Future Focus: AI in the Upper School

by Andrew Ruoss, Ph.D., Asst. Head of Upper School for Academic Programs

We live in a moment defined by a uniquely rapid pace of change. Technological innovation has driven these dynamics, from smartphones and app ecosystems to generative artificial intelligence tools, social media, and instantaneous communication channels. As professional fields, universities, and schools weigh the best strategies to address this constantly evolving environment, GCDS has continued to expand its role as a leader in K–12 education.

A RESEARCH-DRIVEN APPROACH

Almost a decade ago, the Upper School was built with the mission to establish powerful opportunities for learning by engaging directly with the institutions and individuals driving and analyzing societal change. We recruited a faculty of more than 90 experts, blending secondary teaching experience, deep research credentials, and applied professional careers. Together, this diverse faculty has built a curriculum designed to embed directly into the most pressing societal, policy, and research debates.

The continued evolution of smartphone technology and the rise of generative and agentic artificial intelligence tools represent two of the most prominent focuses right now for the Upper School faculty. Leveraging the expertise of our community, committees of business and research leaders have joined with faculty and student groups to continuously monitor and advise the use of emerging technologies in teaching, learning, and research. Strategic partnerships with universities and companies have also positioned our faculty and students to be in dialogue with leaders across technological fields.

BUILDING A SHARED, FLEXIBLE LANGUAGE

One of the most important ongoing conversations among our faculty has centered on when, how, and whether to introduce AI tools into the classroom. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, a faculty team worked over the summer to develop a highly flexible ‘AI cover sheet,’ which every teacher uses for each major assessment. In addition to prompting students to sign the Honor Code—a cornerstone of the GCDS community across both campuses—the cover sheet distills the different uses of AI technology across disciplines: assisting in the preliminary research process, aiding in crunching data, serving as an editing partner, and creating project components from scratch. The cover sheet gives the teacher the autonomy to tailor and define AI use at different developmental levels, as well as for different research, computational, and writing skill goals. And in an environment where a new AI tool is pushed out to student devices on a near-daily basis, the cover sheet also provides the student with clarity in their coursework.

Step inside the Advanced Data Science class, and you’ll see a room of students exploring cutting-edge computational tools to manipulate large data sets. The students in the course have at least two years of intensive training in coding and computer science, so the use of tools like Perplexity and Claude have the potential to add rocket fuel to their problem-solving and to allow the instructors to dramatically elevate the expectations and the challenges. Crucially, their established skill fluency allows the students to analyze and assess the responses that they get back from AI models, which, the class has found, can hallucinate up to a quarter of their results.

According to Gordie Campbell, who heads the Upper School’s Creative Applied Technologies Department, “AI results are only as good as the questions you ask. The use of an agentic tool represents a tremendous amount of faith that the tool can find a perfect predictive answer. We feel as though the best advantage for our students is to be able to both use and interrogate these tools—a ‘trust but verify’ approach that requires students to have the skills to test the veracity of AI output.” Campbell and the Computer Science faculty also constantly benchmark their curriculum, making annual trips around the country to the leading undergraduate computer science programs.

If you were to walk down the hall during the same period as Advanced Data Science, you would find Maddy Wilder’s Advanced Literary Analysis course. In this class, there’s a very different approach to the use of AI. The course is centered on cultivating students’ ability to think through writing: to analyze the complex ways in which influential authors across time seek to capture the human experience, and then to effectively communicate that analysis through authentic language. Thus, the students’ AI coversheets for each project convey that they cannot use AI tools in the production of their writing. Wilder explains her department’s approach, that “the goal of an English course is to cultivate each student’s ability to craft unique ideas about a text. In the process, they’re learning how to represent their ideas, their perspective, and their voice to a world beyond their own mind. AI tools are powerful and helpful in many corners of life, but they do not help to grow that skillset.” Far from simply dismissing AI, however, the English Department meets regularly to discuss the uses of emerging AI tools, and Wilder and her colleagues have developed English electives that explore the societal impact of technology through literature.

AI ENTREPRENEURSHIP

As our faculty continually track the evolution of AI technologies and test different platforms in class, members of our faculty are also engaged in their own entrepreneurial research and development. Dr. Michelle Smith, who teaches political thought and political science, and Adell Vann, who serves as an Upper School STEM Teaching Fellow, have spent the past year building Resonant Minds, an “Ethical AI” venture that has developed a new agentic tool designed to advance applied learning. After months of prototyping, Smith and Vann’s agent offers the ability to tailor its curricular assistance to individual students and faculty, with the goal of supporting faculty workflow and curricular design.

According to Dr. Smith, the Resonant Minds platform “helps educators to design the kinds of applied learning experiences they’ve long imagined but rarely had time to create. Our Enquiry Engine now powers a full-class simulation of civic deliberation. We are practicing pluralism, not just discussing it. What once took weeks now unfolds in a single afternoon—without sacrificing depth, rigor, or authentic student thought.” Resonant Minds tools will be piloted in specific Upper School classes this spring.

RESEARCH + UNIVERSITY PARTNERSHIPS

Beyond our research ventures on campus, over the past five years, the Upper School faculty has also curated an ecosystem of partnerships with research institutions and universities around the country. In our latest collaboration, GCDS will be among the first secondary schools in the country to pilot the NOMO app, a platform built by leading behavioral scientists from the University of Chicago, Stanford, and Princeton, to help students build healthier digital habits, especially outside of school hours, when phone use is hardest to manage. Over the course of the school year, our deans and academic leaders will be implementing the app in grade level competitions and programming. As GCDS was one of the first schools in the New York City region to address cellphone use on campus, the opportunity to partner with the NOMO team has aligned with a continued priority of our faculty in studying the impact of cellphone technology on teenage learners.

We position all of our external partnerships as collaborative learning experiences. In addition to testing the app, math and computer science students at GCDS will also be engaging directly with NOMO researchers to study the efficacy of the app through world-wide user data. “This is a real example of an external partnership that challenges our students to use data science to explore social impact. Taking in a massive, global data set to assess not only the efficacy of a high-profile startup, but also to interpret the effects of a major societal debate right now [over cellphone use], this is a reflection of our core approach to teaching and learning in the Upper School,” shares Coleman Hall, who heads the Upper School Math Department. As NOMO is rolled out to more than 20,000 students across the UK, Brazil, and the United States this winter, the student research group will analyze and present their findings to the NOMO leadership team later this spring.

LOOKING FORWARD

As GCDS celebrates its 100th school year, the centennial theme of “pride, purpose, and possibility” echoes through the work of our teachers and students in the Upper School. A rigorous approach to innovation, a clear mission of empowering and preparing students to impact the world around them, and an intense curiosity that seeks out opportunity in change—these are the values carrying our school into its second century.

#gcdsus