A junior opens an essay assignment and wonders whether it’s okay to ask an AI tool to critique her draft. She isn’t sure, so she doesn’t ask her teacher. Maybe she uses the tool quietly. Maybe she skips it entirely. Either way, a key learning moment of the assignment just happened in private, with no adult in the room.
Digital Literacy is less about which tools we allow and more about the judgment we cultivate in students. But judgment does not develop independently or in secret. It grows when people can see each other’s choices, talk through gray areas, and adjust together.
When AI use stays hidden, whether by students or by adults, there is nothing to discuss, compare, or correct. Discernment becomes a solo act. The work ahead is making it a shared one.
This resource gives school leaders research and tools to support AI Literacy and collective agency for both teachers and students. Collective Agency is where AI Literacy becomes a community practice rather than an individual skill. Students learn to make good choices by making them alongside others, and they gain a real voice in the norms that shape their learning.
More Than Just Policy is Needed
Taken together, these data points pose the question: if our top priority is guiding responsible student use, how are we supporting the adults who are still building their own fluency? Clear policies matter, but in a landscape where two-way suspicion between teachers and students is eroding trust, relationships and transparency are equally important.
How do we build trust through collective agency?
Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving offers a useful lens in its Agency-Centered Framework for AI Literacy. The framework asks students and educators to understand three things: the AI tools themselves (Technical Literacy), the business models behind them (Market Literacy), and who we are and want to become (Self Literacy).
It then looks at each through three kinds of agency: what I do on my own (Individual Agency), what we do together (Collective Agency), and what others do on our behalf (Proxy Agency), taking seriously AI’s risks and its potential simultaneously.
For schools working to build trust around AI, collective agency matters. Collective Agency shows up in three practices: using AI in the open and learning together, advocating for tools that serve students well, and co-creating shared norms for AI use that reflect your school’s mission and vision.
Transparency Runs Both Ways
Most school AI guidance asks students to disclose their AI use but rarely asks the same of adults. Yet teachers and leaders use AI too, often without saying so, and students notice.
When adults talk openly about how they use AI, including where it fell short and when they chose not to use it, they model the discernment we want students to practice.
This doesn’t require expertise. A teacher who is still emerging in AI use can be a powerful model precisely because she is learning in the open. But transparency only works when it feels safe. Students who fear false accusations and teachers who worry about judgment will keep their use hidden, no matter what the handbook says.
Advocating Together
Collective Agency extends to the tools themselves. When schools choose AI platforms, faculty and students can help weigh what matters: what data are collected, who can access it, and whether the tool supports learning or shortcuts it. Sharing the reasoning behind those decisions models the same transparency we ask of students.
Classroom Practices for Exploring AI with Students
Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving presents five co-designed classroom practices for exploring AI use with students built upon their Agency-Centered Framework for AI Literacy. These can be used as stand-alones or in a five-part sequence.
Harvard’s Center for Digital Thriving notes in their report, An AI Policy Isn’t a Playbook, that these practices also ask educators to shift their mindset: from assuming they know how students use AI to asking with curiosity, from tech-centered conversations to student-centered ones, and from an us-versus-them stance to working together.
Reflect Together
As the Center for Digital Thriving team puts it, “As AI evolves and disrupts life and learning in helpful ways, harmful ways, and all the ways in between, the most human and effective thing we can do is to BELIEVE that we can make things better and that we’re not alone.”
- If a student in your school wondered whether a particular AI use was allowed, who would they feel comfortable asking?
- How are you supporting faculty who are still building their own AI fluency, and where can they learn alongside colleagues?
- How visible is adult AI use in your school, and what would make honest disclosure feel safe for both students and faculty?
- When your school selects AI tools, whose perspectives shape the decision, and how is the reasoning shared?
- Where do adults in your school assume they know how students are using AI rather than asking?
- Where do students have a real voice in shaping AI norms, and when did your school last revisit those norms together?
Resources & Tools
These ready-to-use templates help school leaders assess current AI use and practice, analyze collective agency, and revisit your norms around AI use. Begin here and adapt each tool to fit your school’s mission.
Learn More About AI Literacy
SAIS Members: For more information about AI Literacy, check out our webinar “Moving Your AI Conversation Forward” with Peter Nilsson.