Cooper's Approach to AI and Learning

Published: 8/16/2026

Navigating AI with Curiosity, Responsibility, and Purpose

As artificial intelligence continues to reshape education and the world beyond the classroom, The John Cooper School is taking a thoughtful, human-centered approach to preparing students, faculty, and families for what comes next. Through the work of Cooper's AI Council, ongoing faculty learning, curricular exploration, and community education, the School is focused not simply on how AI can be used, but on how students can learn to navigate it responsibly, ethically, and with the critical and creative thinking that remain central to a Cooper education.

The John Cooper School's Approach to AI and Learning

At Cooper, we continue to explore how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, can be approached thoughtfully and responsibly, and always in service of learning, innovation, and human connection. And as artificial intelligence continues to shape how we live, work, and learn, we are taking a deliberate, mission-aligned approach to understanding its role in education.

Led by a trio of Cooper faculty and staff, including Travis Gasper, AI Innovation Coordinator, Katherine Navarra, LS Educational Technology Coordinator, and Scott Ardill, Chief Technology Officer, Cooper's AI Council regularly brings together faculty and administrators from across Lower, Middle, and Upper School to guide this work thoughtfully. Amid a flurry of new tools, technologies, and updates related to AI, the Council focuses on ensuring that any use of AI supports what has always defined a Cooper education: critical thinking, creative collaboration, and authentic, meaningful intellectual challenge.

A central priority of the Council’s work has been identifying developmentally appropriate uses of AI, as the School recognizes that students at different stages of their growth as learners require different guardrails, expectations, and levels of exposure. As a result, AI use at Cooper is intentionally aligned across divisions while remaining sensitive to students’ cognitive, social, and emotional growth.

The Council also works closely with faculty to explore how AI can support teachers without replacing professional judgment. A guiding principle from the AI Council's effort this year centers on our teachers' voice and authentic feedback as part of the generative process, as teachers utilize these transformative technologies and applications to enrich the learning experience while helping teach AI fluency and skills to our students.

Beyond the classroom use, the Council is helping the School shift the conversation from simply setting rules to building AI literacy. Students are being encouraged to understand what AI is, where it can be helpful, where it can be misleading, and why ethical judgment and human responsibility remain essential—skills they will need long after specific technologies change. Just as Cooper seeks to prepare students for life beyond the classroom, the AI Council’s work ensures that emerging technologies are approached with the same care, values, and intentionality that define every aspect of a Cooper education.

Preparing the Cooper Community for an AI-Enabled Future

This work continues to expand across the Cooper community. In age-appropriate ways, the School is helping students explore how emerging technologies can enhance learning while ensuring that their own curiosity, critical thinking, and creativity remain the drivers of their education and growth.

Faculty learning is an important part of that effort. This summer, all Cooper faculty read Ethan Mollick's Co-Intelligence as a shared reading, providing a common foundation for continued conversations about the opportunities, questions, and responsibilities surrounding generative AI. Throughout the year, the AI Council will continue a multi-pronged strategy that includes faculty professional development, student and parent engagement, curricular integration of AI literacy, and the thoughtful adoption of AI tools.

Cooper's approach also recognizes that responsible AI education requires clear expectations. The All-School Handbook includes guidelines addressing the responsible and ethical use of AI by students and faculty, reinforcing both the educational potential of emerging technology and the responsibility that accompanies its use.

Those safeguards extend to the rapidly developing challenges surrounding AI-generated and digitally altered content. In alignment with federal law, School guidelines expressly prohibit the creation, distribution, or threat to distribute nonconsensual intimate images of any employee or student without consent, including digitally altered or AI-generated images such as deepfakes.

As part of Cooper's continued commitment to student safety, the School has also partnered with Evan Harris, President of the Pathos Group and a leading expert on deepfake safety in schools. Harris met with Cooper's senior leadership team this summer to help inform the School's approach to safeguarding students and the broader community, with additional opportunities for engagement with the Cooper community planned for this school year.

As the technology evolves, so will Cooper's approach. The goal is not to prepare students for one particular platform or generation of AI, but to develop the judgment, literacy, adaptability, and human skills they will need to engage thoughtfully with technologies that will continue to change throughout their lives.

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