Connecticut School Builds Student AI Council to Shape Policy
Cheshire Academy, a 400-student private school in Connecticut, has launched a student-led AI council and a patchwork of classroom experiments to set norms around generative AI use.
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Cheshire Academy, a private boarding and day school in Connecticut serving about 400 students in grades 9 through 12, has launched a programme it calls a “Student AI Council” in which pupils create media and lead discussions on healthy AI use - one of the more concrete institutional responses to generative AI’s arrival in secondary education.
- Cheshire Academy runs a 'Student AI Council' where pupils create media and lead discussions on healthy AI use
- The school's roughly 400 high-school students and staff use tools including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and MagicSchool, chosen through general technique training rather than prescribed platforms
- French teacher Miriam Przybyla-Baum, with nearly 30 years in the classroom, has students compare LLM edits against their own voice and anonymously grade AI-assisted peer work
The initiative represents a shift in how schools are handling artificial intelligence tools in the classroom. Rather than simply banning AI or allowing unrestricted use, Cheshire Academy is involving students directly in shaping how these technologies should be used in their own education. This approach recognizes that students are already encountering AI tools outside school and need guidance on using them responsibly and thoughtfully.
How Teachers Are Using AI at Cheshire Academy
The school did not mandate specific tools. On the advice of consultants, administrators trained staff on general prompting techniques and the technology’s limits, including its potential for incorrect and biased outputs. Teachers now draw on a mix of platforms - ChatGPT, Perplexity, and the educator-focused tool MagicSchool - mainly to plan lessons and build grading rubrics.
This behind-the-scenes use of AI helps teachers work more efficiently without replacing the human judgment that matters most in education. Prompting techniques refer to the skill of writing clear instructions that get useful responses from AI systems. Understanding the technology’s limits means teachers know when AI might produce inaccurate information or reflect biases present in its training data, and can work around these shortcomings.
Using AI to give students feedback remains on hold, held back by concerns over quality, personalisation, and privacy, according to MIT Technology Review’s reporting. This cautious approach shows the school is prioritizing student welfare over technological novelty, particularly around sensitive issues like how student data might be used and whether automated feedback can truly meet individual learning needs.
Teaching Students to Recognize AI’s Impact on Their Work
French teacher Miriam Przybyla-Baum, who has nearly 30 years of classroom materials behind her, does not use AI herself but has built two exercises around it: one where students let an LLM edit their homework and then identify which changes stripped away their voice, and another where students anonymously annotate peer assignments to flag AI-assisted passages.
These exercises teach critical thinking about AI rather than just technical skills. An LLM, or large language model, is the type of AI system that powers tools like ChatGPT - it generates text based on patterns learned from vast amounts of written material. When students see how an LLM changes their writing, they learn to recognize what makes their own voice distinctive and valuable. The peer annotation exercise builds awareness of what AI-generated text looks like, helping students spot when work may not be genuinely original.
The Student AI Council is intended to extend that reflective approach across the whole school community. By having students create media and lead discussions, the school ensures that AI policies reflect the perspectives of those most affected by them and creates peer-to-peer learning opportunities that can be more effective than top-down rules.
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What is the Student AI Council at Cheshire Academy?
The Student AI Council is a programme where pupils create media and lead discussions on healthy AI use across the school community. It gives students an active role in shaping how artificial intelligence tools are used in their education rather than having policies imposed only by adults.
Are students at Cheshire Academy allowed to use AI tools for their schoolwork?
The school did not mandate specific tools and has taken a nuanced approach. Teachers use AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and MagicSchool for lesson planning and building grading rubrics, while some teachers have created exercises that help students understand AI’s impact on their work. The focus is on teaching healthy and reflective use rather than blanket permission or prohibition.
Why isn’t the school using AI to give students feedback?
Using AI to give students feedback remains on hold, held back by concerns over quality, personalisation, and privacy. The school is taking a cautious approach to ensure that any use of AI truly serves students’ educational needs and protects their personal information.
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