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The Future of Teaching with AI: From Lesson Plans to Learning Partners

  • Writer: Eric Mason
    Eric Mason
  • Aug 25
  • 4 min read


For years, as a classroom teacher, I combed resources on the in dusty old

textbooks for lesson plan ideas. Certainly, published curriculum was a primary resource for me. (Yes, my first years in the profession came before the internet was widely accessible to schools.) When I returned to the education profession in the early 2010s, I mastered the art of finding resources on the internet. I enhanced and expanded on the required curriculum, I used videos to help build analogies for students, I sprinkled clips from movies to reach students where they were and to make my lessons in English, grammer, and writing interesting and exciting. However, as a secondary teacher (High School and Middle School), I had more than 120 students each year. Personalizing their learning remained a scattershot of ideas and pedogogical approaches.

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As a Director of Assessment, I helped thousands of teacher translate standardized assessment data into finely honed clarity about the learning journey and progress of their students. Those assessment score were windows into the clarity or lack thereof that their students brought to the classroom each day. Everyday, the concept of personalized learning and individual interventions dominated the conversation about educational improvement.


Late at night, countless teachers sit hunched over laptops, coaxing lesson plans from large language models. Already, AI is helping lighten the load—drafting worksheets, building quizzes, even suggesting classroom activities. It’s the quiet first wave of AI in education: not flashy, but practical. The massive speed of productivity provides educators with increased opportunity to help students


But what comes next is far more transformative. What does come next as LLM Ai becomes as ubiquitous as the internet?


Phase 1: Today’s Reality – AI as Teacher’s Assistant

Right now, AI tools serve as behind-the-scenes helpers. Teachers use them to brainstorm ideas, write parent communications, or tailor practice questions. This work matters—every hour saved in preparation is an hour returned to students. Yet at its core, this phase is about efficiency, not transformation.

Phase 1: Today’s Reality – AI as Teacher’s Assistant (Expanded)

Late at night, I—and countless others—have watched AI evolve from novelty to necessity. AI now drafts worksheets, tailors quizzes, and suggests engaging content. This first wave of AI in education is quietly pragmatic: it boosts efficiency, but hasn’t yet transformed the core of teaching.



As AFT President Randi Weingarten put it:

“AI is already in our schools, impacting how lessons are planned and how students learn in and out of classrooms. We have to ensure educators, parents, and students shape how AI is being used, so it’s not simply imposed on them.”

Educators are seeing real gains: Zach Kennelly in Denver used AI to deliver personalized, effective feedback to 60 students in just two hours—a task that would have taken days by hand .

This is the present of AI in education: a co-pilot that amplifies the teacher’s work without replacing it. It turns preparation time back into student time, while preserving the essential educator-student bond.


Phase 2: The Near Future – AI as Interventionist

The next horizon is interactive. Imagine a classroom where AI is not only helping teachers outside the room but also engaging students inside it. A group of four huddles around an AI tutor, exploring a novel or working through algebra problems step by step. Another group runs a science simulation, guided by an AI coach that adapts in real time to their questions. Meanwhile, the teacher circulates, joining conversations, offering encouragement, and weaving the threads together.

Leaders like Sal Khan have begun to articulate this vision. In a BBC Global interview, Khan described AI as essentially giving every teacher a handful of graduate-level assistants:



This is the heart of AI’s near-term role: co-teaching, not replacing.


Phase 3: The Long Arc – AI as Partner in Learning

The most radical potential of AI in education isn’t efficiency—it’s transformation. For generations, classrooms have operated on a one-size-fits-all model, with pacing, content, and assessment standardized across students regardless of their differences. But AI allows us to imagine something far more individualized.

As Mike Dunlop writes in TechRadar:

“Education may be the sector most radically transformed by AI. For too long, students have been shuffled through one-size-fits-all classrooms, forced to memorize facts, and judged by standardized exams. AI opens the door to personalized, adaptive learning—customized in real time to each student’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Imagine a system where students are assessed continuously through participation and engagement, not just snapshots on test days. AI can identify knowledge gaps and tailor content dynamically—favoring subjects that spark passion, curiosity, and intrinsic motivation. Students will no longer be treated as production units that must progress at the same pace. They will be treated as individuals.”(Dunlop, 2025, TechRadar)

This vision reframes the teacher’s role: not as a distributor of identical lessons, but as a docent and guide who walks alongside students as they explore knowledge at their own pace. AI becomes the adaptive tutor, spotting where a learner is stuck, drawing connections to their passions, and personalizing pathways that sustain engagement. The teacher remains the essential human presence—the one who notices, encourages, and helps students make meaning of their learning journey.


Humans and Machines


I think back to my own early years in the classroom—hauling armfuls of dusty textbooks, splicing movie clips into lessons, stitching together resources wherever I could find them. Personalization was more art than science then, and with 120 students, it often felt like throwing sparks into the wind and hoping one caught.

Today, we stand at the threshold of a different reality. The same instinct I had—to reach each student where they are—now has a partner. AI offers not just another stack of resources, but the ability to adapt in real time, to notice the gaps, to fan the spark.


And that’s the point: the tools may have changed, but the teacher’s heart has not. What once felt scattershot can become intentional. What once drained evenings and weekends can happen in minutes. What was once beyond reach—personalized, student-centered learning at scale—is now possible when humans and machines work together.




References (APA 7)

 
 
 

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