As part of my work and scholarship with the Google GSV Fellowship (cohort 3) Google GSV Fellowship (cohort 3 I have the good fortune of doing actual Action Research in my school district!

Throughout my career, I’ve been a champion for student voice, choice, engagement, agency, and relevance in student work. From my 1997 publication to my latest book (releasing October 30, 2025) – Leading for Tomorrow’s Schools Today, Leading for Tomorrow’s Schools Today (with Nick Polyak), I have shared illustrations of how and why student voice must be (and can be) incorporated into learning and leadership.

Slides generated by NanoBanana3 from Google’s Notebook LM, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TtmIbrzf_If5U5X20KT2CXCxgUuA00hZ/view?usp=sharing

My current Action Research project aligns with the tenets that have provided the foundation for the essence of my work.

Here is a video overview (2 minutes) from Notebook LM

Video Overview of Project from Notebook LM

From my “almost done” report on findings … From Urgency to Agency:  A Case Study in Student-Led AI Governance

Fellow for Generation AI – ISTE-ASCD (2025), Fellow for Google-GSV Cohort 3 (2026) 

With AI analysis and review by Manus AI, Gemini AI, OpenAI, Perplexity Pro, CoPilot, Student tools Magic School AI, Playlab.ai 

Date: November 26, 2025/10:30am

This project has been a resounding success, not because it has solved every problem, but because it has identified the right issues and laid out a clear path forward. It has moved NSSD 112 from the simple question of “How do we use AI?” to the more critical and complex questions of “Who decides?” and “How do we ensure this transformation is equitable, meaningful, and sustainable?”

1. Executive Summary

This case study documents a transformative six-month action research initiative by North Shore School District 112 (NSSD 112) to answer a critical question: How can we systematically center student voice in AI integration? The project evolved from a technology implementation plan into a profound exploration of student agency, equity, and instructional leadership. By applying the ISTE-ASCD Transformational Learning Principles of Nurture, Guide, and Empower, the district answered its core research questions and developed a model for student-led AI governance. The initiative’s central discovery was that the most effective way to promote trust, equity, and responsible adoption is to empower students as creators, not just consumers, of AI. This culminated in an implementation where eighth-grade students built their own AI-powered tools to solve community problems, earning them an equal seat at the table to co-author district AI policy. This report traces that journey, offering a replicable framework for other districts seeking to move beyond asking for student feedback to building a system where student voice has binding power.

2. The Catalyst: A Data-Driven Call for Student Voice

Every significant change begins with a compelling reason to act. For NSSD 112, the urgency was not born from the hype surrounding AI, but from a deep-seated, data-driven understanding of a persistent local challenge. For six consecutive years, the district’s student engagement surveys revealed a critical area for improvement: the dimension of “Choice,” which consistently ranked as the lowest-scoring metric [1]. This data was a clear signal that students felt a lack of agency and ownership in their learning. This internal call to action was amplified by the findings of a 2020-2021 Equity and Inclusion Audit, which explicitly noted that students desired more meaningful opportunities for their voices to be heard [2].

This internal pressure converged with external forces. The public release of ChatGPT in November 2022 and subsequent reports on AI’s projected impact on the global workforce created a broader context of inevitability and opportunity [3]. The district’s leadership astutely connected these threads, framing the exploration of AI not as a technological mandate, but as a potential solution to a long-standing pedagogical problem. The key discovery during this phase was that authentic, data-driven urgency, rooted in student experience, is a far more powerful catalyst for change than external technological trends alone.

3. A Framework for Transformation: Research Questions and Learning Principles

The project was guided by a central research question regarding student voice, supported by three leadership-focused inquiries. The district’s journey reveals that the answers to these questions were discovered through the active application of the ISTE-ASCD Transformational Learning Principles of Nurture, Guide, and Empower.

Research Question	Transformational Learning in Action	Key Findings & Evidence
How to center student voice in AI integration?	EMPOWER: The ultimate strategy was to empower students as creators.	By building their own AI tools with Playlab.ai to solve community problems (e.g., refugee legal aid, wellness), students moved from being subjects of research to being its leaders.
RQ1: What competencies do leaders need?	NURTURE: Leaders must nurture a culture of psychological safety for experimentation and risk-taking.	The “Familiarity-Skepticism Paradox” revealed that technical knowledge is insufficient. Leaders need adaptability and the courage to cede control and address complex ethical concerns.
RQ2: How to design effective professional learning?	GUIDE: The project itself served as a guided, differentiated PL experience.	The bifurcated model—a “walled garden” for 4th graders and “open creation” for 8th graders—provided novel growth for both, demonstrating the need for developmentally appropriate pathways.
RQ3: What strategies promote trust and equity?	EMPOWER: The strategy of student co-creation built profound trust and demonstrated a commitment to equity.	Empowering students to build their own tools earned them an equal seat on the District Technology Committee, creating a binding mechanism for their voice and ensuring equitable adoption.

This framework illustrates that transformational learning is not just an outcome for students, but a process for the entire system. The following sections detail how this process unfolded.

Next … find a blog post “written” or created, by Google’s Notebook LM from the source (my report) – cool usage of AI – please read to the end and see my gratitude/acknowledgements!

From Users to Architects: How Students Took the Reins of AI and Earned a Seat at the Policy Table

When schools discuss artificial intelligence, the conversation often follows a predictable script. It’s a top-down dialogue focused on control, preventing cheating, and equipping teachers with the latest efficiency tools. The questions are typically about implementation: Which platforms should we buy? How do we train our staff? How do we regulate student use? This approach frames students as the subjects of AI policy, not its authors.

But what happens when a district flips that script entirely? North Shore School District 112 (NSSD 112) decided to find out. Facing years of data showing that students felt a lack of choice and agency in their learning, the district embarked on a radical experiment. They shifted the central question from “How do we use AI?” to the far more critical question of “Who gets to decide?”

This case study reveals the surprising and powerful lessons learned when a school district hands the keys to the students themselves. It’s a story about moving from a culture of compliance to one of co-creation, where middle schoolers didn’t just provide feedback on AI—they built it, mastered it, and ultimately earned the power to govern it.

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1. Takeaway 1: True Agency Isn’t Giving Feedback—It’s Giving Power.

The project’s most significant outcome wasn’t a new app; it was a new power structure. Eighth-grade students earned a permanent, equal seat on the District Technology Committee.

This was not a token position for collecting student feedback. These students are now actively co-authoring the district’s official AI policies and procedures. This created a “binding mechanism” that converts their voice directly into policy, ensuring their influence is not just heard but formally integrated into the system’s DNA.

This monumental shift occurred for one simple reason: the students proved their competence and their capacity for ethical thinking by becoming architects of their own sophisticated AI tools. They demonstrated that they were not just passive consumers of technology but responsible creators, earning them the right to help shape the rules for everyone.

“It has moved NSSD 112 from the simple question of “How do we use AI?” to the more critical and complex questions of “Who decides?” and “How do we ensure this transformation is equitable, meaningful, and sustainable?””

2. Takeaway 2: Students Become Ethical Architects When We Let Them Build.

The project’s core discovery was that genuine agency requires the power to create. By shifting students from passive “consumers” of AI to active “architects,” the district unlocked a new level of engagement and ethical responsibility.

In the 8th-grade “Open Creation” model, students used the Playlab.ai platform—a tool that enables users to build AI chatbots without coding—to design and program functional applications that solved real-world community problems. The sophistication and empathy embedded in their projects were extraordinary.

• Immigration Guidance System: This app guides users through the complex U.S. immigration process. Going far beyond simple information delivery, the students programmed the AI with a critical safeguard: it must require source verification and citation, instructing the tool to “cross reference, and from reliable sources” and “Inform the user of where the information was gotten.” This demonstrates a mature understanding of information integrity in a life-altering context.
• Legal Translation for Immigrants and Refugees: Showing deep empathy for systemic barriers, students built a tool to translate legal phrases between English and Spanish. Instead of a generic translator, they pre-loaded it with phrases specifically relevant to immigration and refugee contexts, designing a solution for a vulnerable population.
• Multilingual Tutoring Support: To tackle educational equity, students created a personalized tutor. It was built with multilingual support (English, Spanish, and French) and designed to help with executive function skills by tracking due dates and quizzes, showing a holistic understanding of student needs.
• Hangout Ideas: A chatbot designed to combat screen fatigue by suggesting real-world, fun, and affordable social activities for teenagers, demonstrating an awareness of their peers’ mental health and wellness.

What made these projects so impressive was not just their technical function but their built-in ethical guardrails. Students programmed their AI tools to avoid judgmental language, be inclusive, and avoid stereotypes. They didn’t just build tools; they built tools designed for trust, safety, and equity.

3. Takeaway 3: The Biggest Hurdle Isn’t Fear—It’s Familiarity.

In a counter-intuitive discovery, the research revealed a “Familiarity-Skepticism Paradox” among educators.

The project found that deeper familiarity with AI sometimes led to higher resistance to its adoption, not lower. This occurred because educators with more knowledge were also more keenly aware of AI’s legitimate flaws, including its potential for bias, hallucinations, and other complex ethical concerns.

This finding carries a critical implication for schools everywhere: effective AI adoption requires more than just technical training. It reveals that leaders must cultivate a culture of “psychological safety for experimentation” and have the courage to cede control, creating spaces where these valid and complex ethical questions can be addressed openly.

4. Takeaway 4: AI Literacy Is Not One-Size-Fits-All.

The district recognized that a single approach to AI education would fail to meet the diverse needs of its students. Its success hinged on a “bifurcated strategy” that created developmentally appropriate pathways for different age groups.

• The “Walled Garden” (4th Grade English Learners): For younger students, the district created a protected, teacher-guided environment using Magic School AI. In this safe space, AI served as a scaffold for language development. It provided standards-aligned writing support and non-judgmental feedback, nurturing confidence and skill. Data showed the most-used tools were the Idea Generator and Text Proofreader, demonstrating a focus on foundational writing skills.
• The “Open Creation” Model (8th Grade Students): For older students, the district used Playlab.ai to foster a high-agency environment. This model empowered them as builders and creators, trusting them to identify real-world problems and design their own AI-powered solutions from the ground up.

This differentiated approach was essential. By meeting students where they were, the district provided novel and meaningful growth experiences for both groups, proving that effective AI literacy must be tailored to the learner.

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Conclusion: From Using AI to Governing AI

The success of North Shore School District 112’s initiative came from a profound shift in focus—away from the technology itself and toward student agency and governance. The project didn’t just solve the district’s long-standing problem of low student agency; it forged a new, sustainable model for technology governance, proving that student agency is the engine of meaningful change.

By empowering students to be creators, problem-solvers, and ethical stewards, the district discovered that the most powerful way to prepare students for a future with AI is to let them build it. This journey moved them beyond simply using AI tools to fundamentally rethinking who holds the power to shape them.

What could your students create if they weren’t just asked for feedback, but were given the power to build the future?

The above post was created by Gemini/Google Notebook LM

Overall – I cannot thank the folks who worked with me enough!

Acknowledgements and Thanks to:

I would like to thank the following individuals who have made significant contributions to this work. The incredible students at Oak Terrace & Edgewood Schools!!

Jeremy Wickham, Co-Researcher and Executive Director for Technology & Operations, North Shore School District 112

John Whitehead, 8th-grade social studies teacher at Edgewood Middle School

Rebecca Condon, Instructional Coach at Edgewood Middle School

Kaye Piña, English Learner Teacher, Oak Terrace School

Sarah Jablonski, Instructional Coach at Oak Terrace School

Anthony Swope, Principal at Edgewood Middle School

Jenny Schwind, Principal at Oak Terrace School

Monika Patel, Playlab.AI Partner in research & implementation at the 8th-grade site

Stephanie Carmella Barrazza, LEAP Innovations & Community Member, for help in facilitation at the 8th-grade site

The Board of Education of North Shore School District 112

Google GSV

Generation AI ISTE-ASCD

Dr. Martha Salazar-Zamora

Dr. Michael McCormick