By Amber Hickman |
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has launched the National Academy for AI Instruction in collaboration with Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic and the United Federation of Teachers (UFT).
The $23 million education initiative will provide access to free AI training and curriculum for all 1.8 million members of the AFT, starting with kindergarten to 12th-grade educators.
The programme will cover a variety of modules to train educators in AI literacy, ethical reasoning and creative problem solving, and provide them with skills they can take back to their students.
“To best serve students, we must ensure teachers have a strong voice in the development and use of AI,” said Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft. “This partnership will not only help teachers learn how to better use AI, it will give them the opportunity to tell tech companies how we can create AI that better serves kids.”
The National Academy for AI Instruction will be based at the UFT facility in New York City and will be operated under the leadership of the AFT and stakeholders. The academy will begin instruction later this year before scaling nationally.
Over the next five years, the AFT aims to support 400,000 educators through the programme, which equates to approximately 10 per cent of the US teaching workforce.
“AI holds tremendous promise but huge challenges and it’s our job as educators to make sure AI serves our students and society, not the other way around,” said Randi Weingarten, president of AFT. “The direct connection between a teacher and their kids can never be replaced by new technologies, but if we learn how to harness it, set commonsense guardrails and put teachers in the driver’s seat, teaching and learning can be enhanced. The academy is a place where educators and school staff will learn about AI. Not just how it works, but how to use it wisely, safely and ethically.”