For School Librarians
The AI question surrounds us. The answer is AI-Ed.
Understanding and Working with AI is a print-first AI-Ed program you can put on display, share with a teacher, or run yourself. Here's what that can look like.
The case for AI-Ed
Most every student takes Driver's Ed. It's time for AI-Ed.
We don't hand a teenager the keys and hope they figure it out. We teach the rules, the risks, and the responsibility first — then we let them drive. AI is a far more powerful machine, and we've handed it to students with no instruction at all.
AI-Ed is the course that's missing — it teaches students to drive the AI, safely, effectively, and creatively, before the AI starts driving them. And the library, the one room that belongs to every department, is where that course can begin.
Why the library
The library reaches all departments.
No one is quite sure which department should teach AI-Ed — but the library works to support all departments. School librarians are certified teachers. They lead information literacy every day, which makes AI literacy to fluency a natural fit. In the most print-centered place in the building, a print-first AI-Ed program is a homecoming.
Belongs to every department
No turf issues over who teaches AI-Ed — the school library serves the whole school.
No curriculum committee
It runs as enrichment: a librarian's initiative and a principal's approval, with everyone wanting to know how it goes.
Print-first, screens as needed
Pen, field journal, and the student uses AI only as directed. Everyone is working with a book, not an app.
Three ways to say yes
Display it. Share it. Run it.
Take it as far as you like — from a book on the shelf to a program you teach.
Display it
You're being asked about AI literacy — here's the print-first answer for your shelf. Handsome, timely, and built for students to pick up on their own.
Share it
Any teacher in your building can request a free classroom pilot. The copy in your library becomes the whole school's on-ramp.
Run it
Host it yourself as a study-hall or after-school enrichment program — facilitator guide included.
The enrichment model
From information literacy to AI literacy.
The program is self-contained: the two volumes, a pen, a field journal, the student's designated AI, and 22 short videos where the author teaches every core lesson. A facilitator guide provides the support you need. Teach the program as a short course or full-semester experience.
At the end, you hand out certificates. Students also leave with an original literary work of their own — and taught alongside a creative-writing course, those finished pieces can be added to your library's catalogue. Students view the library differently when they see themselves within it.
The safety story
On school computers. Under your supervision. In structured labs.
When it's time to work with AI, students do it in the library, on library computers, under your supervision — using whatever base model you find available and appropriate. It also solves equity, since not every student has a device and an account at home, and it keeps the program vendor-neutral.
What students actually do
From AI literacy to fluency.
Every chapter interleaves five recurring lesson forms, anchored by a running field journal — the spine that turns reading into practice and practice into fluency.
Core Lessons
The conceptual backbone, in plain language — no math, minimal jargon.
AI Labs
Structured experiments students run on their own AI — finding its boundaries, catching its confabulations.
Projects
A sustained creative work — an original novella or screenplay — with the student directing the AI.
Reflections
Guided sessions connecting the material to the student's own life and judgment.
Spotlights
Case studies and essays, from Clever Hans to deep-fakes that failed — kept current each revision.
Serving a public library?
The same model works beyond the school day.
Independent reading plus a weekly gathering fits a public library just as naturally — for teens, adults, and community learners. We've told that story on its own page.
See the Public Library Page →How to get it
A purchase you can make yourself.
No sign-off required
Books are the one thing a librarian can buy unilaterally — no edtech review, no data-privacy agreement, no IT approval. They flow through your usual acquisition budget.
Order a class set
When you're ready to run it, order a lending set through your usual channels — Follett for schools, or Ingram and Baker & Taylor for public libraries. The field journal is a composition notebook.
Fund it with a cohort
If the budget is tight, a DonorsChoose project can fund a class set — and rallies parents behind the program before it even begins.
Bring it to your library
Start with a copy in your hands.
Request your copies and the facilitator guide, ask about a pilot for a teacher in your building or a program in your own library, or just tell us you'd like to run it. We'll take it from there.