How do we as teachers balance the need of students to practice class content with their intense schedules, extracurriculars, and need for a healthy and balanced life? An alternative to traditional, mandatory homework is offered herein, in the form of a Suggested Practice document and classroom routine for incorporating self-selected practice into your classroom structure. These documents break each unit down by topic, offer practice opportunities, provide resource links, and include reminders of labs, assessments, or extension opportunities that accompany the unit. By building a clear classroom routine around this optional practice, students are encouraged to take ownership over their own learning in a way that allows them to create balance in their own lives and prepare for college, while also providing immediate feedback and differentiation on practice materials. The author shares the impact such a routine had on her own classroom environment and engagement, and recommendations for building successful Suggested Practice documents of your own.

As applications of AI have proliferated, the call has grown for educating students about what AI is, how it works, and how it can affect us. In response, [an American University], in collaboration with an external implementation partner, developed 12 modular, short-format curricula for educators of students aged 5-18 years to use for developing AI literacy among students. The curricula incorporate the National Research Council’s core ideas of engineering design. This article describes the curricula, how they were implemented in 2022-23, and findings from an external evaluation on the impact of this AI literacy initiative. In survey responses and interviews, teachers reported that both they and their students gained knowledge about how AI works, key AI concepts, current uses of AI, and potential benefits and harms to society. In addition, learning more about AI increased their levels of optimism about the potential benefits of AI to society and about their own abilities to contribute to shaping the future of AI. The reported impact is impressive given how little time students engage in the curriculum content relative to other topics and subjects they study.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm, consequently bringing a hurricane to the seas of education. The purpose of this article is to encapsulate commonly used classroom strategies into practices that can effectively build content acquisition yet preserve academic integrity. Implementing these best practices is as simple as knowing the ABCs of Teaching with AI: Apply, Build, and Collaborate. Encouraging students to be responsible users of content gathered from AI while primarily focusing instruction on the Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) will support authentic learning in an age of AI. AI is here to stay; educators must adjust their methodology to allow students to grow and learn alongside its capabilities. By embracing the knowledge available through AI and adjusting instructional practices, educators can support using AI as a tool for growth and not a crutch hindering stride.

It is critical to understand past science education reform to know what could be explored in the future (Cheng et al., 2010). The purpose of this position paper is to describe a historical timeline of science education. Using historical documents and current science education research, the authors create an evolutionary description of science education changes over time and how these shifts could influence how Artificial Intelligence is used in science education. Teachers should meaningfully implement the use of AI in ways that focuses on student-centered learning and restore the progress made by the K-12 Framework and NGSS, including generating ideas about problems that students can solve in an interest area, analyzing large sets of real-world data, generating grade appropriate science readings to develop background knowledge, and using AI to grade unique student work to replace multiple-choice response exams. AI and science education may best be described by a Chat GPT response… “It's important to note that while AI can enhance science education, it should not replace human teachers. Instead, it should be used as a tool to augment and support their expertise, fostering a blended learning environment that combines the benefits of technology with human guidance and mentorship”.