There is a certain type of magic that happens in my art room with my students: Time stands still. As a middle-school art teacher I see up close their drive to create. I have students who passionately stir gloppy puddles of acrylic until they’ve created the perfect purple and others who happily click on the exact shade they need when digitally “painting” on their iPads. I have students who need tweezers to fold the world’s tiniest origami rose and others who stand on tiptoes to design Lego skyscrapers that reach for the ceiling.
In my classroom, I encourage my students’ creative exploration by giving them hands-on time with material and permission to get a little wacky. “Look! I’m Wolverine!” a seventh-grader says as he proudly shows me popsicle sticks glued to his knuckles.
With artificial intelligence now storming into the world of education — embedded in our school devices, the topic of every teacher conference I attend, products in my algorithm promising to “transform” my teaching — I wonder what creative exploration looks like for me. Not wanting to choose between traditional arts or technological progress, I’ve created a framework that helps me preserve the physicality of art that I and my students love, while investigating the benefits that artificial intelligence has to offer.
First, I embrace my own timeline. In my diverse classrooms, students move at different speeds. They are driven by their own interests and needs. They make progress congruent with their own abilities and background knowledge. Taking my time to slow down and learn how artificial intelligence works, how it is being developed, and how it is impacting our world helps me contemplate the immediate and long-lasting effects.
Instead of jumping into creative AI tools like Canva’s Magic Studio AI with all 150 students across my six classes, I teach how to craft prompts to generate specific imagery for posters in our graphic design unit with only a single class. This allows me to examine the benefits and determine what is actually useful and realistically scalable.
Second, I embrace my “why not.” Our ceramics unit is a consistent hit. Only after three solid weeks of coiling, pinching, and successfully constructing clay mugs, do I strategically show my students a video of a contemporary artist who builds clay vessels with a 3D printer. This amazing feat of technology — methodically pumping and stacking clay from a machine — constructs impressive and intricate forms but is always met with a shrug. “It’s cool, but I’d rather make it myself,” Wolverine says.
My students find satisfaction in the productive struggle of making an idea come to life with their own hands. Yes, generative AI can make art, but my students actually appreciate having the time to unwind and make it themselves.
Third, I embrace my “why.” As the only 6th- to 8th-grade art teacher in my school, I leverage artificial intelligence as the thought partner I need. My common teacher constraints — time, space, and need for support — become a specific conundrum within an art context. Turning to social media groups of other art educators doesn’t provide the instant support I get from multiple rounds of hyperspecific prompts. Design an outline for four 37-minute lessons that cover the introductory components of animation and includes time for instruction, independent practice, group reflection, distributing and cleaning up materials, I type into ChatGPT and it suggests a curricular sequencing I hadn’t considered that works with my goals and within my constraints.
While it can’t load a kiln or hang new art on a bulletin board for me, partnering with AI streamlines my ideas to develop and implement the hands-on, community-rich experience my students want.
When it comes to AI and the arts, I’m choosing an abundant mindset. The arts don’t inherently have to compete with other priorities and innovations. I can actively work to both protect and uplift traditional arts, while also embracing thoughtful implementation of artificial intelligence to improve my administrative processes. Wolverine, free from popsicle appendages and now patiently sculpting from clay his brain-rot-du-jour “Niche Fruit,” is teaching me that I too can embrace the real and artificial at the same time.
Lindsay Johnson is a 6th- to 8th-grade art teacher at Roosevelt Middle School in River Forest and a 2025-2026 Teach Plus Leading Edge Educator Fellow.