Students from my early days of teaching are in their forties now. I’ve talked with many of them over the years, and not a single one ever brought up some skill I taught them or some test they nailed because of my brilliance. What they did bring up is how they felt in my class. They all felt important. Truly important. Valued. Heard. A part of something special.

Not long ago, one of those former students commented on Facebook that they’d just listened to an Enya song and were immediately transported back to my classroom, writing in their journal. Others commented. Sweet memories they still carry from that time. Years later, and a song is enough to bring the whole room back.

It’s not the lesson plans or the formative checks or the differentiated handouts, though those certainly matter. It’s the moments. The laughter. The insight. The young man in the back row who went quiet because he was confused and I can be there. The conversation heading somewhere powerful and we have the time to let it roll. The moments I can sit with a student who’s struggling and actually help and build. The room’s rhythm, built between us in those important moments of trust, humor, and human connection.

What if AI in the classroom lets me dig deep into lesson design work in a matter of minutes so I can invest my energy and time on what only I can do?

I design an AI agent or app that runs a repeatable process for each student, built from what I know about their needs and what the curriculum requires. It delivers real time data to the student and me, so I’m not spending my evenings grading or carrying the guilt if I can’t. Iteration becomes a natural part of the learning process. We evaluate in cycles instead of at the end. Students improve in real time instead of waiting for a final score. Challenge becomes meaningful.

I’ve lived enough years to know what follows. I saw it in action last semester. They don’t need shortcuts. They’re confident. They’re proud. They want to show what they’ve learned. Systems that take minutes to build, grounded in real data, experience, and vision. AI keeps it running while I’m free to notice, to listen, to encourage. Could I integrate intentional rigor this way without making the whole room globally difficult for the sake of it? Each student moves through at their own speed and attacks challenging content with confidence.

This is where I choose to put my hope and energy.

Stay curious. Stay ethical. Stay you.

Many of my teaching colleagues are counting down to retirement. Years, then months, then one last first day. That might be you in the next few weeks. Twenty-two years ago I walked out of a classroom too, and I spent that time away in healthcare and in real estate, certain I would return one day but not sure when.

That “when” was January of 2026. I turned 60 in the same month! I returned right as AI began to make a huge impact everywhere. And instead of counting down, I found myself lit up in a way I had not felt in a very long time.

My teaching methods have always been a bit of a Purple Cow. Seth Godin wrote a small book by that name, and if you have not read it, go find it. A purple cow is the one who stands out, the one who cannot help doing the thing a little differently. This year, everything I’ve done in my work life finally makes sense. I’m a purple cow with the experience and energy to tackle the challenge of AI in the public school classroom.

So come with me and let’s pull back the curtain on what we can do on the first day, because, as you well know, day one sets the stage for the year.

In my sophomore English class, it always starts with a game. Students pair up, interview each other, and introduce their partner with a same-sound adjective stuck to the name. Lucky Louise. Happy Heather. We make tent cards that we use for several weeks. We pass around markers, and scissors, and stickers and ribbon; somebody laughs and the rest follow. The room never feels like a place where you sit and wait for instructions. It is a simple exercise, but it is tried and true and it works every single time. By the end of the hour they know each other’s names and a little something about each person. Equally important, I know their names and a little something about each one of them.

The major plot twist this year is AI. Instead of handing students my printed list of interview questions, I hope to let them build their own with an AI thinking partner. It is a low-stakes first taste of using AI on purpose, out in the open, for something that actually helps them. No sneaking. No gotcha. Just their own curiosity, sharpened, and unity on day one. My district is hopefully going to allow Gemini and NotebookLM. Students are using all models already, but I’ll work with what is approved and I’ll report back here.

From there we walk into defining personal ethics, which is really the cornerstone of my classroom. Students define what ethics even mean to them. Then their personal ethics. Then their academic ethics. Then how all of it applies to AI use. I plan to give them a no-shame questionnaire that asks, plainly, how do you actually use AI right now. Not so I can catch anyone. So that we can start from the truth and build from there. My sweethearts last year helped me discover this approach on our final research assignment. It changed how I teach. I’ll share that document with you as well.

Here is the belief underpinning every video and every post I make: when we put the thinking and the decision making back in students’ hands, they take ownership immediately. AI stops being a shortcut to cheat. It becomes something closer to a teacher in their pocket, a catalyst for refining their own voice instead of a replacement for it.

I know a lot of you are tired. Some of you are brand new and a little scared. Some of you are stuck between colleagues who are dead set against AI. Some of you have taught through decade after decade and are eyeing the door, done with one more sweeping change. Wherever you are standing, pull up a comfy chair. I am not the AI expert here, but I am learning as fast as I possibly can, truly geeking out on all of the LLMs and what they might mean for our students, for us, and for our classroom. I am a seasoned teacher figuring this out in real time, in public, and sharing every step so you do not have to figure it out alone. Ask questions, please!

If you want the pieces I plan to use on day one, two of them are free: the adjective game interview question bank, and the teacher guide for letting students build their own questions with AI. Grab them, use them, and tell me what worked and what flopped. Please share your ideas as well. I may add a few more documents. Who knows.

Grab the free day-one resources

I hope the time I’m putting in this summer helps you. If I can help you, I help your students and their families, and that is exactly why I’m here. I’m just getting started. Let’s see what we can make happen for our students, together.

Thanks for reading and I hope to meet you here next time.

Stay curious, stay ethical, stay you. ~Heather

When I walked back into the high school classroom this past January to teach Honors English II, after 22 years away, I knew the landscape would look different. I spent years in the real estate and healthcare worlds focusing on ethical leadership and values-aligned cultures. Returning to the classroom was a deliberate choice, but I did not expect to step directly into the middle of a real-time reinvention. In my fourteen years in public education, I dreamed of a system that supported student autonomy and encouraged a deep love of curiosity and learning. I see that possibility clearly now.

As we enjoy these summer months and look ahead to the upcoming 2026-2027 school year, teachers are asking the same anxious questions: How do we stop students from cheating? How do we police AI use? How do we protect the old ways of writing and thinking? How do we stop them from giving away their thinking?

I want to explore some different questions: How do we use this moment to make our classrooms truly student-driven and teacher-supported? How do we help students finally and truly own their learning?

During my years working with organizational values and culture, I learned that people thrive when they feel aligned with a clear purpose. The same is true for high school sophomores. If we treat school like a game of compliance, students will use any tool available to automate their way to a grade. But if we invite them into a creative studio where their actual voice matters, the game literally becomes about how they can reach higher and learn more.

This is where the real opportunity of generative tools comes into play. Recent studies suggest that when teachers learn to integrate these thought partners thoughtfully into their preparation, they save an average of 5.9 hours per week.

I don’t know about you, but as I plan for the fall, I can make excellent use of that time.

In the old days of teaching, those hours were consumed by drafting repetitive rubrics, generating reading comprehension questions, and formatting worksheets. Sifting through grading took up far too much of our precious energy. Today, I can use a digital tutor to help me scaffold a complex reading assignment in seconds. I can generate five different reading level options for a historical text, or instantly create a targeted vocabulary exercise tailored to my students’ interests.

Better yet, students can create all of that for themselves. The possibility is right there. Our students can get deep into their own data and design a tutor for themselves that helps them fill gaps in learning in a matter of hours. That is revolutionary, helpful, and is where true learning happens.

That time I got back does not belong to the computer. It belongs to the teenagers sitting in my classroom. A digital mentor handles the administrative skeleton, freeing the human teacher to provide the soul connection.

Those five extra hours (and I would argue more) are now spent walking around the room, kneeling beside a student to help clarify a thesis, or listening to a quiet student who finally found the courage to speak up about a poem because they feel supported.

My namesake, Charles Dickens, wrote during the Industrial Revolution. He saw how easily systems can treat people like gears in a rigid assembly, especially in public education. Imagining my classroom as we prepare for a new year, I see the opposite potential. We have a historic opportunity to redesign public education from the ground up, making it more personal, more creative, and more ethical. I believe it starts with the students and teachers. If we adapt within the system, the system will be forced to adapt to us.

We do not need to fear the future of writing, reading, and thinking. We just need to teach our students how to stand on the shoulders of these ever-evolving tools, using them as guides to reach higher vantage points of original thought.

I am glad to be back, and I am incredibly optimistic about where we are heading next.

Stay awake. Stay curious. Stay ethical. Stay human.

Charles Dickens wrote during the Industrial Revolution and didn’t hold back about the state of public education in his day. Here I am in 2026, back in a public high school by choice and at the precise moment AI is helping us reimagine public education as Dickens and I dreamed. The name fit.

I’m a teacher. I came back to the classroom in January 2026 after 22 years away, and I’m documenting the adventure of a revolution in education — starting now, while it’s still messy.

I'm not the AI expert in the room — but I'm learning. I'm a seasoned teacher with a B.S. in Education and an MBA in Ethical Leadership. I'm also a mother of three grown kids, bonus mom to one, with many years out in the "real world" beyond public ed. Since school let out this year, I keep circling one question: how do I serve my students as AI waves through every facet of our lives?

Here’s what you’ll find in your inbox:

• Honest field notes from my classroom, flops included.

• Conversations with the disrupters — teachers, parents, and students doing it differently.

• The ethics underneath it all — who we want to be while everything changes.

• Who we can be for our students — and real stories of how.

If any of that is your kind of thing, subscribe and walk with me. Let’s learn together.

My next post is the longer story — why I left teaching, where I went, and why I came back now. It begins with a line from Gandalf. I’ll see you there.

Stay awake. Stay curious. Stay ethical. Stay human.

— Heather