to say no AI, think about what you're excluding on that assignment. You can't use spellcheck. You can't use Grammarly. You can't use Google Search's first result on most factual searches. And here's one a lot of people don't know uses AI. Voice typing. How many students do we have that have an IEP that lets them do voice to text?

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-4: Half of my students with IEPs probably have that accommodation. If you want to fight federal law and say no AI on any assignment, good luck with that with your IEP students. Because you're breaking federal law and that's always a bad idea. Therefore, know what you mean when you say no AI, and know what you mean when you say AI is okay.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-4: You should be specific.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: The final aspect of AI policy in our [00:09:00] classroom is how are you going to address transparency? What teachers have done for decades is say, cite your sources, put a works cited page, links at the end, or the book at the end. How do you do that in the post AI world? Let's start with what not to do.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: Please don't have kids cite the AI tool. ChatGPT. com, accessed on January of 2025. Don't do that. That's like citing a library. That's like citing Wikipedia. com. That is not helpful. I don't know how you used it. That's not specific. What you should do instead, make your students turn in links to their chat logs.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: I started it in 2024, and it's totally changed the transparent use of AI in my classroom. Here's how it works.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: No matter how a student uses AI, even if it's just for ideas, they turn in a link to that chat log. Then I can see what they've been doing. And here, teachers, this is the best part of this video. It gives you x ray vision [00:10:00] into their head. What were they thinking when they used that AI tool? What content did they know?

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: What content did they not know? What skill or framework or application did you want to see in their work that you can look into their chat log? Here's an example from a student that basically was just using AI to copy and paste ideas and didn't understand the content.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: How do I know? They had to turn in a link to that chat and then I can go through and read it. That's their citation. Here's an example of a student who really knew what they were doing, and you can tell they asked for specific feedback, they had a draft of their paragraph first, and I can go through with my teacher x ray vision that AI chat logs give me.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: And tell, wow, this kid really knows the content. Please, try it with your students, even just on one assignment, and you will be blown away at what you can discern from reading their chat logs.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: Now, how do you get a link to a chat? You're going to have to show your students how to do this, I'll give you an example with ChatGPT, [00:11:00] but all of the apps really do this. ChatGPT. com There's two ways. First, you can go up here to the name of the model, or in this case the custom GPT they're in.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-4: You don't want to share a link to that. You want to link to their chat here. Or, in the top right, by their account picture, you'll see a share button with an open arrow. Have your students test the link. In a different tab, and make sure it loads everything in there, not just going to the home page of ChatGPT.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-5: All of the large language models do this, except SnapAI. It's another reason to not have your students using that, even though it's probably one they use all the time. Now what does all this mean for me as a teacher in the generative AI era? we have to change. Not the fundamentals, not the content, but some of the skills and the tools that our students are using didn't exist even two years ago. we have to learn how to incorporate those into our classroom.

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-5: If you want to know how I teach my students the skill set of using AI, [00:12:00] check out my next video in this playlist, where I go through, no matter what platform you're on, School AI, Magic School, ChatGPT, What are the skills my students need to interact with these tools, to write, to research, to get feedback, to cite them, to use them effectively?

Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-5: Think about it this way. The only alternative is let your students keep spamming your submissions with AI generated slop where they use Snapchat to write on a PhD level and then pretend it was their own words. Can we please stop doing that?

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-5: I'm Aaron Makelky. Thanks for joining me in building an effective AI policy for your school and your classroom.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-5: If you haven't already check out my link in the description below, I'll give you samples of syllabi that address AI in classrooms, the integration scale that I use, and I explicitly put at the top of every one of my assignments, lesson plan ideas, and everything I do with teachers with AI.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-5: If you have any questions on AI [00:13:00] policy that we didn't address today, put a comment down below. I'd love to hear those and get back to you. You can also send me a DM on any platform. My handle is just my name, at Aaron Makelky. If you want me to help you or your school, send me a message and I'm always happy to talk with fellow educators.

Shure MV7 & Coach Mak's ProMax Camera-5: See you in the next video where we're going to be talking AI skills to teach your students.