D-E Position Statement on Artificial Intelligence

Dwight-Englewood School is a community of learners committed to lifelong learning, excellence, integrity, diversity, and the courage to meet the challenges of a changing world and make it better. Artificial intelligence is increasingly part of that world, bringing meaningful opportunities for learning and creativity as well as important questions about judgment, responsibility, and the nature of learning itself.

Dwight-Englewood approaches AI with judicious curiosity. We neither ignore nor fear these technologies nor adopt them uncritically. Instead, informed by emerging research, we seek to understand them intentionally, evaluate their benefits and limitations, consider their impact on cognitive development, and make thoughtful choices about when and how they should be used in support of our educational mission.

Human learning and agency remain central. AI should serve learning and intellectual growth rather than replace independent thinking, authentic work, or human judgment. As AI makes some tasks easier to complete, Dwight-Englewood continues to value the processes through which students develop understanding, creativity, perseverance, and the capacity to think for themselves. Technology should support these human capacities, not diminish the need to cultivate them.

AI literacy is a schoolwide learning priority. Students and adults alike need the knowledge and judgment to understand AI, evaluate its outputs and impacts, recognize both its limitations and its opportunities, and use it thoughtfully and responsibly. Developing this literacy is an ongoing responsibility in a rapidly changing technological environment and an important part of preparing our community for learning, work, and civic life beyond Dwight-Englewood.

Expectations for AI use should be clear, coherent, and developmentally appropriate. Dwight-Englewood will establish shared schoolwide principles while recognizing that appropriate uses of AI will vary according to developmental level, discipline, learning goal, and context.  Within shared schoolwide guidelines, educators will use their professional judgment, informed by emerging research and continued learning about AI, to translate these principles into meaningful expectations for students.

Responsible use requires integrity and critical judgment.  Members of the Dwight-Englewood community should be transparent about meaningful uses of AI, critically verify AI-generated information, protect personal and confidential information, and consider the effects of AI use on other individuals, communities, and the environment. Responsibility for the accuracy, quality, and consequences of work remains with the human user.

Because AI will continue to change, our practices will evolve as well. Our underlying commitments should remain steady: to approach change with curiosity and judgment, to preserve the central role of human learning, and to prepare students and adults to engage thoughtfully and responsibly with technologies that are reshaping the world around them.

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