18. Shaping the Future Classroom with Mike McGuckin
Season 2, Episode 7 of Kinwise Conversations · Hit play or read the transcript
Episode Summary: The Shift in K-12 AI Integration
In this episode, we sit down with Mike McGuckin, a trailblazing computer science teacher from Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and one of the first AIEDU Trailblazer Fellows. As districts grapple with the rapid integration of AI, Mike provides an on-the-ground perspective on what works. He shares his playbook for transforming AI from a potential cheating tool into a powerful "idea bouncer" that fosters critical thinking and reclaims valuable time for student engagement. For superintendents and curriculum leaders, this conversation offers a practical framework for developing effective AI classroom policies, designing future-ready learning experiences, and empowering teachers to lead the charge in a world of constant technological change. Mike’s journey provides a roadmap for how to move from hesitation to innovation, one classroom at a time.
Key Takeaways for K-12 Leaders
Policy Should Foster Critical Thinking, Not Just Detect Cheating: The most effective AI policy is not about detection tools, but about knowing your students and teaching them to question AI-generated answers. The core message for students should be: "The answer may not be 100% accurate."
Empower Teachers with Practical AI Use Cases: AI's greatest value for educators is as an "idea bouncer" and administrative assistant. It can generate lesson plans, create rubrics, and draft parent communications, freeing up teachers to focus on high-impact instruction and student relationships.
Start with 'Why,' Not 'What': Before deploying any AI tool, engage students in ethical discussions. Use real-world scenarios, like the programming of self-driving cars, to explore bias, decision-making, and the societal impact of algorithms.
Future-Ready Curriculum is About Application, Not Just Theory: The most impactful learning happens when students use AI to solve real-world problems. A final project requiring students to design an AI tool, without any coding, teaches them to think like innovators and problem-solvers.
The Best Professional Development is Play: Encourage teachers and leaders to experiment with AI tools. Hands-on exploration with platforms like ChatGPT and Magic School AI is the fastest way to build the confidence and familiarity needed to lead effective implementation.
The AI Idea Bouncer: A Teacher's Guide to AI Policy
Episode Summary: The Strategic Shift in K-12 AI Integration
In this episode, we sit down with Mike McGuckin, a trailblazing computer science teacher from Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and one of the first AIEDU Trailblazer Fellows. As districts grapple with the rapid integration of AI, Mike provides an on-the-ground perspective on what works. He shares his playbook for transforming AI from a potential cheating tool into a powerful "idea bouncer" that fosters critical thinking and reclaims valuable time for student engagement. For superintendents and curriculum leaders, this conversation offers a practical framework for developing effective AI classroom policies, designing future-ready learning experiences, and empowering teachers to lead the charge in a world of constant technological change. Mike’s journey provides a roadmap for how to move from hesitation to innovation, one classroom at a time.
🔑 Key Takeaways for K-12 Leaders
Policy Should Foster Critical Thinking, Not Just Detect Cheating: The most effective AI policy is not about detection tools, but about knowing your students and teaching them to question AI-generated answers. The core message for students should be: "The answer may not be 100% accurate."
Empower Teachers with Practical AI Use Cases: AI's greatest value for educators is as an "idea bouncer" and administrative assistant. It can generate lesson plans, create rubrics, and draft parent communications, freeing up teachers to focus on high-impact instruction and student relationships.
Start with 'Why,' Not 'What': Before deploying any AI tool, engage students in ethical discussions. Use real-world scenarios, like the programming of self-driving cars, to explore bias, decision-making, and the societal impact of algorithms.
Future-Ready Curriculum is About Application, Not Just Theory: The most impactful learning happens when students use AI to solve real-world problems. A final project requiring students to design an AI tool—without any coding—teaches them to think like innovators and problem-solvers.
The Best Professional Development is Play: Encourage teachers and leaders to experiment with AI tools. Hands-on exploration with platforms like ChatGPT and Magic School AI is the fastest way to build the confidence and familiarity needed to lead effective implementation.
The Educator on the Ground
Lydia Kumar: Hi, Mike, I'm so glad to have you on the podcast today. It's the middle of the school day for you, or towards the end, so you are really on the ground with students and with fellow educators, navigating a lot of things, one of them being AI. I'm so excited to just take a minute for you to talk about your journey in education and artificial intelligence, and what brought you to this work, and what's motivated and interested you.
Mike McGuckin: Yeah, so I got into teaching in 2018 at Thomasville High School. When I was there, I spent my first five years as a swim coach. I ended that career at Thomasville as an assistant athletic director and then moved to Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in 2023, right around the time when my son was born, my firstborn. Since then, I’ve been able to get into computer science, which is something I'm passionate about. Within that first year, I really just took off in computer science and artificial intelligence education and have really been set in stone for that, doing work not just at the local level, but even at the state level.
Lydia Kumar: That's amazing, Mike. I'm curious about computer science because you mentioned that. Do you have a background in computer science, or is that just something that you've been interested in throughout your life?
Mike McGuckin: Yeah, so I originally, when I went to Old Dominion University, started out as a computer science major. I could not really get the math part to figure out for me, so I switched my major to Sport Management. When I was a senior and doing my internship, I ended up working with high school students. So, after I graduated college, I went to Macon, Georgia, where I did group sales for a year, and left there to go teach at Thomasville High School. I wanted to get back into high school; I like high school education, I like athletics, and I had a background in computer science and a passion for it—teaching students about programming, design, and really all sorts of things related to computer science. So, once I came to Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and saw that I was teaching a computer science class, after learning the new curriculum in a semester, I really enjoyed it and made little tweaks to make it more engaging and more fun. My students have enjoyed learning computer science, and some of them have told me they've gone into college taking computer science courses because they had exposure here at Glenn High School. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools is pushing forward towards that, especially as that field is expanding rapidly with the use of artificial intelligence. People need programmers; people need all sorts of people to be able to do things for them.
Curriculum: Mandating a Future-Ready Skillset
Lydia Kumar: It's funny because earlier this week, or maybe it was last week, I was reading this report about how earning potentials increase when students have access to even one computer science class. I think it's a class that is not necessarily required for every student but is associated with these really positive outcomes. That must be a cool area of work to be involved with.
Mike McGuckin: It is, and in the state of North Carolina, I know not this current school year, but the next school year, it's going to be a state law where the graduating class of 2030 must have at least one computer science credit. Now, it may not just be a computer science principles class; it can also be a technology engineering design class where you're now teaching computer science inside of that unit. So it's one of the new classes that I'm teaching this year, and once I saw the first unit was on computer science, I got really excited about that because that's something I'm passionate about and know a lot about. That graduation requirement is coming to full fruition, and this current school year is the last year that school districts could use a waiver unless the General Assembly decides to not require that graduation requirement. It's a whole mess.
Lydia Kumar: That's really cool that it's going to be able to expand and we're going to have more students having access to courses like the ones that you're teaching. I want to ask you about your AI involvement. I know you were one of the AI Trailblazers; you did that fellowship with AIEDU. Do you want to share a little bit about what that was like, why you decided to do it, and what that experience was like for you?
Mike McGuckin: So, I decided to do it after seeing a post in the AP Computer Science Principles group on Facebook. I thought, well, I'm passionate about artificial intelligence. At the time, in the spring of ‘24, I had just finished my second master's degree in sport management and a graduate certificate in project management. I started using artificial intelligence when I was in that second master's program, only as a guideline and to get an idea. For all the journal articles I had to read, it was just easy for me to download and upload them to ChatGPT to get a summary so I knew what I was talking about, while also trying to raise a child and do lots of other things. Once I got accepted into that program, I realized I was one of 25 teachers in the nation. So just to be involved in that was substantial in itself, but I was the only one from North Carolina to be involved. That really skyrocketed me to lots of different roles inside of AIEDU and even inside the state of North Carolina. I have lots of different teachers messaging me over email and sending me messages on different platforms asking me about artificial intelligence. I’ve really had a passion for it as I've seen it grow in the past couple of years as we have used it more and more. Now it's part of our daily life. It's fun teaching it, and it's interesting looking at that pivotal moment of me being in that Trailblazer fellowship, being the only one from the state of North Carolina, and representing not just the state, but being one of 25 teachers in the nation to be part of that fellowship. It's a huge honor.
Lydia Kumar: That's really amazing. And it's interesting because North Carolina has really been at the forefront of AI in education. We were the fourth state that had our AI guidelines published. And it's cool to meet somebody like you, who's a teacher who's been able to move some of that implementation forward and be a part of a national cohort that's thinking about what AI looks like in classrooms.
Workforce: The On-the-Ground Reality of AI in the Classroom
Lydia Kumar: I'm curious about what it looks like in your class now that you're using AI and teaching with AI. If I came into your classroom, what would I learn, or how would you be integrating the technology?
Mike McGuckin: So, AI, as we know, changes every minute of every day, so it's just constantly keeping up with the change. We offer an artificial intelligence intro course that the state has kind of created. We teach out of that course, which was originally developed by the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and has been slowly updated. I've been helping update that course to a point. We start out with the ethics portion of AI. I teach my students that self-driving cars, for example, have to make a decision whether to harm people in the car or harm the people on the road. These are hard ethical questions I have them answer, and I tell them this is what a programmer has to think about. We go into a little bit of algorithms and bias and data, and then right now we're doing Scratch programming, just to get a little programming involved. But we go into sensors, and my favorite unit is chatbot creativity. I use a tool on Magic School to allow my students to create their own chatbots to demonstrate that ability. I will also show them on an unrestricted side of it for ChatGPT; I've created my own chatbots for almost everyday resources. I have a chatbot that helps me get my AP classes to be a little more adept and really pushing forward to get higher scores on their AP exams. At the end, for their final project, they have to create their own AI resource. They don't have to do any of the programming; they're just designing it. It's a big paper where they have to research and find different resources. So, I had one student look at healthcare and design on paper an AI tool that would be unbiased in helping diagnose medical diagnoses. Those are just some of the things that we do in the class that kind of help elevate it.
Lydia Kumar: Yeah, that makes sense because the field of AI has been around for a long time, but machine learning, deep learning—it's becoming complex. There's a lot of math and a lot of complexity in how the technology works. Trying to figure out the most important aspects that students need to understand, that you need to understand to teach it well, and then support the different educators around the state that it sounds like you're working alongside as well—that's a big job.
Mike McGuckin: Yeah, it's a big job. When you're one of the people on our Moodle... it's more of a Canvas course, anyone can have a shell for it. I will meet with anyone as needed to help go through the class and tell them about the class and work with them. There's only one other teacher in my district that teaches it, so I work with them all the time as needed. He'll reach out to me occasionally to ask questions. But when we do get into some of the complex math, that's where I kind of draw a line. I'm not comfortable teaching my students this if I don't understand it. That's one of the things I tell other teachers: if I'm not comfortable teaching it, I'll show them the math behind it, but I'm not teaching the math because I don't understand it.
Lydia Kumar: It gets… Yeah, I think that's a… I was talking last week with Dr. Brené Brown, who works at Duke, and she has developed this course on AI concepts for people who hate math. I'll link it in this episode, but it's really… it was fun to talk to her because she's like, there's so much math in artificial intelligence, and sometimes we forget that. There are a lot of people who don't have the comfort or the time to learn that deep level of math, but you still need to understand the concepts to make the technology work well. Like, the final project you're having students do is really solving a real-world problem and having them think about how this new technology can help save lives or improve people's experiences. If you understand the technology, then you can at least conceptualize that and talk intelligently with other people about what's possible.
Mike McGuckin: Yeah, and remaining unbiased. That's one of the hardest things. We watch videos where a computer may be biased toward a specific group of people, and I tell them, "You have to think about everyone when you do this." It's a hard thing to teach them, and it's hard to visualize how some computers may not be able to recognize some issues. There are political, societal, and economic issues that a computer does not understand yet, but you have to be able to not be biased towards one or the other. You have to be in the middle, and that's usually hard when you have to develop something.
Policy: The Core Principle for Student AI Use
Lydia Kumar: What do you think is the most important thing for students in your class to understand about artificial intelligence?
Mike McGuckin: I think the hardest part to understand is not to use it for everyday tasks. Unfortunately, we saw last week a student unfortunately ended their life with the use of artificial intelligence. That's something we discussed in my class—that artificial intelligence is great, but it can be wrong, and it's not meant to replace the individual people that are with you. I encourage a very safe use of it. The school system, we do not have a policy, so students are not supposed to be using artificial intelligence, but I know that they do use it. We talk about the dangers of artificial intelligence and how there's a whole phenomenon of people going there for answers and not doing the research. When I talk in PDs, I tell them, "You know what your students write, and you can easily tell if something's written by them or not." I tell them that when I use artificial intelligence, I use it as an idea bouncer. I will ask questions, research the topic a little bit more, and then go in and solve problems. For students, they may just be looking to get the answer when the answer could be wrong because it's not 100% accurate. That's one of the things I tell my students: yes, you can use artificial intelligence in your own personal life, but the answer may not be 100% accurate. My AP class, they have the ability from College Board to use it to help with programming. I tell them that you can use it, but just know that you need to be able to explain what it is and what it's doing. That can discourage some of them because they may just want to submit something with artificial intelligence and not use it. I tell them, "Get your program, get everything you can, and then go back and take a look further into what can make this better, or what was a different solution?" Use different ways to explore and not be using too much of it.
Workforce: Empowering Teachers with AI as a Tool
Lydia Kumar: I want to flip from the student perspective to using it as an educator and using it to support other educators. I'm curious, for you, how has AI helped? You mentioned this a little bit with your AP class, but how do you use it as a teacher? How do you recommend other teachers use it?
Mike McGuckin: Yeah, so I use it mainly as an idea generator, first off. I got access to a new curriculum this year for my newest class, and I got it the week that school… I think I got it on a Wednesday, and school was starting on a Monday. So I had no time to review what I wanted to do. I used artificial intelligence to kind of lay out some projects or some tasks that we could do, even with specific dates, like, "we aren't in school on these days, this is this break." It kind of gave me an idea of where I wanted to be and a pacing guide. That's how I use it. When I taught artificial intelligence for the first time last year, I got the curriculum, but it was kind of bone dry. So I was like, okay, what can I do to make this curriculum a little bit better? So, I used artificial intelligence to help me create presentations and went back and made changes to those presentations. When we talk about ethics and stuff, it makes it easier. Or I want to talk about the history of computer science; I may ask where we are now from where we were 50 years ago. I've only been in education for seven years, so this has been a wild ride to kind of see artificial intelligence come out. It's been real crazy watching the way I use it. I also use it for some everyday tasks. So I may put in a lesson plan or a specific project. I want to do a mousetrap car in my class, so I'll put in a mousetrap project and give it a timeline, and it will give me a timeline of what parts I need to get done on what day. I can even get a rubric. I use that as well to kind of help me take some of the weight off me so I can focus on other things, like helping my students understand concepts, or really just get me off of lesson planning and be more engaged with my students and help other people overall.
Leadership: A Call to Action for School Leaders
Lydia Kumar: If you had a school leader, a principal, curious if AI is worth their time right now, what would you say to them, or what would you encourage them to think about?
Mike McGuckin: I'd say it's worth it. Play around with it, explore it. When I lead PDs, that's one of the best ways I've always learned to teach—play around, kind of see what you can get, and then go back and try to get something else. I always enjoyed doing that type of thing. So when principals ask me about stuff related to artificial intelligence and computer science, I have to put on my thinking cap and think exactly what they're looking for and help them get to the answer that they're trying to get to. I think it's useful for those day-to-day activities. I know Magic School has a newsletter option where you can use AI to generate a newsletter for you. I haven't done it yet but thought about using that for parent contact and sending different newsletters about what we're doing in class and what we're learning about. I think it would help them get in and out of different things quicker. But to use it to the full advantage that they would want to, they'd have to sit down and just play with it. You don't know what anything can do until you sit down and play with it and create things that make it work.
The Big Question: What is the Future of School?
Lydia Kumar: My last question for you, Mike, is about an idea or a question that is sitting with you right now. The question that keeps you up at night, or something that you're just really spending a lot of time thinking about right now.
Mike McGuckin: So, I think one of the crazier questions is, where are we going with this? What's education going to look like in a couple more years? We're using artificial intelligence; it's here. You can't deny it. It is physically here. So what is the next step? What is the next step in education? When I was going for my first Master's, one of the things I mentioned was that eventually, everything could be self-paced learning, or it could be virtual learning. And that was before COVID-19. And then COVID-19 hit, and we all had to go virtual. So, I was right at one point. There are different schools that offer virtual learning options. And that's one of the things where I think it's trending. So one of the things I ask myself is what is that going to look like in a couple of years? What is education itself going to look like in just a few years? Not even 10, 20 years down the road. Are we still going to have classrooms? Are we going to be meeting virtually again? No one knows. And that's one of the questions that keeps me up at night, because I not only worry about myself, as I enjoy teaching, but I also worry about my son and my kids, because they are going to need some sort of schooling, and I don't know what that looks like in a couple of years.
Prompts Inspired by Mike
1. The "Idea Bouncer" for Rapid Curriculum Planning
Use Case: You've just been assigned a new course and received the curriculum guide only days before school starts. Use AI to quickly generate a project-based learning unit that aligns with the standards while being engaging for students.
Prompt:
"Act as an instructional coach for a high school teacher who is teaching a Technology, Engineering, and Design class for the first time. I need to create a 5-day project-based learning unit on building a mousetrap car.
Your task is to generate a complete plan that includes:
A student-facing project overview with a clear objective.
A day-by-day timeline (Day 1: Intro & Design, Day 2: Build, Day 3: Test & Refine, Day 4: Competition, Day 5: Reflection).
A simple, 4-point rubric to assess the final car based on distance traveled, design creativity, use of materials, and a written reflection.
One bell-ringer question for each day to kick off the class."
2. The AI-Powered Coding Tutor
Use Case: A student is struggling with their code and has sent you an email for help. Use AI to quickly identify the error and generate a guided hint that helps the student solve the problem themselves, rather than just giving them the answer.
Prompt:
"Act as a computer science teaching assistant. A student has submitted the following Python code, which is supposed to ask for a user's name and then print a personalized greeting. It's not working, and the student can't figure out why.
Student's Code:
Python
name = input("What is your name? ") print("Hello, " + name) print("Welcome to our program)
Your task is to:
Identify the specific error in the code.
Do NOT provide the corrected code.
Write a brief, friendly response to the student that points them to the exact line with the error and gives them a hint about what to look for (e.g., 'Take a close look at line 3. Programming languages are very picky about making sure everything that opens also closes. See if you can spot what's missing.')."
3. The Ethical Dilemma Generator for Classroom Discussion
Use Case: You want to move beyond the technical aspects of AI and engage your students in a deep conversation about its ethical implications. Use AI to create a realistic scenario that forces critical thinking.
Prompt:
"Act as a curriculum developer for a high school AI ethics class. Generate a short, compelling scenario to spark a classroom debate on algorithmic bias.
The scenario should involve an AI model used by a city to distribute a limited number of summer job opportunities to high school students. The AI is designed to prioritize students it deems 'most likely to succeed.' After the first year, it's revealed that students from wealthier neighborhoods were recommended at a much higher rate.
Your task is to write the scenario and then provide three open-ended discussion questions for the class, such as:
What factors or data might have caused the AI to produce this biased outcome?
Who is responsible for this unfair outcome: the programmers, the city officials who used the tool, or someone else?
If you were hired to fix this system, what steps would you take to make it more equitable?"
4. The Parent Communication Assistant
Use Case: You want to keep parents informed about what's happening in your class but lack the time to write a detailed newsletter from scratch. Use AI to transform your brief notes into a polished, professional communication.
Prompt:
"Act as my classroom administrative assistant. I need to send a monthly newsletter to the parents of my Introduction to AI students. Please take my bullet points below and transform them into a friendly, engaging, and professional newsletter.
My Notes:
Last Month: We finished the unit on AI ethics and discussed self-driving cars. Students did great on their debates.
This Month: We're starting our 'Chatbot Creativity' unit. Students will use Magic School AI to build their own chatbot based on a historical figure. It's a fun project.
Final Project Sneak Peek: Their final project will be to design an AI tool to solve a real-world problem. More details to come.
Reminder: Parent-teacher conferences are next month.
The newsletter should have a clear subject line, a warm opening, organize my notes into clear sections, and have a professional closing."
5. The Project Ideation Partner
Use Case: You want to design a creative final project for your class that allows students to apply their knowledge in a tangible way, but you need some fresh ideas to get started. Use AI as a brainstorming partner to generate diverse and interesting project options.
Prompt:
"Act as a creative curriculum designer. My high school Computer Science 1 class has just completed units on basic programming concepts (variables, loops, conditionals) and an introduction to AI.
For their final project, I want them to apply these skills to a real-world context. Generate three distinct project ideas that a high school student could reasonably complete.
For each idea, provide:
A catchy project title.
A one-paragraph description of the project.
A list of the key skills they would demonstrate (e.g., 'Using conditional logic,' 'Designing a user interface,' 'Considering AI bias')."
Connect and Resources
Mike McGuckin on LinkedIn Connect with Mike professionally to follow his work at the intersection of computer science, classroom teaching, and AI leadership in K-12 education. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-mcguckin/
AI Concepts for People Who Hate Math Explore the YouTube series from Duke's Dr. Brinnae Bent that Lydia discussed, which breaks down the complex mathematical concepts behind AI in an accessible way.
AIEDU AI Literacy Snapshots Download the free AI literacy snapshots and other classroom-ready resources from AIEDU to start conversations with your own students about the ethics and impact of artificial intelligence.
AIEDU Trailblazer Fellowship Learn more about the fellowship program that helped launch Mike's journey as a leader in AI education and discover opportunities for educators to get training, resources, and a supportive peer network.
About the Guest
Mike McGuckin is a Computer Science teacher at Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools in North Carolina. As one of the first educators selected for the AIEDU Trailblazer Fellowship, he has become a key resource for teachers and districts across the state on AI integration. With a passion for making computer science accessible and engaging, Mike is at the forefront of designing curriculum and policies that prepare students for a future driven by artificial intelligence.
