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If this episode makes you think, please let us know in the comments and support us by subscribing and leaving a review. Thank you. Today we are exploring a really compelling article from the 74 written by Greg Toppo, published back on July 24, 2026 titled Students convene to hammer out AI Bill of Rights for Schools and here's what immediately grabbed me 100 students representing all 50 states came together at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate in Boston to actually debate and vote on a detailed set of recommendations for how schools should navigate the world of AI. Think about that for a second. It's not adults dictating terms, but students, the digital natives living with this technology every single day, stepping up to define the rules. The article opens with a story that I think will resonate with so many educators and honestly, it's a bit heartbreaking. Tatiana Reeves, a 16 year old high school student from North Carolina, got a zero on a paper in her computer class. Why? Because she used the word whilst her teacher immediately accused her of using AI, giving her a zero for the assignment. Even though Tatiana says it's just how she talks. Can you imagine that tension, that immediate mistrust? It speaks volumes about the current state of AI cheating in schools and the knee jerk reactions we're seeing, often without actual evidence. It highlights a huge communication gap, doesn't it? This isn't just about students understanding AI, but about educators understanding students and how this new technology is changing everything about how they write, thinking, think and even speak. What the students found after being immersed in generative AI for nearly four years is that they're largely navigating this new world without any clear agreed upon student AI guidelines. So Day of AI, a non profit that works with MIT's RAISE research program and a national Superintendents association, brought these students together. And they weren't just dabbling. They were there for three days debating and ultimately approving these recommendations by a Senate style roll call vote in a full scale replica of the U.S. senate chamber. It's pretty incredible when you think about it. These young people are living through a massive technological shift and they're not waiting for adults to figure it out. They're actively shaping the conversation around AI Bill of Rights schools. Now here's the first thing that really stuck out to me. The students concerns. They're worried about everything from cheating and transparency, which we all talk about, to hallucinations to cognitive offloading. That's when you let the AI do all the heavy lifting and your own brain switches off and even mental health and environmental impacts. Ethan Liu, a recent high school graduate from West Virginia, put it well. He said the recommendations outline that AI with proper supervision is a great tool for brainstorming and studying. He'd use ChatGPT to create practice problems for tests, which is a fantastic application of the human in the loop principle. He's using it to enhance his learning, not replace it. But he also drew a clear line saying that using AI to answer test questions or generate art is a bridge too far. This is about teaching students not to outsmart machines, but to outthink them. And for the most part, they get it. The students are arguing that AI literacy for educators and students should be mandatory as soon as devices are used in the classroom. And it needs to cover more than just appropriate academic use. They want to learn about misinformation, about plagiarism, about bias in AI systems, about privacy, environmental impacts, and crucially, how AI actually works. Think about that. This isn't just about don't cheat. This is about genuine critical engagement with a powerful technology, understanding its limitations and its failure modes. It's exactly the kind of collaborative reasoning ability that I believe is at the heart of true AI literacy. James Baxter, a 14 year old from Utah, summed up the dark side of this well, saying it's an easy way out. And Dillian Campbell, a rising senior from North Carolina, sees it firsthand, with classmates just snapping photos of assignments and letting AI do the rest. This is where we need to remember the outsource you're doing, not your think and pillar. AI can handle the repetitive tasks, but judgment and creativity, the strategic thinking that has to remain human. We can't let AI create a cognitive debt by allowing students to over rely on it for core think and processes. What really impressed me was the nuance in the students discussions. Jalen Jensen, a 17 year old from Missouri, noted that the group felt limiting AI for younger students made sense, but giving middle and high schoolers more autonomy was important. Why? Because teens need to make their own decisions to learn from their own mistakes with AI. That's such a powerful point about growth and development in the context of responsible AI education. It's about empowering them to prepare for a future where AI will be ubiquitous and teaching them how to use it wisely. This all points to the irreplaceable human elements that AI cannot replicate. Lucia Herrera, another student from Missouri, talked about how AI is even creeping into the speech and debate world, taken all of the human out of it. And Beman Giacho from Minnesota shared how she was troubled to hear adults using AI as a therapist because, as she put it, it hurts my heart. Machines can compute. They cannot wonder, they cannot care. They can't build genuine relationships or offer the kind of nuanced judgment and wisdom that human connection provides. This goes straight to the core of what we need to preserve and protect in education. If you're finding these insights valuable, remember to follow and subscribe to the podcast for more discussions on AI in education. It's not just students who are wrestling with these ideas. Gima Whittaker, the superintendent of Decatur, Georgia schools who chaperone students to the event, acknowledge that AI fundamentally undermines the values of things like project based learning and the International Baccalaureate curriculum, pushing students towards mere completion instead of mastery and productive struggle. This is a critical observation for school leaders. AI should deepen learning, not just automate tasks. What's more, her students in the IB program are truly offended if a teacher uses AI to grade their papers and and they've even proposed a three strikes and you're out rule for teachers using AI. That's a fantastic example of students holding educators accountable, and it highlights how essential AI literacy for educators really is. It's not just for kids. Cynthia Brazil, who directs MIT's RAISE research program, stressed that AI literacy for teachers is no longer optional. She even suggested that generative AI might demand an entirely different pedagogical model, one that encourages students to deeply engage with material. And she invoked the legendary MIT computer scientist Seymour Papert, who popularized the term hard fun. Remember hard fun? It's that productive struggle, that embrace of difficulty, that is so crucial for deep learning. Papert believed children should be encouraged to build things and tackle challenges, not shun or outsource them. This connects so beautifully to our core belief in process and productive struggle, that learning truly happens in the work, not just in the outcomes. We need to design learning that cannot be faked because it demands depth, care, and imagination. Chase Johnson, a rising junior from Alaska, is a great example of the student experience. He uses AI a lot in his personal life, shown off 10 different AI apps on his phone to explore different possibilities, even developing a business with it. Yet in his high school, generative AI is largely banned because of AI cheating in schools. He suggests that teachers need to adapt their assignments instead of essays easily outsourced to a bot. He says teachers should assign research projects that require students to present their findings in front of a class. You can't cheat your way out of that, he says. This is a brilliant student perspective on assessment redesign, moving from just a product to incorporating process and performance. It asks us to consider can AI complete this without the students unique context, perspective or judgment? That's cognitive stretch. And Sarah Zacha, a Florida student, encapsulates the human in the Loop ideal perfectly. She'll ask AI for step by step help on a math problem or for brainstorming ideas for writing. But then she says, I'll write ethically on my own. Although I'm going to sound like a teenager writing an essay and I might not get the grade that the cheaters get. Ultimately I'll know what level I'm at. That is the authentic voice of a student committed to learning, understanding the value of her own thought process. Jeff Riley, the former Massachusetts Commissioner of Education and now the head of Day of AI, sees this as a potential Sputnik moment for education. He's excited about AI's possibilities for differentiation and personalization, but also rightly terrified by the bad stuff bias, deepfakes, energy concerns, all the rest. He noted that the International PISA exam will assess AI literacy for the first time in 2029. And he worries American 15 year olds will score 30th in the world, despite AI largely being created here. That's a stark warning, isn't it? It emphasizes the urgency for robust, responsible AI education and for all of us to truly evolve our thinking around this technology. What really gives me hope, though, is how the students themselves are engaging. Superintendent Whitaker shared that her two students on the flight home had split their vote on the recommendations, with one saying the proposal didn't meet the mark completely. Her reaction? I think that's exciting. What excites me is that our children are wrestling just like we are. And that level of inquiry as a superintendent is what you want to see in students every single day. That's exactly right. The real value is not in what the machine produces, but in how the student responds, how they wrestle, how. How they question. Empowering student voices to shape the future of AI in schools isn't just a good idea. It's absolutely essential for thoughtful, human centered integration. That's all for today. Thanks for listening.