Mount Desert Island Schools Build a Human-First, Grassroots Approach to AI in Education.

Carrie Jones and Shaun Farrar

Apr 11, 2026

BAR HARBOR—Seventh graders from across the Mount Desert Island region gathered at College of the Atlantic at the end of March to learn about artificial intelligence, not how to cheat with it, educators stressed, not how to rely too much on it, but how to question it and work with it.

That, they said, is a distinct and important difference, a skill for students in 2026.

The workshops were led by a small group of local educators who have spent the past two years quietly developing a human-centered framework for how schools can teach students to use AI ethically and responsibly.

That’s because AI is already in the lives of students throughout the region and the goal is to keep humans in the loop.

“This is here and it can actually help us become better teachers,” said Julie Keblinsky, MDI RSS director of teaching and learning.

She sees it as a movement toward empowerment of students and teachers.

Some schools approach AI use as cheating, but these educators address that and help their students address it, too.

The educators were assisted during the workshop by a team of MLTI ambassadors. MLTI stands for Maine Learning Technology Initiative.

According to the state website, MLTI “provides professional development and 21st Century learning tools to Maine’s K-12 public schools to support the attainment of Maine’s college and career readiness standards.”

Negative use of AI was a component of the day, but what the day was really about was teaching kids how to use AI tools that the students already have access to, and the educators hoped that for the students it was all about the human framework and the ethical use of AI.

“Students will learn how to use AI and tech with purpose, instead of letting it use them,” according to the educators.

Students rotated through quick interactive workshops. There, they practiced ethical practices and worked to determine when AI is a smart tool and when it’s a shortcut. They wrote better prompts. They checked for bias. They learned about protecting privacy. They also learned how feeds and apps can try to influence them.

The skills taught that day weren’t about punishment or containment. Instead, the day focused on the emerging technology and whether or not it helps people’s brains learn rather than people surrendering their brains.

The work is being done by Keblinsky, Nicole Davis (Maine Department of Education emerging tech specialist), Gray Cox (College of the Atlantic philosophy, peace studies, and language learning professor), and Kate Meyer (instructional innovation specialist/ELA teacher author).

It is, however, truly a collaboration between the region’s schools, the College of the Atlantic, Maine DOE, and the students themselves.

“We just very informally put a group together,” one educator said. “It kind of evolved into saying, ‘We have to talk.’”

The cross-school and agency collaboration with its grass roots origin is meant to help kids.

AI literacy is so important, the educators said, because the students need the skills to use it responsibly.

Students were taught to “rabbit hole” — opening multiple tabs and corroborating information from reliable sources instead of just accepting the first source or the AI source.

They worked with five pillars to “keep the human in the loop”: halt, utilize, monitor, authenticate, and note.

Meyer and Davis have extensively worked to create the ROBOT framework, which is meant to help educators harness AI to harness AI in practical and clear ways to enhance instruction for teachers in the Mount Desert Region, Maine, and beyond.

Meyer taught English for 25 years. When ChatGPT came up in 2022, she was working for the state. It became her job to learn about it and talk about it. She began using it with her students and worked with Davis.

“How do we keep that human aspect in?” they wondered.

Meyer found in her own classroom that having open, honest, transparent, and ongoing discussions with her students about AI was helpful to develop those skills and understanding.

“My students have told me that they want to do the right thing. They don’t want to use it to cheat,” Meyer said.

Teaching back at the school again, cheating in her class room hasn’t been an issue.

The event isn’t a one-day focus. The levels of acceptable AI use are part of daily practice.

Cox said that students come into College of the Atlantic with different levels of backgrounds, which means different exposure, attitudes, and previous use (or not) of AI. He has taught a course on collaborative writing with AI.

Students at the college have been interviewing community members about their own AI use.

People had very different feelings about AI, he said. Trying to develop best practices was part of the activity.

“There’s this notion of creating a safe environment—or safe, ethical, legal kinds of work that we really—we obviously need in the schools,“ Cox said. “Part of what you want to be asking is how does it harvest data for people. Is it going to start using advertising to manipulate them?”

Schools want to be safe places, and that’s happening via the protocols, but when Cox talks to people in other walks of life, he says that “it’s really clear that we need that in the state level for people in all these other levels as well.”

The state had a task force initiated by Governor Janet Mills last year with a report issued in October 2025. Out of those recommendations came ideas for legislation and there’s been approximately $6 million in best practice coordination at the state level.

“What we want is collaborative, cooperative process,” Cox said of the state level work, the kind that’s already happening in the Mount Desert Island school system.

“To me AI is a mirror and amplifier of student thinking,” Keblinsky said.

Cox quoted educator John Dewey during his discussion.

At the end of the 1800s, John Dewey famously said, “Education is a social process; education is growth; education is not a preparation for life but is life itself.”

Dewey also said, “The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community to select the influences which shall affect the child and to assist him in properly responding to these influences.”

How to respond to the changing world, how to use the tools available in ways that lift up students and their learning is part of the collaborative effort.

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The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Acadia Brochures of Maine.

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All photos: Shaun Farrar/Bar Harbor Story

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