Thrive 2026 Signature Experience 2

Educators over EdTech, Pedagogy over Platforms: Teacher Agency in the AI Age

Overview and Purpose

Innovation requires use. To make pedagogically informed decisions about artificial intelligence (AI) in education, teachers and school leaders need more than just prompts, policies, or products—you need hands-on experience. Uncover how to design PD that prioritizes ongoing experimentation with real classroom use cases—from lesson design and differentiation, to feedback and metacognition. Join us to push back on the one-and-done style of AI PD that fails to give educators the insights or incentives you need to continue innovating on your own. Learn from our experiences founding and leading the AI Co-Lab, a network of hundreds of independent school educators who engage in monthly experimentation to evaluate the power, potential, and pitfalls of AI use in our schools.  

To get the most out of this Signature Experience and the hands-on work it prioritizes, we encourage you to bring sample materials from your classroom or school (e.g., curriculum overviews, learning outcomes, individual lesson plans, examples of formative or summative assessments, etc.). 

Intended Outcomes

  • Understand why ongoing, experiential learning is essential for educators to build AI literacy. 
  • Learn how to center teachers and authentic classroom use cases in order to promote confident, informed, and responsible AI implementation at your school. 
  • Engage with a variety of Co-Lab’s tried-and-tested AI Explorations for both student-centered and teacher-centered AI use cases.  
  • Take home adaptable frameworks, discussion protocols, and replicable strategies for designing and supporting hands-on AI PD at your school. 

Presenters

Nate Green

Nate GreenCurrently serving as Center for Teaching & Learning coordinator at Sidwell Friends School (DC), Nate Green has spent his career in education studying the impact emerging technologies have on students. He teaches middle and high school students about the internet, social media, and AI. This past year Green helped found Co-Lab, the teacher-led, monthly AI professional development organization featured in the Spring 2025 issue of Independent School magazine. He has published in Slate and presents at conferences across the country. Reaching beyond the walls of his own school, Green has worked directly with a number of independent schools to train teachers, educate students, and develop policies to prepare schools for a changing world.

Maureen Russo Rodriguez

Maureen Russo RodriguezWhile teaching language and literature at St. Mark’s School (MA), Maureen Russo Rodriguez has spent the past three years spearheading AI PD for the greater independent school community. Her conviction that educators must prioritize interdisciplinary and interschool dialog around generative AI led her to organize a Symposium on AI in Education in 2024 and cofound the teacher-led PD initiative Co-Lab. Russo Rodriguez currently serves on the AI Advisory Panel for MIT’s Teaching System Lab in its development of a forthcoming handbook to assist K-12 school leaders in decisions around AI integration. She is also a proud faculty mentor for the interschool student coalition Student AI Literacy (SAIL).

Click here to view the full Thrive 2026 Signature Experience lineup.