TEMPLE, Texas — Temple ISD is navigating using Artificial Intelligence in its classrooms. It will be a multi-year process focusing on generative AI. The district may use it for assessment, instruction and measuring student progress.
"AI is inevitable," Dr. Bobby Ott, Temple ISD Superintendent, said. "I mean, it's wherever you go, so you really have two choices as an education institution. You can put your head in the sand and act like it's not going to happen, and then the students will introduce it in the organization. Then you're going to spend your entire time doing damage control around plagiarism and all types of academic instruction being compromised."
The other choice is taking a slow approach, which is what TISD is doing.
"As you learn, you figure out what's the safest way to introduce this to our students, and do it in a way where we're still in charge as the adults and as educators," Ott said.
For the 2025-2026 school year, Temple ISD is using AI to support teaching and learning in the classroom.
"We will be identifying a cohort of teachers to begin to start to learn about AI," Dr. Lisa Adams, Deputy Superintendent of Academics and School Leadership for Temple ISD, said.
Those teachers will engage in self-paced explorations throughout the first semester. In the spring, they will implement it in the classrooms.
"If an English teacher has 100 essays she has to read, utilizing that AI allows her to review that learning in a much quicker fashion which allows her to give feedback to students more quickly, which better helps and assists with learning," Adams said.
"We're going to be able to evaluate kind of where students are at at a different rate than we have before," Ashley Jones, Director of Digital Learning for Temple ISD, added.
There will be no student use until 2025-2026.
"We will adjust our plan as necessary and will continue to be transparent," Jones said.
While it's a lot to navigate, the district has a message for those who many be on edge.
"I know there is a fear out there that AI will eventually remove the human from the equation and that's not at all the case," Ott said. "We're taking precautionary measures and moving as slow as we are because we want to make sure that number one, the values that we have in the community are associated with education, that they're not compromised. Number two, the core academics that we're responsible for providing are not compromised as well."
On Friday, June 21, over 100 Temple ISD staff participated in a professional development called Unraveling the Mystery of AI. The teachers learned more about AI and how to use it in the classroom. Many are excited about this opportunity.
"They feel like they walk in a classroom that they'll be able to recognize and they're still in charge of versus walking into one where students are doing things and they don't understand where they got them from or what they're doing," Ott added.
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