Newark High School Students Learn About AI Through Career Exploration
This article was originally published in Chalkbeat.
On a recent Thursday morning, Michael Taubman asked his class of seniors at North Star Academy's Washington Park High School: 'What do you think AI's role should be in your future career?'
'In school, like how we use AI as a tool and we don't use it to cheat on our work … that's how it should be, like an assistant,' said Amirah Falana, a 17-year-old interested in a career in real estate law.
Fernando Infante, an aspiring software developer, agreed that AI should be a tool to 'provide suggestions' and inform the work.
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'It's like having AI as a partner rather than it doing the work,' said Infante during class.
Falana and Infante are students in Taubman's class called The Summit, a yearlong program offered to 93 seniors this year and expanding to juniors next year that also includes a 10-week AI course developed by Taubman and Stanford University.
As part of the course, students use artificial intelligence tools – often viewed in a negative light due to privacy and other technical concerns – to explore their career interests and better understand how technology could shape the workforce. The class is also timely, as 92% of companies plan to invest in more AI over the next three years, according to a report by global consulting firm McKinsey and Company.
The lessons provide students with hands-on exercises to better understand how AI works and how they can use it in their daily lives. They are also designed so teachers across subject areas can include them as part of their courses and help high school students earn a Google Career Certificate for AI Essentials, which introduces AI and teaches the basics of using AI tools.
Students like Infante have used the AI and coding skills they learned in class to create their own apps while others have used them to create school surveys and spark new thoughts about their future careers. Taubman says the goal is to also give students agency over AI so they can embrace technological changes and remain competitive in the workfield.
'One of the key things for young people right now is to make sure they understand that this technology is not inevitable,' Taubman told Chalkbeat last month. 'People made this, people are making decisions about it, and there are pros and cons like with everything people make and we should be talking about this.'
As Generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, graduate high school and enter a workforce where AI is new, many are wondering how the technology will be used and to what extent.
Nearly half of Gen Z students polled by The Walton Family Foundation and Gallup said they use AI weekly, according to the newly released survey exploring how youth view AI. (The Walton Family Foundation is a supporter of Chalkbeat. See our funders list here.) The same poll found that over 4 in 10 Gen Z students believe they will need to know AI in their future careers, and over half believe schools should be required to teach them how to use it.
This school year, Newark Public Schools students began using Khan Academy's AI chatbot tutor called Khanmigo, which the district launched as a pilot program last year. Some Newark teachers reported that the tutoring tool was helpful in the classroom, but the district has not released data on whether it helped raise student performance and test scores. The district in 2024 also launched its multimillion project to install AI cameras across school buildings in an attempt to keep students safe.
But more than just using AI in school, students want to feel prepared to use it after graduating high school. Nearly 3 in 4 college students said their colleges or universities should be preparing them for AI in the workplace, according to a survey from Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse's Student Voice series.
Many of the challenges of using AI in education center on the type of learning approach used, accuracy, and building trust with the technology, said Nhon Ma, CEO of Numerade – an online learning assistant that uses AI and educators to help students learn STEM concepts. But that's why it's important to immerse students in AI to help them understand the ways it could be used and when to spot issues, Ma added.
'We want to prepare our youth for this competitive world stage, especially on the technological front so they can build their own competence and confidence in their future paths. That could potentially lead towards higher earnings for them too,' Ma said.
For Infante, the senior in Taubman's class, AI has helped spark a love for computer science and deepened his understanding of coding. He used it to create an app that tracks personal milestones and goals and awards users with badges once they reach them. As an aspiring software developer, he feels he has an advantage over other students because he's learning about AI in high school.
Taubman also says it's especially important for students to understand how quickly the technology is advancing, especially for students like Infante looking towards a career in technology.
'I think it's really important to help young people grapple with how this is new, but unlike other big new things, the pace is very fast, and the implications for career are almost immediate in a lot of cases,' Taubman added.
It's also important to remember the limitations of AI, Taubman said, noting that students need the basic understanding of how AI works in order to question it, identify any mistakes, and use it accordingly in their careers.
'I don't want students to lose out on an internship or job because someone else knows how to use AI better than they do, but what I really want is for students to get the internship or the job because they're skillful with AI,' Taubman said.
Through Taubman's class, students are also identifying how AI increases the demand for skills that require human emotion, such as empathy and ethics.
Daniel Akinyele, a 17-year-old senior, said he was interested in a career in industrial and organizational psychology, which focuses on human behavior in the workplace.
During Taubman's class, he used a custom AI tool on his laptop to explore different scenarios where he could use AI in his career. Many involved talking to someone about their feelings or listening to vocal cues that might indicate a person is sad or angry. Ultimately, psychology is a career about human connection and 'that's where I come into play,' Akinyele said.
'I'm human, so I would understand how people are feeling, like the emotion that AI doesn't see in people's faces, I would see it and understand it,' Akinyele added.
Falana, the aspiring real estate attorney, also used the custom AI tool to consider how much she should rely on AI when writing legal documents. Similar to writing essays in schools, Falana said professionals should use their original writing in their work but AI could serve as a launching pad.
'I feel like the legal field should definitely put regulations on AI use, like we shouldn't be able to, draw up our entire case using AI,' Falana said.
During Taubman's class, students also discussed fake images and videos created by AI. Infante, who wants to be a software developer, added that he plans to use AI regularly on the job but believes it should also be regulated to limit disinformation online.
Taubman says it's important for students to have a healthy level of skepticism when it comes to new technologies. He encourages students to think about how AI generates images, the larger questions around copyright infringement, and their training processes.
'We really want them to feel like they have agency in this world, both their capacity to use these systems,' Taubman said, 'but also to ask these broader questions about how they were designed.'
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.
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