A Teacher's Guide to Still in Charge
Your students will use AI whether or not you do. Your job is to decide what it is allowed to do in your room, including whether it gets in at all.
You have 50 minutes, a full roster and no extra hours. This guide does not ask you for more of them. It gives you a line to write at the top of an assignment, one question to ask in the room, and, if you choose to use AI yourself, a way to make it carry your judgment to every desk.
What you get, and what you do not have to do.
Still in Charge gives your students five principles for using AI without handing over their own judgment. Your part is smaller than you might think.
A reference to hand out
The Student Reference puts the five principles in students’ own words, for a class period, an advisory or a club.
A guide to send home
The Parent Guide gives families one question to ask at dinner, so the conversation does not stop at your door.
An hour with the founder
When your school brings in the program, it includes a one-hour virtual Q&A for teachers. How it works →
No new system
Nothing to install, no accounts, no dashboard. No student data, ever.
No cost
Free to schools, teachers and families.
Not a mandate
Nothing here requires you to use AI, in class or in your own work.
Using this guide takes no account and no form. If you write to us or book a call, we keep only what you send, as our Privacy Policy and Booking Terms describe.
Using AI is your choice.
AI is a tool, like a hammer. Swing it well and you drive the nail. Swing it carelessly and you hit your thumb.
Everything below marked “If you choose to use it” is for teachers who do. Everything else works in a classroom AI never enters.
Five principles, and what each one asks of you in class.
Think Better
Use AI to sharpen reasoning and ideas, not to replace effort or judgment. Students remain responsible for the thinking behind the work.
In class. The test is not whether a student used a tool. It is whether they can still tell you what they decided. Build assignments where the deciding shows: a choice to defend, a step to explain, a draft with their fingerprints on it.
Protect Privacy
Never enter personal, confidential, financial, company, client, or restricted information into AI tools. Once sensitive information is entered, students may not control where it goes.
In class. Model it. Do not paste student names, grades or identifiable work into a tool your district has not approved for it, and tell students why you will not.
Verify Outputs
Students must check facts, sources, and claims before using, presenting, submitting, or acting on AI-generated output.
In class. Let students catch the tool being wrong. Ask it something your class already knows cold and wait for it to miss. Then look at how it sounded when it did. Exactly the same. That lesson sticks longer than any warning.
Follow the Rules
Household, school, classroom, workplace, and organizational rules come first. AI does not override the standards set by parents, teachers, employers, or institutions. When rules are unclear, students should ask before using AI.
In class. Students cannot follow a line nobody drew. Write it at the top of each assignment. There is a starting version below.
Pause and Ask
When something feels wrong, risky, inappropriate, or uncertain, students should stop and ask a teacher, supervisor, or responsible adult before proceeding.
In class. Make it safe to say “this does not look right,” about the tool or about their own work. A student who flags a problem should leave your room with credit, not trouble.
Write the line at the top of the assignment.
AI rules change from class to class, and students are left guessing which one applies. Three short lines at the top of an assignment end the guessing. Here is one version for a written assignment. Change it for yours.
Fine
Using AI to understand the reading or a hard idea.
Checking grammar on writing that is already yours.
Say so
Brainstorming with AI. Note it in one line at the end of your work.
Not on this one
AI writing any sentence you turn in.
Putting a classmate’s work or anyone’s personal details into a tool.
A written line protects the honest student most. Without one, the student who used a tool to fix a sentence and the student who had it write the paper look the same on the page.
The question that does the work.
A detector asks whether a machine touched the work. You need to know whether the student understands it, and the page will not tell you. Ask in the room, where the answer is theirs.
Give the first five minutes of class to one question, answered on paper with screens away. Do not announce it ahead of time, and change it each time.
What would change if [one fact] were different?
Which part were you least sure about?
What did you decide that the tool did not?
Read for the voice.
You know how your students write. Read for the answers that do not sound like them, and save your conversations for those few.
A student who rehearses an honest explanation of their own work has still learned something. That is not gaming the question. That is the point of it.
Where the grade sits.
Students reach for the shortcut hardest when the stakes and the stress are highest, usually the night before something big is due. If homework carries most of the grade, homework is where the temptation lives.
Count homework as practice, worth enough that students do it and reflect on it. Put most of the grade on work where you can see the thinking happen: in class, out loud, on paper.
Make the tool carry your judgment.
Across the studies we reviewed for On Judgment, the AI tools that helped students had a teacher behind them: someone who wrote its instructions, checked its answers or approved what it said. The chatbot that simply handed over answers hurt exam scores. You can give a tool your judgment by writing it down once.
1. Give it a job
You are helping a student in [course and grade] practice [topic].
2. No answers
Give one hint or one step at a time, never the final answer.
3. Ask first
Before helping, ask what the student has already tried.
4. Their terms
Explain in everyday words and examples a [grade]-level student already knows. Keep the content accurate to the material below.
5. Hold the line
If the student asks you to just do it, say the goal is for them to do it, and offer a smaller next step.
6. Check against your key
Check every step against the correct solution below. If unsure, say so.
7. Explain it back
When the student finishes, ask them to explain one step in their own words.
The full set, ready to copy
You are helping a student in [course and grade] practice [topic]. Do not give the final answer. Give one hint or one step at a time. Before you help, ask what the student has already tried. Explain things in everyday words, with examples a [grade]-level student already knows, and keep the content accurate to the material below. If the student asks you to just do it for them, say that the goal is for them to do it, and offer a smaller next step. Check every step against the correct solution below. If you are not sure something is right, say so. When the student finishes, ask them to explain one step in their own words. Correct solution and key points: [paste yours]
Test it before your students do. Be the student who wants the answer, and push.
Instructions shape a tool. They do not lock it, and a determined student can talk past them, which is why the question in the room still matters. If your district’s tools do not allow custom instructions, skip this section. Nothing else on this page depends on it.
Let it do your prep, not their thinking.
Practice quizzes
Being quizzed is one of the best-supported ways to learn. Have the tool draft ten questions on this week’s material, fix what needs fixing, and hand them out. The students do the remembering.
One reading, three levels
The same passage at three reading levels, or the same idea explained through basketball, a video game or a part-time job. The content stays yours.
Exit tickets and warm-ups
A week of them in five minutes. You choose which ones run.
Rubrics and review sheets
A first draft to edit, not a final copy to trust.
In a randomized trial in England, science teachers given ChatGPT and a guide to using it spent about a third less time planning lessons, and an independent panel found no drop in quality.
Signs worth a conversation, not an accusation.
None of these is proof. Each one is a reason to ask, with curiosity rather than suspicion.
The work is polished, the walkthrough is blank
Ask them to show you the first step on paper.
No false starts anywhere
Real thinking leaves marks. Ask what they tried that did not work.
They take every answer as given
Questioning the tool is the habit this program builds. A student who never doubts it has not built it yet. Show them it can be wrong.
They talk about a chatbot as a friend, or turn to it for comfort
That is worth a quiet word, and if it worries you, bring in your school counselor.
The goal is not less AI.
The tools will change faster than any training can follow. What you are building does not change: students who can tell you what they decided, and why.
This guide was written from the research, not from years at the front of a classroom. If something here does not fit your room, tell us. Teachers will make it better than we can.