I am writing this letter in longhand, on a yellow pad, before anyone types a word of it into a computer. That is not a stunt. It is how we are trying to think about this question at BPD Academy.
Every school is being asked the same thing right now: what do you do about the fact that students have access to a machine that will write for them? The answers range from total bans to full integration, and the honest truth is that nobody knows yet which answer is correct. We are going to be candid with families about that.
Here is what we have decided, for this year:
- In Grades PreK through 8, students will not be asked to interact with generative AI tools for any graded assignment. Writing will be done by hand before it is done on a screen. This is not a rejection of the technology; it is an insistence that children first learn what it is they are trying to delegate.
- In the Upper School, teachers will name their own policy for each class, in writing, at the start of each term. Some will forbid AI tools entirely. Some will require students to use them and then document what they learned. Some will ask students to submit a draft and a revision together, with a reflection on what changed. The one thing no teacher will do is leave the policy unstated.
- Our Capstone Program will continue to require that students work directly with a human mentor. The Capstone project is not compatible with a machine that produces text without caring about it.
None of this is final. We will look at it again in June, with faculty, and again in September. What I want our families to know is that we are not going to pretend this is not happening, and we are not going to pretend we already know the answer. We are going to be a school thinking carefully about this, in public, together.
— Dr. Elena Marquez, Head of School