Summer is always an intriguing time in education. Educators finally get a well-deserved break from an exhausting school year, while leaders use the opportunity to recharge and solidify their plans for the return of teachers and students. It's a time of reflection and renewal, and as a result, often when the emerging themes and priorities of the next school start to form.

With the rapid emergence of AI, it is increasingly clear that a key question we will all be answering in the coming school year will be: What should the role of technology be in K-12 education? This isn’t a new question, but one that is likely to take center stage this year.

Now for years, folks have said that edtech will solve all our problems in K-12 education. Believe it or not, it hasn't. In some cases, it has proven to be extraordinarily valuable. In other cases, it has been underwhelming. When leveraged effectively, edtech usually does two things:

1. Provides unrestricted access to information.

2. Unleashes teachers' capacity to engage in more 1-1 and small-group interactions with students.

AI clearly introduces a whole new level of functionality. But the same principles will remain true. Great teaching is building relationships with students and supporting them as they apply new information to complex tasks. AI will help teachers be great. But it won't replace them. And to truly unleash the benefits of technology, educators need to be equipped with new instructional models that both transform the student experience and make the teaching profession more sustainable. That is what we are committed to doing at the Modern Classrooms Project.

Kareem Farah spent his teaching career as a math educator in Hawaii and Washington, DC. He earned his undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis and later received a master’s degree in secondary education at Johns Hopkins University. Instead of using a traditional lecture model, Kareem taught math through a blended model where students accessed content through his self-made videos. The cornerstone of his classroom was the ability for students to work at their own pace and Kareem’s ability to assess students on mastery. Kareem co-founded the Modern Classrooms Project to empower teachers worldwide to redesign their classrooms around blended, self-paced, mastery-based learning.