Academics
Generative AI at Campbell Hall
Our Philosophy
Campbell Hall is a community of inquiry committed to academic excellence and to the nurturing of decent, loving, and responsible human beings. A Campbell Hall education values learning for its own sake, not only for the credentials it produces. The habits of mind at the heart of that education like curiosity, productive persistence, ethical reasoning, and honest reflection, cannot be outsourced to any technology. They are best developed through students' own thinking, practice, and struggle, in relationship with teachers who know them well. Our responsibility is to ensure that every student leaves Campbell Hall more capable of independent thought, stronger in their own voice, and clearer about who they are and what they value.
Generative AI is already part of the world our students inhabit. It is changing how people write, research, create, and work, and our students will be asked to navigate it long after they leave us. Its arrival asks us to be deliberate about what we teach, what we preserve, and how we care for our students. As a community of inquiry, we believe that knowledge comes from a process that begins with asking questions rather than asserting answers. How we engage this technology, with technical understanding, critical evaluation, and ethical care, is itself a subject of our inquiry.
These values guide our engagement with generative AI:
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Open inquiry.
We approach generative AI with a balance of openness and healthy skepticism. We will continually ask questions about its possibilities and its unintended consequences, and we will revisit our positions and policies to remain faithful to our mission and values. -
AI literacy.
Responsible use begins with understanding. Engaging with generative AI productively requires understanding of each tool's limitations and design. We commit to building genuine AI literacy, which includes technical, practical, critical, and ethical, for students and adults alike, and to widening use only as that understanding grows. -
Curiosity about AI's potential.
We are open to ways generative AI might serve our mission and academic philosophy: supporting student agency and access, lightening work that does not require human judgment, and opening new questions worth asking together. -
Human connection.
Generative AI must not displace the connection and community that are central to the Campbell Hall mission and academic philosophy. The time we spend together in class, the knowledge that comes from lived experience and face-to-face conversation, and the relationship between teacher and student are sacred to this school. -
Responsibility for AI's impact.
Our engagement with generative AI is measured against our mission to nurture decent, loving, and responsible human beings. We take seriously its environmental footprint, its effects on childhood development and student wellbeing, its biases, and the boundaries of age-appropriate use. These commitments will always shape how we navigate generative AI use.
This is a living statement. We will keep learning alongside our students and families, and we will revise our positions as evidence and understanding grow. The questions AI raises about authorship, truth, creativity, and justice are opportunities for the kind of transformative inquiry that has always defined life at Campbell Hall.
Shared Ground
Four definitions and stances apply to student and faculty generative AI policy:
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What we mean by generative AI:
tools that produce text, images, audio, video, or code in response to prompts. Routine features like spell-check are not the subject of these policies, and assistive technology in a student's documented learning plan is governed by that plan. -
Working within walled gardens:
school-provisioned tools, like Gemini for Education, that are FERPA-compliant and/or do not use our community's data to train public models. -
Disclosure is the norm:
when generative AI use is permitted, its use is acknowledged by adults and students alike. -
AI use within school:
these policies govern generative AI in and for school; they do not attempt to police generative AI use that does not impact school.
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Faculty Expectations
Our faculty carry our AI philosophy statement into daily practice, grounded in the same values that shape the rest of their work: care for students, intellectual honesty, and the conviction that how we do our work matters as much as what we produce. Campbell Hall encourages teachers to explore generative AI thoughtfully; used well, it can support planning, feedback, and the tasks that pull teachers away from students. As we navigate the impact of generative AI's arrival, Campbell Hall asks every faculty member to hold four commitments.- Protect students and their information. Student names, grades, written work, photographs, and evaluations belong only in the school's protected tools, never in consumer generative AI products. And because consumer generative AI platforms are not designed for children, teachers do not direct students under 13 to them, in class or at home.
- Model the use we ask of students. What faculty do with generative AI shapes what students believe is acceptable. Faculty use these tools in ways they would be comfortable describing to a colleague, a student, or a parent, and they are transparent with students when generative AI has meaningfully shaped work encountered in class.
- Stay in the loop and own the outcome. Teachers remain accountable for the work that goes out under their name and for every decision that affects a student. Evaluative judgments like grades, evaluations, recommendations, are made by people, not generated by AI. A tool can support thinking and drafting; it cannot be the reason a grade was wrong or a comment missed the child. The person stays responsible.
- Stay curious and collaborative as we explore. The field moves quickly and our guidance will evolve. Faculty are not expected to be experts; they are expected to be thoughtful, to bring questions to the AI Council, their department, or their division, and to err on the side of care and integrity when the right answer is not yet clear.
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Student Expectations
Our students are growing up with this technology, so our expectations are developmental: clear, age-appropriate rules that widen as understanding grows, with teachers guiding when and how AI has a place in learning. These expectations are AI-specific applications of existing student policies and expectations outlined in the student handbook.
Because generative AI requires understanding, skills, and maturity to engage productively, some aspects of the policy are differentiated by division.Grades K-6 (Elementary School)
- Students do not use generative AI for schoolwork, and the only place they encounter it at school is AI-literacy learning led by their teachers: discussion and establishment of guardrails in the younger grades, guided and supervised practice within educational technology and human development programs in grades 4-6.
Grades 7-8 (Middle School)
- The default is off, but some teachers may allow or require students to engage generative AI for specific learning tasks. Outside of school-sanctioned use, students are encouraged to avoid generative AI platforms.
Grades 9-12 (High School)
- For work that is submitted or assessed, generative AI is strictly prohibited unless the teacher explicitly allows it. Outside of assessed work, high school students may find AI useful to support their learning and understanding: preparing for a test, firming up an understanding outside of class, or organizing their work and time. In gray areas, students must ask the teacher for clarification and cite how generative AI was used. Teachers may narrow or expand these uses for any course or assignment.
- Do your own work. The work you turn in for class must reflect your own thinking, writing, problem-solving, and creating. When generative AI has not been permitted, you do not use it to complete that work.
- Don't default to AI. When you are stuck, your teachers and classmates are your first resource. Struggle can be productive in building skills, understanding, and confidence.
- Own what you submit. When generative AI use is permitted, use it only as directed; you remain responsible for everything you turn in.
- Some uses are never permitted. You may never use AI to deceive or harm others through deepfakes, impersonation, non-consensual or sexual imagery, or content that harasses or misleads, or to share personal or identifying information with AI tools.
A Living Framework
The AI Council, with the division principals and the Educational Policy Review Committee, reviews this framework when tools or practice change materially. It is paired with AI literacy teaching for students at every division and ongoing professional development for faculty. Questions from families, students, or faculty are welcome through the AI Council.
Campbell Hall
Campbell Hall is a K-12 independent, Episcopal, gender-inclusive day school. We are a community of inquiry committed to academic excellence and to the nurturing of decent, loving, and responsible human beings.
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Campbell Hall admits students of any race, color, gender, sexual orientation, national, and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, gender, sexual orientation, national, and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admission policies, scholarship and loan programs, and athletics and other school-administered programs.