Teachers Must Become Artists in the Age of AI

Why preserving human meaning, culture, and empathy is now the core work of education

Teachers as Artists in the Age of AI

Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping classrooms. It can summarize texts, generate examples, personalize practice, and automate feedback. What it cannot do, at least not authentically, is preserve human meaning, culture, and empathy. That responsibility has always belonged to artists. And now, more than ever, it belongs to teachers who are willing to see themselves as artists, too.

What Artists Do That Machines Can’t

Across history, artists have served as keepers of memory and meaning. They turn lived experience into symbols, stories, and practices that people return to across generations. Through visual art, music, dance, textiles, and storytelling, artists encode language, rituals, histories, and values; creating a living record of how a community understands itself. Art is also how humans make sense of the world when ordinary language falls short. From cave paintings to contemporary murals, art transforms grief, joy, faith, identity, and conflict into forms we can share. Engaging with art allows us to “try on” another person’s perspective, expanding empathy and deepening understanding across time, place, and difference. For marginalized and Indigenous communities in particular, art resists erasure. It protects identity from homogenization and keeps tradition alive, not as a museum artifact, but as something adaptive and relevant to present struggles and future hopes. In short, artists preserve our humanity.

The Classroom as a Studio

If that’s what artists do, then educators are already closer to artists than technicians. Teachers don’t simply deliver content. They design experiences. They curate stories, texts, images, questions, and rituals that help students make meaning of the world and their place in it. In this sense, the classroom becomes a studio, one in which identity, understanding, and culture are collaboratively created. Seen through this lens, teaching is an act of composition. Educators attend to rhythm (pace), contrast (varied modes of learning), and audience (students’ identities, emotions, and needs). They improvise constantly: adjusting a question mid-lesson, reframing an idea with a metaphor, shifting energy to bring a room back to life. Like artists, they work within constraints and revise in response to their audience.

Curating Culture, Not Just Curriculum

Teacher-artists intentionally invite students’ lives into the work:

• Curate culture by integrating students’ languages, traditions, and community stories through oral histories, photo essays, and family artifacts.

• Juxtapose voices by placing canonical texts alongside contemporary music, visual art, or narratives from students’ own cultures — treating culture as living, not static.

• Design for meaning-making, replacing some recall tasks with expressive ones: visual metaphors, sketchnotes, role-play, collaborative murals, or multimedia explanations.

• Name the process, asking students to reflect through artist statements or learning journals so they can articulate how meaning is constructed, not just graded.

These practices don’t water down rigor. They deepen it by asking students to think symbolically, empathetically, and reflectively.

Cultivating Empathy and Belonging

Arts-based approaches also create space for perspective-taking. Story circles, tableaux, monologues, and visual narratives allow students to embody viewpoints before analyzing or debating them. Structured reflection: What might this person be feeling? What are they trying to say?, builds emotional intelligence and ethical awareness. When classrooms adopt the ethos of an arts space, creative risk is welcomed. Mistakes become resources. Multiple interpretations are valid. Students gain voice and choice in topics, formats, and audiences, whether that’s a zine, a community exhibit, or a digital gallery. They begin to see themselves not only as learners but also as co-creators of knowledge and culture.

Practicing Your Own Teacher Artistry

Claiming an artistic identity as an educator doesn’t require grand gestures. It starts with small, intentional practices:

• Share your metaphors, stories, and works-in-progress with students.

• Treat lesson planning as creative composition, not script-following.

• Remix ideas with colleagues, as artists borrow and build from one another.

If you want a practical framework for this mindset, Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered offers guidance that translates beautifully to teaching. Three ideas resonate especially well for educators:

1. Curate and share your influences. Make visible the books, thinkers, lessons, and experiences that shape your teaching.

2. Build a “cabinet of curiosities.” Collect articles, quotes, images, questions, and classroom moments that spark wonder and fuel future ideas.

3. Share the process, not just the product. Let students and colleagues see the drafts, experiments, and reflections, not only the polished lesson.

Why This Matters in the Age of AI

AI can assist with efficiency. It can generate content. It can optimize systems. But it cannot replace the human work of meaning-making, cultural preservation, and connection. In an AI-saturated world, students don’t just need answers; they need help understanding why those answers matter, how they connect to human stories, and what kind of people they want to become. That is artistic work. Educators don’t need permission to claim the title of artist. It’s already embedded in the craft. When teachers embrace that identity, they protect what is uniquely human in education and model for students how intellect, culture, emotion, and creativity come together to create and build a shared future. In the age of AI, we need teachers who are not just users of tools but artists of learning.

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Looking for Your Next Career Move?

Me: What do you want to be when you grow up?

My five-year-old daughter: I want to be a doctor, police officer, firefighter, artist, ballet dancer, farmer, the president, and...hmm.

No matter where you are in your career, there comes a time when you wonder if a change is necessary. You may consider changing organizations, seeking a different role, or leaping into a different profession altogether. This condition of wonderment was on full display for me as I recently participated in a panel discussion for a class of educational leadership doctoral students.  The course was full of mid-career educators and administrators pursuing a doctorate to open doors in their career.  Toward the end of the panel discussion one of the educators posed the question, 'How do you know when to take the next move in your career?'.  My response may have surprised a few students, although I don’t believe it was profound.  It was merely based on nearly two decades of seeking the same answer for myself.Consequently, I believe that I have finally arrived at a response that guides my career moves and keeps me fulfilled.  I think that before we seek a new career opportunity, we should stop trying to “follow our passion” and depending so much on our jobs for fulfillment.  It doesn’t matter what career move you make if you seek opportunities to arrive at a “professional nirvana,” you may find yourself looking for new jobs far too often.    After all, we don't find our passion, we develop it over time.  In fact, we can have more than one passion at the same time, and they can change. Also, not all passions manifest themselves into livable wages.  These realities shouldn’t preclude anyone from looking for growth opportunities, but it should frame one’s approach to the question, 'How do you know when to take the next move in your career?'.  To this end, the way I believe we should approach the question should be very similar to the way young children respond to the question, 'what do you want to do when you grow up?'. Why children? The truth is, young people, like my five-year-old daughter, are open-minded about their interests, and they are filled with unfiltered, unapologetic, curiosity.  Here are three approaches to exploring career change options that I have learned from working with children.

Explore all of your interests

At a young age, children begin to consider what careers intrigue them.  Ask any child what they want to do when they grow up, and they will describe or name jobs that seem cool to them at that moment.  Even if those careers choices seem divergent, depending on the age of the child, each one appeals to a part of who they are as a person at that moment in time.  Interestingly, this highlights how children at some level are in touch with what interests them.  Likewise, we as adults should explore what appeals to all of our interests. Just imagine what we may pursue if we are open to all tapping into all aspects of our personal interests.  Dig deeper into what interests you and why, and don't hold back. The most important thing is that you don’t automatically shut down something before mining it for all possible jewels of knowledge and skills.

Embrace the power to change your mind

Another key lesson we can pick up from children is to stop acting like you can't change your mind.  Children don't seem to understand the word 'no' when it comes to envisioning what they would like to do in life.  There is power and beauty in this simplistic view.  It is empowering for each of us take on a mindset that allows us to change our mind about what career paths interests. We should avoid limiting ourselves with self-imposed constraints.  There are no rules against having multiple areas of interest or changing interests, and we owe it to ourselves to allow our acquired knowledge and skills to continue to mold and shape our attention.

Don’t worry about what others think

We sometimes muffle our career options by being overly concerned with what others consider is successful.  Your success is not determined by titles or the approval of others. By now I am confident that we are all aware of this truth, but for some reason, it doesn’t stop us from being weighed down by what other people may or may not be thinking about our career.  So we need to get better at tuning out or minimizing the mental pressure we put on ourselves. The reality is that everyone has an opinion, but what matters most is that you can stay true yourself and your family.So, the next time you find yourself in a job not feeling fulfilled and wondering what is next for you to pursue, just remember how children approach the question, 'what do you want to be when you grow up?'.  More specifically apply the three lessons from children (1) Acknowledge all of Your Interest; (2) Embrace the Power to Change Your Mind; (3) Don’t Worry about What Others Think.  With this approach, you will gain clarity as you choose a career path that brings you joy and satisfaction.

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Creativity Matters, Right?

Today’s demand for a highly skilled workforce in the areas of science, technology engineering, and math (STEM) is making an immediate impact on our society and what we value in education.  Changes in state and federal budgets further illustrate this shift our society is making in educational priorities.  I am starting to wonder what will be the long-term effects of these changes.  How will they impact our society’s ability to create, innovate, communicate, or simply express the qualities that truly make us human? Don’t get me wrong, as a Physics educator, I am all for the investment in STEM.  I would just like to see more emphasis on the value and versatility in cultivating one’s creativity.

Source: edtechmagazine.com via Textbooks.com on Pinterest