Community Education

Google recognizes three Peninsula teachers for AI innovation

Posted on January 23rd, 2025 By: Christina T Henry

Dave Stitt would typically ask students completing projects in his science classes to create a presentation, write a research summary or make a podcast. Earlier this year, Stitt challenged his students to do all three in the same amount of time using artificial intelligence.

“I really loaded it on them,” said Stitt, who teaches chemistry and physics at Peninsula High School. “And they all told me in a pre-survey that there was no way they could get this done. They all finished with time to spare.”

Stitt is one of three teachers from Peninsula School District chosen for a Google for Education fellowship. Also selected were Heather Whyte, a social studies teacher and digital instruction leader at Harbor Ridge Middle School, and Kayla Frank, also a social studies teacher and interim assistant principal at Kopachuck Middle School.

Google asked them to explore using artificial intelligence in the classroom and to share their ideas with fellow educators on a global scale.

Peninsula’s teachers represented the district at a recent international tech showcase at Google’s New York City headquarters. They were the only Washington state teachers Google selected for the prestigious fellowship.

Stitt, Whyte and Frank are a “shining example” of the district’s commitment to innovation and preparing students for a rapidly changing future, said Communications Coordinator Danielle Chastaine. “We’re just really proud of them.”

Heather Whyte, Dave Stitt and Kayla Frank, all Peninsula School District teachers, participated in a Google for Education AI fellowship. Photo by Christina T. Henry

Recognized for innovation

When ChatGPT became publicly available in early 2023, Kris Hagel, Peninsula’s head tech administrator, encouraged district leaders to embrace emerging technology including artificial intelligence. The district established an AI Action Research Team and assigned tech-savvy teachers to guide their peers in leveraging AI and other technology to enhance the quality of instruction … and make their jobs easier.

Peninsula School District is now recognized as a trailblazer in classroom tech integration. Time magazine and other national publications have quoted Hagel. The state Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction cites the district’s guidance on AI. Hagel and Superintendent Krestin Bahr will speak at an upcoming AI Super Summit hosted by the AASA, the national school superintendents association. And Hagel and several other staff members were recently invited to collaborate with AI innovators at Stanford University.

An invite from Google

Last spring, Google for Education, a division of the tech giant developing tools for schools, asked Peninsula Coordinator for Innovation and Technology Mel Benner if anyone from the district wanted to apply for the fellowship.

“Peninsula is known nationally as one of the front runners with AI adoption,” Benner said. “We are often being asked to model and partner and connect and explore different avenues of leadership around those things.”

Google previously tapped teachers in Japan and South Korea for AI fellowships to collaborate on product development.

This year, the company gathered teachers from North and South America to design scalable projects using AI and present them to Google employees.

Several PSD staff members applied for the fellowship. Stitt, Whyte and Frank made the cut.

‘Go for it!’

Starting in August, the three teachers spent weeks — and untold hours of their own time — developing their projects aided by a facilitator from Google for Education.

“From the start of this fellowship, they let us know that we would be kind of pacesetting for other teachers around the world,” Stitt said. “And from that, they did not have a predefined project in mind. So, they said, ‘This is AI. You’re going to use these particular tools. They gave us full access to a lot of the Google tools in the education suite. And then they said, ‘Go for it.’”

The end goal was a Google for Education showcase starting Jan. 9 at the company’s New York City campus.

But first, the test drive.

Learning more, saving time

Stitt asked students to use specific tools, including Google Gemini (Google’s AI chatbot), Google Scholar (its search tool for scholarly literature), and a newer app called NotebookLM (which analyzes user-uploaded documents to aid students in research).

“At first they all freaked out because I asked them to do three times the amount of work in the same amount of time that I would have them only do one thing,” Stitt said.

NotebookLM proved especially useful for students to distill information from multiple, voluminous scholarly articles.

“AI allowed students to break down the topic into ideas, explain it in ways that they could manage,” Stitt said. “The goal for that was really to show them how powerful these tools are, and how they can leverage them to not only understand better, but to be more efficient at the same time.”

A competitive advantage

On surveys after the project, some students said they felt like they were “cheating” or “this is way too easy. I’m doing something wrong.” Many were worried about the perception this was not their original work. But Stitt maintains AI tools don’t run themselves. The user is the ultimate creator, envisioning the end product, asking questions and editing content.

The project showed AI’s potential to level the playing field, Stitt said. Students who weren’t necessarily artistic supported their work with visuals. Others who struggle with writing got help with word choice and diction.

“All of them were able to see that using these AI tools gives them a competitive advantage,” Stitt said.

Experience using AI will likely be a requirement for them as job seekers when they get out of school, he and others say. So why not introduce them to it now?

Time-savers for teachers

Whyte has been teaching for 34 years. She remembers when tech in the classroom meant a computer with a green screen and a dot matrix printer. And yet, she’s always been one to dive into new technology.

“I love AI. I mean, when I first heard about it, it scared me,” Whyte said. “But that’s really common, because any new thing is a little bit frightening. You know, calculators or, like, a cell phone. So, things evolve, and you have to evolve with them. If you don’t, you just become stagnant. So, I just jump on the ball whenever I hear something I get excited about.”

Whyte focused her project on using AI to help teachers with daily tasks that are necessary but fairly mundane such as drafting emails to parents and compiling notes for substitute teachers. Through brief meetings with fellow teachers, she developed a list of tasks and time-saving solutions. She then created a website where colleagues could access her tips and tools.

“My website is still evolving, and there’s still things I want to add to it, even though the actual fellowship is over,” Whyte said. “I feel like that’s something that I can give to my colleagues and say, ‘Here, this is a little bit of a legacy from me that you can access and be able to do these tasks a little quicker.’ ”

More time with students

Frank also tapped the power of AI to wrangle administrative tasks. She developed time-saving workflow protocols for both teachers and principals, “so that we’re able to spend more time with our students and with teachers, and building relationships, which is really, I think, the foundation of education and being able to teach.”

For teachers, she showed how Gemini can create a rubric (or a guide listing specific criteria for grading or scoring academic papers, projects or tests) for grading students, giving them quicker and more meaningful feedback. The district integrated the AI-assisted rubrics, in student-friendly language, into its Google workspace to provide students with individualized comments from teachers.

Using NotebookLM, Frank also showed teachers how to tailor lessons to students based on their strengths or weaknesses, and to quickly create interventions as needed.

She showed principals (and teachers) how to use NotebookLM to create an interactive tool for teacher evaluations that align with the state’s teacher certification guidelines. Again, saving time and giving greater insight.

‘Like speed dating’

At the AI showcase in New York, teachers explained their project to Google employees, whose roles ranged from research and development to the head of Google in Education.

“It was sort of like speed dating,” Whyte said. “We’d sit at our table, and the Googlers would come to our table, and we would present our projects in a very brief amount of time. It was very timed, and there was a buzzer. And so, they would listen, and then they would get up and move to the next table, and another group would come in and listen to our presentation again.”

The teachers’ projects intrigued the “Googlers.”

“It was humbling to be able to be in the same room as the people who are designing these tools,” Stitt said. “Google hires, as you can imagine, some incredibly smart people, and they were all incredibly interested in what we have done, as well as what we were looking to do and ways that they can support education.”

Google did not pay the teachers, but it covered their travel. They did get in a little Big Apple sight-seeing.

Google for Education will publish the teachers’ projects online, where it educators around the world can access it.

Pitfalls and guardrails

The district’s AI innovators are well aware of the potential pitfalls of this new and rapidly evolving technology, Benner said. “We walk into using AI knowing there are a handful of really major challenges with the tools at this point in time, right?”

Those challenges include misinformation, “hallucinations,” bias, data privacy and plagiarism.

As part of its tech initiative, the district teaches “digital citizenship” to its students, covering topics such as Internet safety and vetting sources. The district recently took aim at cyberbullying as part of its ongoing efforts to curb harassment and discrimination.

The district has age-level guardrails in place for AI. For example, the youngest elementary students work with MagicSchool AI, an AI tool that allows them to explore but is fully contained and controlled by the teacher. The district developed its own internal AI tool called Amplify, which Benner describes as “the walled garden of our own data system.”

Many companies in the greater Seattle area and beyond are using AI and expecting employees to be able to navigate and leverage it, Benner said. “And if that is the case, it’s our responsibility to prepare students for their futures by integrating it in a really intentional way.”

AI won’t replace teachers

According to Benner, AI has not increased cheating among students. In fact, AI tools now help teachers analyze students’ work for signs of plagiarism.

Stitt says teachers and students should discuss how to critically self-analyze their own AI-assisted work. It’s an evolving landscape that requires teachers as leaders and guides.

“AI in the hands of a good educator extends education,” Stitt said. “It doesn’t replace education. … It doesn’t replace student thinking either.”