School's Out / Education 2040
One lesson. Four decisions.
Try it, gather evidence across moments, and decide what to change next.
Start with the lesson already on your desk.
Today's conversation kept coming back to a sixth-grade geometry project. A model, a protractor, a compass. If AI can help produce the model, what exactly are we asking the student to learn?
That question deserves more room than a yes-or-no argument about AI. I'm proposing four places to examine the work: the capability we want, the evidence we accept, the boundaries around the tool, and the teacher's next move. Education 2040 is a name for that work. It is a framework to try and challenge, not a prediction of what school will become.
These are fictional classroom situations with authored consequences. Change your mind, compare the alternatives, and carry one experiment into your own planning. There is no score.
The wrong future / Grade 6 geometry
Name what survives the tool.
A class designs a model shelter. Before choosing the materials or software, name the capability: reasoning about shape and space, explaining a design, or accurately using a particular instrument. Each deserves a deliberate place in the assignment.
Make the decision
What is this lesson for?
Three overlapping lenses
Select any combination. These describe a capability from different angles; they are not bins for sorting children or subjects.
Foundational: spatial reasoning helps students make sense of later mathematics and design.
Change the model
The roof gets taller. What changes?
A symmetrical triangular roof, viewed from the end. Predict the change in the base angles before moving the ridge. The span stays 6 units.
BASE ANGLES 34° eachWHAT STAYS FIXED 6-unit span
Angles are rounded. Students can measure a drawing; calculating them with trigonometry is not the sixth-grade task here.
Protractor and compass proficiency are candidates for the time-bound lens. That does not make them obsolete. If the goal is angle measurement, the instrument matters. If the goal is spatial reasoning, examine whether changing tools preserves that reasoning.
The impressive artifact / Grade 6 ELA
Give understanding another chance to show up.
A polished essay about The Tell-Tale Heart arrives. An explanation and a prompt history arrive with it. AI can help produce all three. Plan several moments where the student interprets, connects evidence, and responds when the reading becomes less comfortable.
Inspect the assignment
How does the ending change the opening?
Ask the student to cite a specific detail from the opening and another from the ending, then explain the connection. Use the class's full text. The cards below are paraphrases for this scenario.
OPENING / PARAPHRASE
The narrator insists on being sane and presents heightened senses as evidence.
ENDING / PARAPHRASE
The narrator becomes convinced the officers hear the sound too, then confesses.
What could AI contribute here?
Offer a competing interpretation: perhaps the narrator's careful planning complicates a simple claim that nothing they say can be trusted. The student must decide what that reading explains, what it misses, and which details support the response.
The teacher selects the passage and checks the competing reading against the text. An AI interpretation is material to examine, never the answer key.
Plan what you will observe
Keep the dimensions separate.
Use these levels to rehearse your rubric. They do not grade the fictional student. In class, collect evidence across moments and record the support provided.
Offer accessible ways to respond: discussion, annotation, drawing with explanation, or supported writing. A timed oral defense should not become the only route to demonstrating understanding.
This gives us more useful evidence of understanding. It cannot prove that a student read every word, establish authorship, or catch every misuse of AI.
Try the same move in social studies or design thinking
Nile settlement: students explain a location choice using agriculture and trade. Then introduce a failed flood. Which assumption breaks? What would they change, and why?
Design thinking: identify the problem and stakeholders, investigate what people need, set success criteria, design with AI where appropriate, explain decisions, test, and iterate. The next constraint should require a new judgment from the student.
The governance gap / A district decision
Make the boundary usable.
A district already uses Google Classroom. A teacher wants AI-supported rehearsal. Begin by asking whether an existing enterprise provider meets the need. A familiar relationship can reduce the burden of continually shopping for tools. The actual service still needs district review.
Build the review
What has the district actually checked?
Select the evidence available in this fictional situation. These checks do not authorize a real product.
What the decision exposes
A familiar name leaves questions open.
A district review should cover the specific product, account type, age group and configuration. This example makes no claim that any particular Google AI service is approved for a sixth-grade class.
A large vendor does not guarantee protection from loss. A logo cannot substitute for an agreement, working controls, or an exit you have actually tried.
The expert trap / Grade 6 Spanish
Step in. Then give the work back.
Teams invent a café, create a menu, and rehearse ordering in Spanish. An approved AI tool can help with menu ideas or a practice partner. The teacher sets language goals, checks the output, establishes boundaries, and watches for the gap that needs instruction.
Watch the rehearsal
Choose what you notice.
Next minute of class
A small lesson, then another attempt.
What will you observe when students try again?
Coaching depends on subject expertise. The teacher needs to recognize the language problem, choose an explanation that fits, and hear whether the next attempt improves. Mastering every changing menu tool is a different demand.
Carry one experiment back
Put your own lesson through it.
Keep the assignment small enough to try. Your choices from the labs appear in the plan as examples, alongside your own notes.
Your notes stay on this page and clear when you reload. Nothing you type here is submitted. Do not enter student names or work. Download or print to keep your plan.
The useful question for Monday.
Pick one assignment. Keep the capability in view while you reconsider the tools, evidence, boundaries and support around it. Then compare notes with a colleague about what students actually did.
What would you change about the assignment if a beautiful finished product stopped being enough?
Ciao,
Jason
Where this came from. Education 2040 is Jason Padgett's proposed education framework. The interactive format was inspired by Nathaniel Whittemore's September 13 AI Daily Brief, “10 Ways to Think Bigger with Opportunity AI”, especially its invitation to make decisions and professional judgment explorable. These classroom scenarios are authored examples, not research findings or predictions. This is not an official or affiliated AI 2040 plan.
The ELA scenario refers to Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. Read and cite the full text used in your classroom. This page runs authored decision paths; it does not call an AI service or assess students.