There’s a quiet truth most schools are avoiding right now: our students are navigating AI, social media, and digital life every single day; and if we’re not in that conversation with them, something else is.
Probably AI itself.
That was one of the most clarifying moments from our recent webinar with Dana Anderson, Building a Positive Tech Culture at Your School (and Why It’s Not About AI Bans and Phone Policing). Dana, who comes to this work as a Montessorian with experience across all three levels and who is one of the most thoughtful voices on digital citizenship I know, didn’t come to give us another policy template or a tighter phone ban. She came to ask a harder question:
Who actually gets a voice in how your school handles technology?
Because right now, in most schools, the answer is “adults.” And that’s exactly the problem.
The reactive playbook isn’t working
Schools keep reaching for the same tools: ban the phones, block the AI. Write a stricter policy. Print it out. Post it on the website.
But as Dana pointed out, a recent Gallup poll shows that 60 to 87 percent of teachers are already using AI for school-based work. Meanwhile, students in many of those same schools are told they can’t use AI at all, under any circumstances.
This isn’t a policy problem. It’s a trust problem. And the fallout is predictable: young people circumvent the rules, hide their use, and stop bringing their real questions to the adults in their lives.
Dana named it plainly: when students feel a tech policy has been imposed on them rather than built with them, the response is rebellion, not reflection.
In a time when young people need to build discernment and critical thinking, not talking about technology is a disservice.
What happens when we co-create rather than dictate?
One powerful moment in the webinar came from Mara Weitzman, a Montessori educator who ran a service-learning program where her students used 3D printing and CAD design to create real replacement pieces, and entirely new materials, for other classrooms across her school.
The students managed the projects, emailed the teachers, set up the meetings, and iterated until the material was right.
The teachers ended up needing the students’ expertise. The students experienced themselves as contributors, not consumers. And the whole culture of the school shifted, not because someone wrote a better tech policy, but because young people were trusted with real responsibility.
At Bridgemont International School, where Dana teaches, her AI literacy students are currently designing a professional development day on AI for the faculty. The students are teaching the teachers.
That is what a positive tech culture actually looks like. Not surveillance. Not bans. Partnership.
The paradigm we’re inviting you into
As Dana reminded us, Maria Montessori wrote that education depends on a belief that the child has within themselves the capacity to develop into a being far superior to us, and that they will be the only ones who can show us a better way of living.
Comfortable conversations don’t dismantle oppressive systems. Adult-only tech policies don’t prepare young people for a world saturated in technology they’ll inherit from us.
The students are ready. The question is whether we are.
What’s next!
Dana and Developing Education are building something bigger around this work: a full course for educators and school leaders who are ready to stop reacting and start partnering with young people to build genuinely positive tech cultures in their schools.
We want it to actually meet you where you are. If you’re even a little curious, we’d love your voice in shaping it.
Share what YOU want to see in a course here!
The revolution our students need starts with us having the courage to let them in.
The traditional education system had its chance.
Now it’s our turn.
