AI with Intention

AI with Intention: Principles and Action Steps for Teachers and School Leaders

By Tony Frontier

Book Details

Product Code: 124032

ISBN: 9781416633624

Release Date: 2025-05-16

Length: 146 pages

May 2025 Member Book

Make sure your tech initiatives put students first with this robust guide for teachers and school leaders.

With new artificial intelligence tools sweeping into districts and schools, educators must be able to assess the tools’ benefits and limitations and determine if and how they might serve students. Teaching and leadership expert Tony Frontier provides the insight and knowledge necessary to use these tools effectively and responsibly.

AI with Intention presents guiding principles and action steps that address both the issues and the opportunities that come with artificial intelligence. School leaders will learn how to cultivate a schoolwide understanding of AI, implement student-centered practices that support academic integrity, and ensure that effective teaching and learning remain the school’s top priority. Teachers will learn how to efficiently and effectively use AI tools to help their students engage in the productive struggle necessary for learning.

New and evolving technologies can be exciting, but as Frontier points out, how we respond to innovation is more important than the innovation itself. This book is a roadmap for all educators looking to better understand and incorporate AI in ways that support—rather than undermine—effective teaching and learning.

Table of contents

Foreword by Jay McTighe

Introduction

Part 1: Leadership and AI

1. Lead by Learning: Build a Shared Understanding of What AI Is and Isn’t

2. Take a Transformational Approach: Align Leadership Behaviors to the Transformative Implications of AI

3. Emphasize Integrity: Align Expectations for Academic Integrity with Intentional Opportunities to Learn

4. Fidelity Before Efficiency: Use AI Tools to Support Intentional Teaching and Learning

Part 2: Teaching, Learning, and AI

5. Stand in Their Shoes: Empathize with Students’ Perceptions of AI Tools and Learning

6. Know Your Purpose: Prioritize Students’ Strategies and Efforts to Learn

7. Prompt AI Tools Intentionally: Ensure AI Tools Are Used to Create Clarity for Teaching and Learning

8. Empower Students to Use AI Tools Intentionally: Teaching Students to Use AI Tools with Agency for Learning

References

Index

About the Author

About the author

Tony Frontier, PhD, is an award-winning educator who works with teachers and school leaders nationally and internationally to help them prioritize efforts to improve student learning. With expertise in student engagement, evidence-based assessment, effective instruction, technology integration, data analysis, and strategic planning, Frontier emphasizes a systems approach to build capacity and empower teachers to improve each student’s schooling experience.

Praise for AI with Intention

"Yes, AI has many downsides, so we need to know what ‘wise use' means, and here is where Frontier's book is gold. Whether you're an AI enthusiast or a skeptic, AI with Intention challenges assumptions, offers fresh perspectives, and inspires meaningful dialogue about the future of education. AI is not good or bad; it is here to stay, and this is the best book I have read to introduce all to optimize the power of AI."

—John Hattie, laureate professor, director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute

"AI is transforming education, and intentionality is the key to ensuring it enhances, rather than diminishes, the human side of teaching and learning. AI with Intention is an essential guide for leaders and educators looking to understand and use AI to purposefully improve learning, teaching, and leadership in schools."

—Catlin Tucker, EdD, educator, author, and consultant

"Educators can either resist AI or engage in meaningful conversations and take action to ensure it is used to positively impact teaching and learning. Growth requires adaptation. Schools must embrace change, and leaders must find ways to use AI to support teachers in personalizing instruction. In AI with Intention, Tony Frontier provides a thoughtful, practical guide to ensure leaders and teachers preserve the integrity of systems of effective teaching and learning while embracing the possibilities presented by AI."

—Marc Cohen, EdD, leadership coach, The Leadership Link

"AI with Intention is a must-have for every school leader and classroom teacher. To ensure meaningful learning, Tony Frontier clearly links guiding principles, strategic choices, and actionable steps. He provides the tools, strategies, and insights necessary to navigate the evolving landscape of AI in education with clarity and purpose."

—Ruben Velarde Jr., EdD, learning innovator and AI consultant