AI use in classrooms: Edu­cat­ors’ chal­lenge is to get stu­dents to see it as a tool, not a short­cut.

Jeremy Hill sees kids using AI, and it wor­ries him. A high school e-learn­ing spe­cial­ist work­ing with grades 5 through 12 at Rich­mond Com­munity Schools in Indi­ana, Hill is alarmed by how per­vas­ive AI chat­bot use has become in classrooms.

“One of the con­cerns is that kids are going to think that the chat­bot is a per­son,” he says. That puts social-emo­tional devel­op­ment at risk. “The other great con­cern is that AI is going to do the think­ing for the stu­dent, and it’s going to be a crutch.”

Hill isn’t alone. From health con­cerns to eth­ical con­sid­er­a­tions and aca­demic wor­ries, kids’ use of chat­bots for school­work and learn­ing is ringing alarm bells for edu­cat­ors and par­ents alike.

The cur­rent chal­lenges

Hezekiah Her­rera, a spe­cial edu­ca­tion teacher at Sonia Soto­mayor Ele­ment­ary in San Diego, had a stu­dent ask recently: “Can I just tell the com­puter what to write and sub­mit that?”

“That ques­tion stopped me dead in my tracks,” he says. “It did not appear as though she inten­ded to deceive. She wanted to ask if it would be accept­able because, from her per­spect­ive, it seemed like a logical solu­tion.”

There’s a real con­cern that kids who lean on AI aren’t learn­ing to think for them­selves. “Stu­dents are turn­ing to AI for answers instead of using it as a tool to sup­port learn­ing,” says T. Renee’ Smith, an AI edu­cator and author of “She Leads With AI.” “Over­re­li­ance can weaken crit­ical think­ing, prob­lem-solv­ing and ori­ginal expres­sion.”

Experts worry that these trends don’t just put kids at an aca­demic dis­ad­vant­age in the long run – they can also under­mine self-con­fid­ence.

“We often see stu­dents turn­ing to AI because they’re intim­id­ated by the blank page. They don’t know how to brain­storm, revise or even how to define what ‘good’ work actu­ally looks like,” says Lind­say Tanne Howe, founder and CEO of col­lege admis­sions advis­ory com­pany Logic­Prep.

When AI offers a ready answer, it can send a sig­nal that the machines are smarter than you are. There’s the poten­tial for “the erosion of self-trust,” says Cindy Chanin, founder and dir­ector at Rain­bow EDU Con­sult­ing & Tutor­ing.

“I’ve watched stu­dents sub­mit something real and ori­ginal, only to run it through a chat­bot to ‘improve’ it. The out­put comes back smoother, more pol­ished, and sud­denly the stu­dent is look­ing at their own work and think­ing: mine isn’t good enough,’” she says.

AI is put­ting at risk both men­tal well­being and aca­demic suc­cess, but there are steps that par­ents and teach­ers can take to help kids nav­ig­ate.

Strategies for suc­cess

It’s import­ant to estab­lish early on the prin­ciple that AI should sup­port the learn­ing pro­cess, not replace it.

“This means encour­aging stu­dents to use AI for brain­storm­ing, break­ing down com­plex top­ics, or check­ing under­stand­ing, but not for com­plet­ing assign­ments in place of their own think­ing,” Smith says.

For teach­ers and par­ents, the way to ensure aca­demic integ­rity isn’t restric­tion. “It’s struc­ture and trans­par­ency,” she says. “Stu­dents should be taught to dis­close when and how they use AI, just as they would cite a source.”

The aim is “to shift the con­ver­sa­tion from fear to respons­ib­il­ity,” she says. “The goal is to raise stu­dents who don’t just use AI, but who under­stand it, ques­tion it, and use it with inten­tion.”

To help get that mes­sage across, Hill has a “tech team” of high school stu­dents who help their peers learn to nav­ig­ate. “They want to hear from one another, and then they know it’s real, because my stu­dents won’t present something that they don’t believe in,” he says.

In sup­port of both men­tal health and aca­demic suc­cess, teach­ers and par­ents need to get bet­ter acquain­ted with the tech­no­logy so they’ll know what kids are exper­i­en­cing as they lever­age chat­bots in sup­port of classroom learn­ing.

“When teach­ers are trained and are using the tech­no­logy them­selves, they can bring it to stu­dents in a way that’s informed and meas­ured,” says Adeel Khan, CEO of Magic­School, an AI plat­form used in K-12 schools.

“Schools can also be a real bridge for fam­il­ies. We’ve worked with dis­trict part­ners to run fam­ily nights where par­ents can see exactly how AI tools are being used in classrooms,” he says. “Some schools use back-to-school nights ... to walk fam­il­ies through what the dis­trict is doing, what it isn’t doing, and why they chose a par­tic­u­lar approach.”

Par­ents have an import­ant role to play, too, Chanin says. “The most power­ful entry point is hon­est con­ver­sa­tion that starts from under­stand­ing, rather than dis­ap­point­ment.”

“Stu­dents today are over­worked and over­whelmed, and when a child reaches for AI as a short­cut, the more use­ful ques­tion isn’t ‘how could you?’ but ‘what do you need?’ ” she says.

This article was originally published in USA Today on August 14th, 2026 by Adam Stone.