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AI Fluency for pK–12 educators

Helps pK-12 educators build practical AI fluency through the 4D Framework, supporting student learning while staying true to their mission and values. Created in partnership with Teach For America.

10 lessons3 hr1 quizCompletion badge
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What you’ll learnBy the end of this course, you’ll be able to
  • Define AI Fluency and explain how the 4D Framework (Delegation, Description, Discernment, Diligence) applies to your teaching practice
  • Build a reusable context document that captures your role, students, and goals for future AI collaborations
  • Recognize the capabilities and limitations of generative AI, including hallucinations and knowledge cutoffs
  • Use the Description-Discernment loop to create and evaluate differentiated instructional materials
  • Apply the Delegation-Diligence loop to protect student data and navigate ethical gray areas in your practice
  • Draft personal ethical commitments and an AI value document grounded in your own values
  • Run a complete end-to-end 4D workflow on a real task from your own work

This course is the result of a partnership between Anthropic and Teach For America, drawing on research with pK–12 educators about their actual needs, concerns, and aspirations for AI adoption.

We believe that empowering people with skills to wield AI responsibly, and ensuring that AI makes safe contributions to society, requires engaging with a wide range of human perspectives and experiences. Educators are uniquely positioned to leverage AI for social good.

This course helps pK–12 educators and staff build practical AI collaboration skills through the 4D Framework (Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence) in a human-centered way. In this course, we'll explore how the framework applies to common tasks in education.

This course builds on Anthropic’s AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations course, adapted specifically for the pK–12 educator context where limited resources, multiple stakeholder accountabilities, and mission-driven work create unique considerations for AI collaboration. It also builds on the course Teach For America has produced for its constituents since 2023, as well as their ongoing practice since 2022 working to build AI fluency with and for educators across the United States.

Recommended prerequisites

This course lightly covers the foundational AI Fluency concepts. However, for deeper understanding, participants may wish to complete AI Fluency: Framework & Foundations and AI Capabilities and Limitations before beginning this educator-focused curriculum.

It is also recommended that learners have access to an AI tool for hands-on practice. Examples in this course will use Claude.ai, but any AI tool will work.

About the partners

This course was created in partnership between Anthropic and Teach For America. Anthropic is a frontier AI safety company and the maker of Claude. Teach For America is a leadership development organization for those who want to co-create a more just world alongside young people in their communities. Today they are a network of more than 72,000 leaders who started in the classroom and remain in lifelong pursuit of the vision that one day, all children will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.

Teach For America

AI diligence statement

In the development of this course, we engaged in extensive collaboration with Claude from Anthropic.

The base content for this course came from:

  • The AI Fluency Framework Practical Summary Document by Rick Dakan (at Ringling College of Art and Design) and Joseph Feller (at University College Cork) and related working documents and research notes.
  • Technical and practical content provided by Anthropic. Knowledge about AI in pK–12 education came from Teach For America, drawing on the course they have produced for their constituents since 2023 and their ongoing work since 2022 building AI fluency with and for educators across the United States.

Throughout this process, Claude assisted one or more of the human authors with structural development, resource and exercise design, and content drafting, critiquing, editing and rewriting. The human authors wrote, designed, edited and provided continual vision, expertise, critical judgment, and domain knowledge and made all final decisions about both content and approach.

All AI-generated and co-created content underwent thorough validation, editing, and curation by the human authors. The final materials accurately reflect the human authors' understanding, expertise, and intended pedagogical approach. While AI assistance was instrumental in producing these materials, the human authors maintain responsibility for the content.

This disclosure is made in the spirit of transparency advocated by the AI Fluency Framework and to acknowledge the evolving role of AI in educational content development and other creative and intellectual work.

Inside the course

Introduction and AI Fluency framework

3 lessons

Define AI Fluency and learn the four interconnected competencies—Delegation, Description, Discernment, and Diligence—that ground every productive AI collaboration as an educator. You'll articulate your values, goals, and constraints so every future AI interaction starts from the right context.

How AI works

1 lesson

Build a working mental model of what today's AI can and can't do reliably, and explore hands-on with an interactive next-token simulator so you understand why those limits matter for how you put it to work in teaching practice.

Using AI responsibly

3 lessons

Apply the Description-Discernment loop to creating high quality outputs and the Delegation-Diligence loop to working ethically with AI—practicing context-rich prompting, critical evaluation, and responsible data handling on the kinds of tasks you face every day.

Putting it all together

1 lesson

Bring all four dimensions of the 4D Framework together and apply it to a real task from your own work—then plan your next steps and earn your completion badge.