MIT AI Student Leaders Program

Mentoring Students in the Development of AI Guidance for PC

During the first semester of the 2025-26 school year, Faith Ward, director of libraries, mentored a group of 24 students across the Upper School who engaged in a student leadership program developed by Daniella DiPaola, a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab. Daniella studies human-AI interaction, develops curricula on the responsible creation and use of AI, and informs educational policy on AI in schools. Daniella’s program, Student Voices in AI, was designed to empower students to lead conversations about how AI should be used in their schools. Upon joining the MIT AI Student Leaders program, senior Elise Krakowsky noted that Penn engineering had also initiated a similar program, employing student voice and agency to co-create AI policy.

Over the 12-week program, Penn Charter students built confidence in navigating AI in their school lives, engaged their community to understand varied perspectives and worked to produce proposed school guidelines for AI. Each weekly session began with a roundtable, sharing what we learned about AI that week. This icebreaker activity became a dependable forum for some of the most varied and compelling learning we shared. Students often noted how their parents and caregivers utilized AI in their professions and that resulted in an examination of both the drawbacks and benefits of the technology. Through a mix of additional projects, activities such as surveying the Upper School student body, Zoom meetings with professionals working in AI such as Sohan Choudury from FlintK-12, and thoughtful interviews with faculty and staff, the program fostered community dialogue and helped PC students develop a values-aligned approach to using AI.

A meaningful outcome of this work for the students was the ability to present and share what they learned at several different forums. Eila Spaman and Kaiden Sheth joined a Department Chairs Group meeting in March to share the group’s drafted policy guidelines for the schoolhouse as well as offer some suggestions for teaching and learning opportunities for faculty. Several students also participated in Civic Learning Week National Forum, which is hosted annually by iCivics and seeks to highlight the importance of civic education in sustaining and strengthening constitutional democracy in the United States. The forum included a full day of student programming where PC students met Daniella DiPaola, spoke with civics teachers attending the conference and shared their learning from the program. Finally, a group of participants also attended the AI Across Friends Schools student session, joining peers from Abington Friends, George School and Friends' Central to share their insights about AI, how it can be used in the classroom, and where the technology interrupts and impacts learning.

The MIT AI Student Leaders program was piloted in 2025-26 across 18 public and private schools, and, based on its success, the researchers aim to make the curriculum resources available as open-source materials for teachers and students. The structured program provided the students with a pathway for exploring how AI is perceived and used by the PC learning community, and to emphasize the importance of learning, engagement and leadership to develop a meaningful policy rooted in our core values. Ward noted how it was a privilege to mentor the talented students, share their experiences of exploration and inquiry and see their evolving understanding of how this technology is shaping their educational journey. 

Special thanks to Sam Herron for their work supporting the program and co-mentoring students!  

—by Faith Ward, director of libraries