In this guide, I share a set of practical AI-use templates you can bring straight into your teaching. I called them AI Agreements on purpose. The word policy feels heavy. It suggests formal documents, legal language, and something handed down from above. That’s not the spirit I want teachers or students to feel when we talk about AI.
Agreement, for me, signals collaboration. It tells students: we’re shaping this together. It invites conversation instead of compliance. It creates room for questions, uncertainty, and shared decision-making. That’s how I try to approach every piece of my work on AI in education.
These templates were designed with K–12 classrooms in mind. They’re simple, visual, and accessible. Higher-ed instructors can still use them, of course, but they’ll need more adaptation because teaching in a university context brings different expectations, different stakes, and a different relationship to academic integrity.
One thing I want to stress here is that a classroom AI agreement is not meant to replace school or district policy. It’s informal. It sits alongside bigger institutional guidelines. Think of it as a bridge between the written rules and the practical, everyday realities of how students actually work with AI in your class.
Before creating your own agreement, take a moment to look at your school’s existing policies on AI, academic integrity, technology use, and data privacy. Alignment matters. You don’t want contradictions, and you don’t want your students caught between competing messages.
And once you start shaping the agreement, bring students into the process. Use small-group conversations, quick scenarios, examples of real assignments, and even demonstrations of AI tools. When students help define the boundaries (e.g., what’s okay, what’s not, where we draw the lines) they take ownership. They understand the why behind the expectations, not just the what.
I also treat every AI agreement as a living document. AI evolves. Tools appear, disappear, or change dramatically. What feels comfortable in September may feel outdated by January. Build in checkpoints. Revisit the agreement after your first major project. Adjust it mid-term. Encourage students to suggest revisions when something isn’t working.
Related: The AI Turn in Academic Research: AI Tools for Researchers
Finally, share your classroom agreement with the people around you: school leaders, colleagues, and families. Not for approval, but for clarity. It opens the door for feedback and makes the whole process more transparent. AI is too new, too fluid, and too consequential for us to work in isolation.
These templates are simply a starting point, food for thought. Adapt them, remix them, rewrite them entirely. The value is in the conversations they spark, not in the exact wording on the page.
