Khushali Narechania: Thanks for joining us, Stefany! You’ve been teaching for 27 years. What's the most important lesson from your early career that's carried you through to today?

Stefany Palomba: I want to say that the best thing or the most powerful thing you can do in the classroom is build relationships with your students.

It doesn’t matter how much technology you know, it doesn't matter how much content you have or can give to them. If they don't feel you're a genuine person, if you don't care about them, they're not going to learn in your classroom. Building relationships has been my primary concern and then learning comes after that.

Khushali: You teach in Canton, Ohio. Can you tell us about your students?

Stefany: I am in an urban city and many of our students are in poverty.

A lot of our kids come to school every day with trauma and a lot of problems that other students don't have to deal with. So in the mornings, we feel like they're starting at a different point than some other students from more affluent communities. If anything, it teaches us that kids really are resilient and they can persevere no matter what their circumstances are. That's what keeps me coming back every day — seeing the perseverance and the strength that the human spirit has to become better people every day.

Khushali: How has AI helped you in the classroom?

Stefany: When it comes to our students and using AI, I really like the idea of finding ways to differentiate in my classroom.

We have some students who are Spanish-speaking students. I might be teaching 10th grade content standards, but also might have a student who's at an 8th grade reading level. My job is to teach them the content, and delivering it is what has made AI just this great answer to many of my problems that I face every day in the classroom. I can translate within seconds. I can push out a copy. I can read through it before I deliver it to a student. Kids want their needs met immediately, and AI has really helped me meet their needs in a quick way while they're still engaged in what we're doing in the classroom.

Khushali: That's incredible! The stories we hear about AI tools being able to help with differentiation and producing individual plans in a more efficient way that’s specific to the unique needs of each student have been great. It’s been a really powerful shift. So, how has joining the aiEDU Trailblazers Fellowship played into your development and supported the conversations you have with students about using AI?

Stefany: One to two years ago, I felt very alone looking at AI. There was a lot of misunderstanding about what AI was or what the potential could be. It was great to find a community where I could talk to other teachers who were like-minded. We understood all of the great things that were coming out because of AI and how it could help our students as well as us in the classroom. I didn't feel that really anywhere else. At that time, my administrators didn't understand it. Everybody I talked to thought it was still about cheating. They didn't understand everything that it could do for us in our classrooms.

Khushali: How has your classroom or what you're doing with students evolved recently as we’ve seen the release of more AI tools geared towards teaching and learning?

Stefany: I'll give you an example from today. I teach bonding — covalent bonding, ionic bonding —  and there are a few games where you can pair up the different bonds and show how they do the covalent bonds. I looked at some of my lessons from previous years and they were really long-winded directions. Lots of steps, lots of explanations. But today, I went on Gemini, put in the game’s PDF, and asked it to give me step-by-step directions for a 9th grade reader: Where do I need to explain vocabulary? What's the foundational knowledge I need to make sure they know before we start this activity? And in like 10 minutes, I had a presentation that I could put up in front of all my students and it just made it so much easier. They understood what we were talking about, I wasn't just reading a page and going through the directions. They could actually go through it, look at it, and we practiced before they had an opportunity to do it on their own.

Khushali: Amazing! Yeah, AI has given us quite an opportunity to rethink our own lessons, improve on things, and rethink what we're asking students to do and how we're asking them to show their thinking and work. On the flip side, what's your biggest concern about AI in education?

Stefany: One of my big concerns is that we're going to have another digital divide gap where our students aren't going to have the same access to AI and to tools that kids from more affluent areas are going to have. My fear is that the divide is going to get bigger. And I’m fearful because this is an opportunity for our students to close that gap. Our inner-city kids, a lot of them don't have the same opportunities. They don't have a lot of people in higher-paying professions, so it's harder for them to navigate into social circles or even into those groups of people who are making a more livable wage. But having access to AI and putting it at their fingertips is a first step toward evening that playing field.