SPOKANE, Wash. — If you’re a parent wondering whether your child is using artificial intelligence for homework, the answer is probably yes. And according to local teachers, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
AI has quietly become part of daily life in Washington classrooms, changing how educators create lesson plans and how students complete assignments. The same technology transforming industries from healthcare to agriculture is now reshaping how our kids learn.
Courtney Bock leads AI workshops for teachers in the Mead School District.
“It’s pretty safe to assume that if you’re sending home assignments and homework, students are going to use AI,” Bock said.
Instead of trying to ban something that’s already everywhere, Bock focuses her conversations with teachers around strategies to use AI responsibly.
“We can educate people, we can educate parents, we can educate students, we can educate teachers AI can be a really, really powerful tool for everybody,” she said.
What about AI and cheating?
At Mt. Spokane High School, Jessica Klingback has been teaching for 17 years. She’s seen every cheating trend come and go, so she’s taking a practical approach to AI.
“They’re always going to find a way to cheat, it’s just in what way,” Klingback said.
But rather than fighting it, she’s embracing what AI can do for both her colleagues and her students.
“I’m playing with it in real time with the kids in the classroom, I’m like what else can this thing do?” Klingback said.
She uses AI to create different versions of the same quiz, saving hours of work. But where AI really shines is helping her accommodate students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). Something that Klingback says used to take enormous amounts of time.
“I took the text, put it into, I use Claude AI to do this and I said I need you to maintain the same text structure, so same titles, same subtitles, if it’s a bolded word it needs to be in there, so key content, rewrite this at this reading level,” Bock explained.
Without AI, that kind of personalized help would be nearly impossible for one teacher.
“There’s no possible way I could do that level of modification or accommodation by myself, without the support and accessing AI,” Bock said.
Students are finding their own ways to use the technology. Some snap photos of math problems to get step-by-step solutions. Others use AI to help with research.
“I ask it to find me a piece of evidence from a credible article that gives me that exact piece of information,” said Dillan Sesslar, a Mt. Spokane High school senior.
Even kids who initially resisted AI now admit it’s everywhere. One Mt. Spokane student pointed out that you can’t even Google something anymore without seeing AI results.
“It’s hard to find someone that hasn’t used some form of AI, like even if you Google anything, there’s now automatically attached Google AI Gemini right,” said Zoe Alvarez, a Mt. Spokane High school sophomore.
The shift is happening at the college level too. Gonzaga University recently launched its Institute for Informatics and Applied Technology, which created an AI learning assistant called ZagAI with help from students Tony Nguyen and Izzy Tilles.
“When I went to a job conference like two weeks ago, they were asking a lot more questions about like how do you use AI when you’re coding? Do you have any hands-on experience developing an AI application?” Tilles said.
In March of 2026, Gonzaga plans to offer a three-day bootcamp for K-12 teachers across Washington, focusing on how using AI responsibly changes learning. The timing feels urgent to educators who remember how social media caught parents and schools off guard.
“If we learned anything from social media, we learned that grown-ups need to be aware, educated and in charge of new technology,” said Dr. Anny Fritzen Case, Professor of Teacher Education at Gonzaga University.
Scholars and leaders in the field warn parents not to think of AI as a person, or a replacement for thinking.
“I see a lot of people say, oh that’s an assistant, that’s an intern, that’s a being, intelligent being, so I can ask anything,” said Dr. Shanchieh Jay Yang, Director of the Institute for Informatics and Applied Technology at Gonzaga.
“But it’s not,” Dr. Yang cautioned.
“We want to enhance learning not harm learning.”
The AI for Instruction Fellowship is funded by a grant from the Gates Foundation. During the initial call for applicants, the three-day bootcamp was intended for 20-30 educators.
The institute received outstanding interest in the program, with more than 80 applicants. It has since extended the program’s scope to participants across the state, from public, private, charter, and tribal schools.
Back at the library inside Creekside Elementary School in Mead, Courtney Bock was recently notified about her acceptance to the Gonzaga fellowship.
“I love what they’re wanting to do, progressively moving AI in Education forward, it’s where I think it needs to go,” Bock said.
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