We Teach the Future

BrightMinds Bulletin

Author

Jessica Maddry
June 13, 2025

Grounded. Research-backed. Educator-centered.

At BrightMinds, we believe education is more than a delivery system for standards—it’s a reflection of our deepest values. That’s why we don’t just design tech strategies. We co-create ecosystems that honor creativity, protect well-being, and prioritize the people who make learning possible every day.

We’ve chosen a community-first approach in a tech-first world—because real transformation begins not with code, but with connection. And we’re building with purpose, not just progress.

Each edition of this bulletin lifts what we believe matters most in this era of rapid change: the choices we make, the stories we share, and the systems we dare to reimagine. Because whether we see it or not:

We teach the future.
Every single day, through every click, every policy, every invitation to be heard.

This Edition’s Theme: What We Reward Becomes What We Replicate

Why We Chose Community First

If I turned the clock back just two years, you’d see a very different picture.

I was in the middle of earning my Ethical Emerging Technology certification, weighing whether to pursue my Ph.D., and wrestling with a growing unease about the way technology was being ushered into schools… quickly, often carelessly, and without the voices of those it would impact most.

Some moments felt like whispers—teachers sharing how overwhelmed they felt, students asking if their ideas still mattered, communities feeling sidelined by decisions made in rooms they weren’t invited into. Those whispers added up. And they pushed me to ask harder questions:

What would it look like to build a company where strategy wasn’t divorced from ethics?
Where innovation was shaped by educators, not just engineers?
Where communities weren’t just consulted, but centered?

The answer came not just in theory, but through connection. A chance conversation with someone who would become my co-founder turned into hours of idea-sharing, vision-mapping, and eventually, a shared commitment:

We weren’t going to build BrightMinds the fast way.
We were going to build it the right way—rooted in community, guided by research, and led by those closest to the work of education.

System First, Not Tool-First

Here’s the truth we rarely name in education:
We are punishing students for using the very tools they will later be required to master in college and career.

Students who explore AI are being suspended, flagged for plagiarism, or shamed in class, while the workforce around them is being trained to optimize it. This contradiction doesn’t prepare them for the future. It undermines their confidence in navigating it (Boterview, 2025).

But our concern at BrightMinds isn't how much or how little AI is used in your school.
Our concern is how sustainably your systems are built.

Whether you embrace AI today or take a cautious approach, what matters most is the structure guiding your choices, the values anchoring your policies, and the impact they have on your entire school community.

We don’t audit AI use.
We support system improvement with integrity.

How Community Shapes Our Work

Our PURPOSE and SMART School Solutions frameworks were designed to be more than checklists. They’re collaborative tools, built from lived experience, research, and continuous feedback from educators, students, and local stakeholders.

This people-first design is essential, especially as AI adoption continues to grow unevenly. According to RAND (2024), only 48% of U.S. districts had offered AI-related training for educators, though this number is projected to reach 74% by fall 2025. Notably, low-poverty districts are significantly more likely to receive AI support and training than their high-poverty counterparts, widening equity gaps already present in our system (Doan et al., 2024).

That’s why our work starts where you are, not where a vendor says you should be.
We walk beside districts to co-design durable, ethical, and community-informed systems, whether you're still drafting your first policy or already knee-deep in implementation.

What We Reward Becomes What We Replicate

Every system sends a message.
When we reward speed over purpose or punish curiosity instead of guiding it, we replicate systems that value compliance more than critical thinking.

A recent study showed that 77% of teachers find AI useful for lesson planning and administrative tasks, but many of those same teachers view student AI use as a form of cheating (Boterview, 2025). This sends mixed signals and reinforces fear, not fluency.

At the same time, Gallup found that 40% of Gen Z students feel anxious about using AI, and nearly half believe it may be weakening their critical thinking skills (Strohm, 2025). It’s not the tool that’s harming them—it’s the absence of meaningful guidance and coherent expectations.

BrightMinds exists to shift this dynamic.
To help schools build systems that reinforce what we want to see:
Trust. Integrity. Curiosity. Equity.

Resources to Support Your Journey

Whether you’re exploring your first AI policy or refining an existing framework, these resources can support your next step:

Let’s Get to Work

BrightMinds was created to serve schools, not to shape them into something they’re not.

We’re here to help you ask the right questions, build for the long haul, and keep people, not products, at the center of it all.

Let’s reward what matters.
Let’s build what lasts.
Let’s teach the future.

References

Boterview. (2025). AI in education statistics: Key trends in teacher and student use. https://boterview.com/a/ai-education-statistics

Cengage Group. (2024). GenAI 2024: Educator perceptions and adoption trends. https://www.cengagegroup.com/news/press-releases/2025/ai-in-education-report

Center for Democracy & Technology. (2023). Responsible use of data and technology in education: Community engagement to ensure students and families are helped, not hurt. https://cdt.org/insights/responsible-use-of-data-and-technology-in-education

Doan, S., Berglund, T., & Lawrence, R. (2024). Use of artificial intelligence in K–12 public schools. RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA956-31.html

ISTE. (2024). Essential conditions for effective technology use in schools. https://iste.org/essential-conditions-for-effective-tech-use-in-schools

Strohm, E. (2025). Gallup survey: Gen Z’s anxiety around AI and critical thinking. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/genz-young-americans-anxious-ai-schools-career-gallup-survey-2025-4

U.S. Department of Education. (2023). Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning: Insights and Recommendations. https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/documents/ai-report/ai-report.pdf