How Wesleyan School formed their AI position and expanded learning possibilities with Flint

A case study of Wesleyan’s formation of an extensive AI policy and how Flint has enabled teachers there to personalize learning.

Lulu Gao | lulu@flintk12.com

Allison Berry | LinkedIn

Case Study Summary

Wesleyan School first heard about and partnered with Flint in September 2023. At that point, they had already formed an AI committee and were figuring out what they needed to learn about AI and how it could possibly fit into teaching and learning.

During the 2023-2024 school year, the committee piloted Flint and used their learnings from the pilot to form an extensive and specific AI policy. This case study covers the full process they went through to educate teachers about AI, explore its capabilities, define academic integrity with AI, form an AI policy, and communicate that policy to the school community.

Wesleyan is a Flint partner school with some of the most expansive use, going as young as 4th grade, but now considering branching out to 1st graders too. Because their committee had a representative from every department, they’ve found a wide range of use cases for Flint from 4th grade STEM to religious studies to AP Lang writing practice. “The possibilities for how this might transform lessons are endless,” Allison Berry says, “and our teachers who used Flint last year are the cheerleaders for our teachers who are just starting to explore AI this year. It's going to be really exciting to see what will come out of this year.”

About Wesleyan School

Wesleyan School is a Kindergarten through 12th-grade college preparatory school just north of Atlanta in Peachtree Corners, GA. Founded in 1963, Wesleyan’s mission is to be a Christian school of academic excellence by providing each student a diverse college preparatory education guided by Christian principles and beliefs; by challenging and nurturing the mind, body, and spirit; and by developing responsible stewardship in our changing world.

In this case study, K-12 Technology Coach, Allison Berry, explains in-depth how she and the AI committee leveraged Flint to explore AI and build an 8-tier AI policy. She shares their considerations, challenges, and discoveries along the way, including some exciting use cases for Flint uncovered by the teachers. She says that Flint is a “game changer” that lets teachers “transform their content and lessons in a way that they weren't able to do before.”

Wesleyan’s challenges

In November 2022 when ChatGPT first came out, Wesleyan was one of the schools that banned it on campus so they could decide how they wanted to approach AI intentionally. They needed conversations and a partnership that would enable them to:

Educate teachers, students, and parents about responsible AI use
Get each department’s buy-in and invite them into the conversation about an AI position and policy
Understand the extent to which AI is useful in a K-12 environment
Define academic integrity with AI
Form a school-wide AI policy

Flint’s solutions

Wesleyan’s process of tackling the challenges above required strategic collaboration and communication between the different departments. However, as Berry explains in this case study, Flint’s capabilities coupled with her strategy of hosting “Lunch and Learns” and connecting with teachers in each department who could become “cheerleaders” for Flint use made for an exciting and successful rollout of AI at Wesleyan.

By partnering with Flint, Wesleyan was able to provide a safe environment where teachers could explore AI. It is also a tool that is pushing teachers’ creativity, and causing them to have “aha moments” when it comes to imagining what AI could do for students. 4th-grade teacher Meghan Smith realized Flint could help teachers advance through all levels of the SAMR model of technology integration, on which Wesleyan eventually based their AI policy chart.

Flint’s impact so far

Flint has helped Wesleyan teachers grow their understanding of AI’s capabilities to the point where they are now transforming assignments and saving time that they can commit to new things. They have discovered a wide range of use cases from 4th grade STEM to religious studies to AP Lang writing practice. With Flint having opened the Wesleyan community’s eyes to the endless possibilities of integrating AI into their current educational objectives, Berry is already planning the next training sessions on how teachers can use Flint to achieve “different levels of work” that follow the AI policy levels, all achievable within the same AI platform.

Teacher testimonials

When asked in an email thread, many teachers were excited to write about their experience with Flint:

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Joseph Koch, High School Principal and AP Research Teacher at Wesleyan
AP Research sets limits on AI use for students, however, I have used the assignment feature to help with grading overview feedback for specific writing assignments/student samples. While I still grade each paper/assessment individually in great detail, spending a few minutes to set up/enter student samples has created instant feedback, which in turn, has helped me identify strengths, weaknesses, and future instructional elements for students to focus on, especially while I am finishing the grading process in greater detail. This has improved efficiency, especially with correcting important elements of student work faster/in real-time. Ultimately, I am grading less often/for less time and have more margin for teaching and instruction.

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Sarah Peebles, High School Learning Specialist at Wesleyan
Students in Guided Study Hall are often unable to set goals and visualize a path to achieve them. I’ve used Flint to have students create SMART goals for the semester and then create a system for achieving these goals. The individualized attention given to each student in follow-up tutors has helped them stay on track and make meaningful progress.

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Meghan Smith, 4th Grade Teacher at Wesleyan
I use Flint to facilitate higher-order thinking on differentiated assignments. I often feel that Flint is a partner to me in prompting students to think more deeply, answer complex questions, and apply their learning in engaging ways. The transformational use of AI technology in the classroom allows me to open up the figurative walls of my room to create scenarios such as cooking competitions, interviews with astronauts, and historical time travel that would otherwise not be possible.

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Pamela Sanchez, Level 1 Spanish Teacher at Wesleyan
I created a tutorial for students to identify corrections in a letter they wrote. Settings included Spanish that an 8-year-old could comprehend and provide examples to correct the mistake. Some students really appreciated the errors that they overlooked.

After the letter was corrected for errors, the students used a 2nd tutorial where Flint responded to the email like an 8-year-old. Several students were impressed with the use of technology. The correction exercise was turned into a reading comprehension exercise.

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An introduction to Allison Berry

Allison Berry’s Role and Impact on AI

At Wesleyan School, I'm the K-12 technology coach. My role here is to coach teachers on technology implementation in their classrooms. I work with the admin team on streamlining different processes, technology applications, and implementations.

Crafting Wesleyan’s AI Position

Initial Reactions to Generative AI

We all remember around Thanksgiving a few years back when generative AI dropped, and we were all hearing it on the news and the radio. Immediately when that happened, our high school principal said, “This is going to be a game changer. This is something we really need to start understanding.”

For that first year starting in November 2022, Wesleyan’s AI goal for the next six months was AI education—to educate the teachers, to educate the parents, and to understand what the students knew about AI. In that brief period, our school decided we needed to educate all of our stakeholders before we just kind of let AI explode. The reaction to initially block AI programs like ChatGPT, even in hindsight, was a smart reaction as we used this time to educate teachers that AI was coming and, eventually, it's going to be allowed for student use in our school.

Forming AI Committees

Committees had just two meetings based on lunch periods of the day: a middle school meeting and then a high school meeting. And then our fourth-grade teachers joined the middle school because at the time we thought that was as far down as AI is going to go.

The members were given four goals at the start of the committee that we were going to work on throughout the year:

Acquire a working understanding of AI.
Learn how to best integrate AI within each academic department using Flint and other tools.
Define academic integrity with AI.
Create a school-wide AI policy.

To address goal number one, we used Matt Miller's book, AI for Educators. We read about a quarter of it for each meeting and then had discussion points. The teachers found this book eye-opening as it addressed their fears of technology and its implications for the classroom.

For the second goal, all teachers in the committee were asked to use Flint, create at least one lesson with their students, and provide feedback to the committee afterwards. Flint was the main AI tool we focused on for its safety standards and security. At that point, we encouraged teachers to use ChatGPT for personal needs but not with students.

The third goal—defining academic integrity with AI—was crucial to forming our school policy as teachers expressed concerns about an unregulated AI environment.

Formation of the AI Policy

Our fourth-grade teacher, Megan Smith, was one of the biggest users of Flint. She had an aha moment where she realized that our policy would be more of a framework rather than strict rules. She based our policy on the SAMR model, focusing on enhancing or transforming lessons with AI.

The committee discussed whether students could use AI for studying purposes, eventually concluding it was acceptable.

Training and Implementation

During pre-planning, each department decided if they would use an AI cover sheet, covering expectations for assignments where AI was utilized. Teachers from the committee shared their experiences to persuade the skeptical staff members, creating a positive ripple effect throughout the school.

Future Goals with AI

I’m creating presentations to guide teachers in exploring the levels step-by-step, demonstrating various ways students can interact with AI and how the prompts affect outcomes.

Overall, Wesleyan School is embracing AI as a transformative tool, providing training, resources, and a structured approach to policy-making.