While Wisconsin teachers are working on ways to implement and manage artificial intelligence for themselves and their students, the challenge of adapting to new technologies in the classroom is not new.
Mark Aderman, a science teacher at Darlington Elementary/Secondary School, has been teaching for over 30 years and has seen the widespread popularity of computers, the internet and smartphones in schools. For him, AI is the next technical iteration.
“As a teacher, technology has always allowed me to become a more creative and more engaging teacher,” Aseman told WPR's Wisconsin Today. “We need to understand how (AI) can be incorporated while still doing many other things that are important for students to learn.”
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He embraces classroom technology and uses an AI tool called Karipod to make lesson plans more interactive for fifth and sixth grade students.
Acherman said that when students submit answers to questions on the app, they can vote for who has the best answer. They also analyze their written work and propose areas of improvement.
His innovation and creativity are part of why he was selected as one of the five Wisconsin Teachers of the Years in 2026.
Another recent teacher recipient has taken a similar open-minded approach to AI in the classroom.
Brian Counselman teaches science at Malcolm Shabaz City High School, an alternative school in Madison that focuses on project-based learning.
He told WPR that seeing students motivated by technology, teachers can find success that leaned towards it rather than avoiding it.
“When I look at homework, assignments, etc., I think I'm going to challenge my teacher in a really healthy way,” Counselman said. “It often happens that students really dig into and experience things in real time and find real, real moments when they work face to face with people.”
Counselman, a recipient of the 2025 Teacher of the Year, said the emphasis is on advancing students' “deep knowledge.” This has progressed from basic memorization of facts to understanding how an idea works, how it looks, and how it applies.
Much of this comes from integrating the concepts that students are learning by evaluating through self-reflection and applying them to their personal experiences.
“Indeed, you can look into something, you can look into facts,” Counselman said. “But what AI tools can't do is look back at how they were involved in their experiences both in and out of class.”
Both teachers are trying to balance exploiting the benefits that AI can offer with trying to emphasize the value of real-life experiences that it cannot replace.
