At a recent event in San Antonio, about 50 educators received a three-hour crash course in AI, organized by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and largely funded by Big Tech. An Associated Press report from Monday about the seminar sheds some light on what it’s like when AI companies fund an effort to help more teachers AI-generate their lesson plans.
“We all know, when we talk about AI, teachers say, ‘Nah, I’m not doing that,’” Kathleen Torregrossa, a person described as a “trainer” said to the group as part of her introduction, according to the AP. “But we are preparing kids for the future. That is our primary job. And AI, like it or not, is part of our world,” Torregrossa added.
According to a September Gallup poll, 60% of K-12 teachers have already used AI in their work.
Increasingly, parents appear to not want this. One poll over the summer found that support among parents for AI-generated lesson plans has fallen from 62% in 2024 to 49% this year. Another recent study looked at some of the lesson plans themselves and found them academically substandard according to the two benchmarks the researchers used.
The San Antonio seminar is part of a program launched back in July by the AFT in conjunction with a bunch of tech companies. The funding for the program includes $8 million in cash and $2 million in resources from OpenAI, $12.5 million over five years from Microsoft, and $500,000 from Anthropic, according to the AP.
All that money and gear is supposed to go toward a dedicated campus in New York City where AI training for teachers will be conducted online and in person, with the five-year goal of providing AI lessons to 400,000 teachers. That’s almost a quarter of the membership of the AFT, according to its website.
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