Back in April 2023, Pingry’s AI Working Group met for the first time to start figuring out how, and how much, teachers and students should use AI in the classroom. ChatGPT had been introduced in the fall of 2022 and people began experimenting with it, but the whole notion of “using AI at Pingry” was murky except for a 2023 policy that students could use generative AI only if permitted for a specific assignment. Now, three years later, Pingry has made progress in answering difficult questions.

Curriculum and Instruction Specialist Alex Steinberg and Director of Research and Academic Innovation Dr. Danielle Mirliss P’26 lead the Basking Ridge AI Working Group* whose four subcommittees are focusing on four goals: maintain documentation; create a shared knowledge base with lessons, activities, and ideas for integrating AI into classes; integrate AI literacy into classroom practice for subject-specific guidance; and provide professional development, both at Pingry and external.

Most recently, during the 2025-26 school year, the Working Group achieved several milestones. First, teachers are teaching each other—many of the Working Group faculty members have led sessions on AI during In-Service Days. Also, several members assisted the Student Technology Committee’s AI Subcommittee to help plan the student-driven, AI-focused Hackathon on the Pottersville Campus, centered around closing the literacy gap in New Jersey and attended by about 45 students in Grades 6–10. “That was a huge success and a direct result of the work of the Working Group to prepare faculty to support students,” Mr. Steinberg says. Plus, the Working Group published both “Pingry AI Resources” in the Veracross Faculty/Staff Portal (in the Technology section of Employee Resources) and the webpage pingry.org/AI to share community values, an “AI Crash Course”, and resources.

Publication of pingry.org/AI represents the Working Group’s strategic forward thinking. “The more we put it out there to other schools and other people in our industry,” Mr. Steinberg says, “we look strong because we’re saying ‘this is something we believe in enough to make it public. We’re standing behind it. This is how we believe our school is going to be successful with the arrival of AI.’ Not every school has an AI webpage. Not every university has an AI webpage.” The website has also been highlighted as Mr. Steinberg, Dr. Mirliss, and others at Pingry have spoken to parents about AI in division-specific conversations hosted by the PSPA. During the event for Middle School parents, Mr. Steinberg made the observation that AI is not a case of “students versus teachers, but students and teachers”—in other words, exploring together.

Those meetings also delineated which Pingry-supported platforms students are using (for privacy and security when school or student data is involved). In all divisions: SchoolAI, Padlet, Canva, BookCreator, and Adobe Express. In the Upper School: Adobe Firefly, Google Gemini, and Google NotebookLM.

Lower School

Along with the Working Group’s efforts, examples of progress with AI exist in all three divisions. At the Lower School, Grade 5 Social Studies Teacher Anne Becker used AI with a lesson about Ancient Civilizations, with the assistance of Technology and Innovation Coordinator Alana Zussman. She helped students “figure out the best phrasing for prompting the AI mechanism on Padlet to generate the best types of images. For example, I created a list with students that contained prompts such as ‘historically accurate’ or ‘era-specific’ or ‘realistically indicative of the time period’. The students learned the concept that creating the most specific prompts will yield the best results.” Once a satisfactory image was generated, a student posted their exact prompt and the final picture on a class Padlet board.

Also with Ms. Zussman’s collaboration, Lower School Visual Arts Teacher Russell Christian introduced a lesson for Grade 5 on AI and sculpture. As Ms. Zussman wrote, “Can a cardboard sculpture become a skyscraper? 5th graders used iPad photography and generative AI tools in Canva to prove that scale is all about perspective. By remixing their physical art into AI-generated environments, they transformed small, 3D recycled objects into imaginative new worlds. Stepping into the role of Digital Art Directors, students used AI as a kind of ‘set designer’ to build custom settings for their sculptures. Along the way, they discovered something important: AI doesn’t follow your vision, it follows patterns.” In other words, students learned that AI makes predictable choices, such as placing an umbrella sculpture on a beach or placing a car sculpture on a road. So, the students learned how to guide AI with specific directions and break those patterns.

Middle School

Middle School Teachers Margaret Kelleher ’01, P’35, Latin Teacher and World & Classical Languages Department Chair, and Kori Lyons P’30, ’32, Middle School History Department Chair, have led sessions on AI for professional development. For her part, Ms. Kelleher acknowledges that she finds AI “overwhelming and intimidating”, but a light bulb moment occurred when students asked her, “If AI is out there, who’s going to teach us how to use it? Who’s helping us figure it out?” At that point, she realized her responsibility and looked for ways to “incorporate it into my classroom in a way that’s not doing the thinking for them, but assisting them in doing their own thinking.” Her foray, thus far, has been to create a study partner for the students, “like an interactive study guide,” by creating a space on SchoolAI.

Ms. Lyons says, “I’m not trying to replace myself. We’re teaching that AI is here, and how to use it.” She likes having Pingry-approved tools but is working to make assignments more AI proof.

Upper School

Similar challenges are confronting Upper School departments because using AI can significantly take away from students’ learning. Computer Science Department Chair Dr. Marie-Pierre Jolly says their department is also working to make assignments more AI proof. In their curriculum, only the most advanced students who are taking the courses Machine Learning and Database Management are allowed to use AI—specifically, to write code, because the students already understand what needs to be done to make the code work correctly. AI is not allowed in the introductory courses “because we want them to learn the fundamentals.” The gray area is with courses that fall between introductory and advanced, such as Data Structures and Algorithms. “We’re teaching fundamentals in those classes, but the problems are easily solved with AI even though we don’t want them to use it,” she says. “Like the humanities, we’re not embracing the use of AI. We want to teach the fundamentals and not take any shortcuts.” However, for the fifth time in 2026, Dr. Jolly co-taught a Spring Intensive called “Explorations in Artificial Intelligence” to introduce different types of AI for students to explore beyond Large Language Models or generative AI, such as self-driving cars, personal assistants, face detection, and medical image analysis. “What we need to introduce more of,” she says, “is teaching students how to use AI in a smart way.”

Over in the English Department is an English Teacher Working Group**. Before this group existed, the department formulated an AI policy for classroom use, which stipulated no AI use unless the teacher gives express permission. Then, in the 2024-25 school year, English Department Chair Dr. Ann Dickerson wanted to form the department’s own AI working group. Any teacher who wanted to join could do so, and the group also acts as a space for sharing, such as conference takeaways. “The main objective,” says group member Dr. Alexis Briley, “is to draft a department mission statement. What [is the effect on] all aspects of English in the age of AI? What skills and habits do we want our students to have? What role should AI be playing in those skillsets? What matters to us as English teachers?” Ultimately, knowing the temptation to use AI exists, the department wants to figure out how to make sure that students become thoughtful readers and writers.

Then, AI offers ways to solve problems. Recently, French Teacher Salomé Copin, an assistant to the ISP (Independent Senior Project) Coordinators, learned about Claude from her colleagues in the World Languages Department, and she used it to solve a major ISP challenge. For context: all ISP coaches need to track students’ progress through students’ daily electronic logs. Ms. Copin maintains a spreadsheet to keep track, monitoring the students’ progress on their logs and staying in touch with the coaches. If needed, she sends alerts to students, through Veracross, to update their logs.

Well, in 2024-25, she sent hundreds of emails. “It was hard to keep track of everyone’s progress, I was emailing the coaches, the policies of what and when to report were not clear to the coaches…everything was quite vague. I thought I would use AI to make things easier for everyone.” Her idea: a spreadsheet that automatically updates to show how all of the seniors are progressing with their logs, and to keep track of all the alert notices. So, in the span of about one day, she gave Claude instructions to write code to create a weekly tracker. Every week, the spreadsheet sends an email to the coaches, and Claude also created the emails and a linked Google Form for each coach. This way, the coaches do not need to remember to send Ms. Copin anything, and the spreadsheet refreshes automatically. “I was amazed,” she says. “I had no clue that it was possible to do this.” (She still sends the alert notices to students manually through Veracross.)

Hackathon – Middle and Upper Schools

The purpose of the aforementioned Hackathon at Pottersville, on a Saturday afternoon in April, was for students to write code (in this case, vibe coding, which uses AI to write code) to create an app or website to help address educational inequity. Students had about three hours of working time. “Every student group came up with an app, and that would have been impossible five years ago. The speed to create something to solve a real-world problem was the most powerful takeaway,” says Dean of Residential Life L.J. Scurfield, who helped organize the Hackathon. “Pingry is embracing AI in a way that I don’t think most schools are. It’s here, and it’s a tool. We’re not going to be scared of it. We’re going to teach our students how to be good stewards of it. Pingry is on the cutting edge.”

Case Study in Changing One’s Mind

“I was against the wholesale embracing of AI out of the gate,” says Upper School English Teacher Dr. Barrett Ward. Why did he change his mind? “The tide is coming. I have to find ways to use them, and I schooled myself.” How does he use it in class now? “I don’t allow AI except for certain circumstances—I’m open to the ‘value added’ when the major work has been done. Students need to earn the right to use it.” Dr. Ward thinks of AI as a thought partner, so in situations when AI could help polish a project, “sprinkle some fairy dust on it.” He understands students’ temptation to use AI, but insists they “come to me” to learn how to elevate their writing and other work.

That change in mentality is one example of why Mr. Steinberg is “really proud” of the faculty for their progress since the first days of ChatGPT in the fall of 2022. “We’ve come a really long way. Things have palpably changed. People are less afraid. We are in a much better position than we were three years ago. The faculty are working to up their skills and engage on PD Days. It makes me feel good.”

*Basking Ridge AI Working Group
Dr. Alexis Briley
Emily Cooke
Dr. Jessica Flaxman
Steve Frantz
Lisa Hartmann
Matt Honohan
Lisa Longo Johnston
Dr. Marie-Pierre Jolly
Dr. Jonathan Kelly
Lauren Kelly
Dr. Pamela Longo
Dawn Lozada
Kori Lyons
Dr. Danielle Mirliss
Alex Nanfara
Katelin O’Hare
Tamara Schurdak
Alex Steinberg
Dr. Sandra Sudarsky
Andrew Sullivan
Allen Thomas
Dr. Amy Varo-Haub

*Short Hills AI Working Group
Kenya Barber
Anne Becker
Russell Christian
Jeff Cohen
Erik Hove
Denise Lionetti ’85
Sandhya Misra
Victoria Newman
Katie Ricca
Mary Anne Sacco
Vinod Sahani
Dana Sherman
Sue Tummarello
Alana Zussman

**English Teacher Working Group
Gabriel Behringer
Dr. Alexis Briley
Brian Burkhart
Dr. Ann Dickerson
Dr. Charlotte Madere
Rebecca Rose


Contact: Greg Waxberg ’96, Assistant Director of Communications, Writer/Editor