In the age of AI, the ever-evolving technology has touched nearly every industry. Education is no exception, but diocesan educators are prepared.
Before the start of the 2025-26 academic year, a diocesan working group released a policy on AI use in diocesan schools: “Responsible Use Policy for Technology and Artificial Intelligence.” Since then, school administrations and teachers have adopted the policy, introducing or modifying AI use in classrooms throughout the diocese.
Leslie Lipovski, diocesan assistant superintendent of student learning and teaching excellence, said the goal of the policy was to establish “guardrails” for AI while allowing students to learn about it as a technological tool. “In our Catholic faith, we want to use it as a tool, a thought partner,” she said. She added that the Arlington diocese is one of the first U.S. dioceses to establish an AI policy for its schools.
The ways in which schools utilize AI differ between grade schools and high schools. According to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a federal law enacted in 1998, the use of AI chatbots, personalized learning platforms and other technology collecting user data require parental consent for children under 13.
“With K-8, our philosophy is AI literacy, strictly. We want those kids to know what it is,” Lipovski said. “Why is it good? Why can it be bad? How does the Catholic Church look at it?”
The policy states that while students should develop a comprehensive understanding of AI as a tool, technology should never replace teachers. Lipovski said the policy will be updated regularly as the technology develops.
How schools are using AI
Some diocesan high schools are testing AI right in the classroom.
At St. Paul VI Catholic High School in Chantilly, cyber educator Michael Hargadon developed a program called LUMA, which interacts with Google Classroom. Some 20 students used and tested the program in an Introduction to AI class this year.
Next year, Saint John Paul the Great Catholic High School in Potomac Shores will offer a bioethics course on “AI and Algorethics” as a dual enrollment option. In the course, students will contemplate ethical questions raised by AI developments, including impact on human dignity, privacy and the common good. They will consider the dangers of AI surveillance and the transparency of algorithms.
“While we are embracing what AI may have to offer, we want to ensure it is used to serve humanity and not diminish it,” said Greg Haas, assistant principal for academics. “So, our approach to AI will be twofold: find ways to help students use the technology as a useful tool in the learning process but to also protect them from the potential loss of the authentic person.”
At the grade school level, teachers are incorporating AI into education in subtle ways.
Emily Stocker, assistant principal for curriculum and instruction at St. Thomas More Cathedral School in Arlington, said that teachers often use AI for differentiating lesson plans. “If you have a student who needs more of a challenge or needs some extra support — you can actually change the reading level of a passage using AI,” she said. “It looks exactly the same as everybody else’s, but it’s more accessible to them.”
Cathedral school educators may also use AI to generate different class materials or activities, according to Stocker. She gave a recent example: “Fourth grade did a compare and contrast of Galileo, Isaac Newton and Copernicus — who are in their science curriculum — to the Artemis II crew, and AI was able to give us some really great ideas for comparisons and a starting point for that activity.
Second grade teacher Jonathan deBernardo from Queen of Apostles School in Alexandria said that AI platforms can help teachers stay organized and on task. It can even assist with lesson planning and curriculum mapping, he added.
At the same time, “you have to be very careful with how you use it for Catholic education,” he said. For example, if a teacher types a complex Bible passage into a chatbot and asks it to reduce it to a kindergarten reading level, the chatbot may give a result that either distorts the passage’s original meaning or is even heretical, he said.
Teachers must be wary of how they’re wording a prompt. “Whatever your AI tool spits out, it’s only as good as what the prompt is,” deBernardo said. “The more specific you’re getting … the less vague, the better the AI product will be.”
Handling AI hurdles
But for other educators, AI is a challenge in the classroom rather than a helpful assistant.
Rebecca Vaccaro, head of the English department at Bishop Ireton High School in Alexandria, said that over the last three years, student use of AI has increased dramatically.
“I’ve had students who, when we’re writing a paper, they will put in what they have and then say, ‘Can you add three paragraphs?’ ” to a chatbot. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if the paper was entirely written by AI, or if the students used the chatbot to generate ideas, then wrote the work themselves and used AI to refine their writing, she said.
Vaccaro said she has encountered multiple cases of AI plagiarism. “It tends to happen more for younger students,” she said. To prevent students from consulting ChatGPT or other models, she gives students handwritten assignments in class, before moving on to “discovery writing,” which is “low-stakes, more creative writing assignments.”
“As much as we individually may not like it, it is the world we live in,” Vaccaro said. “So, we do need to know about it and we need to train our students on ways to use it ethically.”
Ireton social studies teacher Garrett Fabacher agreed. “Within the liberal arts, we have a very interesting relationship with AI, because it can mimic some of those thinking and writing skills that liberal arts tend to lean toward,” he said.
So, Fabacher intentionally created “AI-resistant” assignments for his history and art appreciation students that would render AI useless. For other projects, “we talk about what an acceptable use of AI (is), what ethical use of AI in this situation would look like,” he said. That approach has helped students make good choices, he said: “Students are starting to question and ask permission in some cases.”
At the grade school level, Latin teacher Jenifer Scott and literature teacher Kandis Rouck say they take on extra work to ensure students bypass AI altogether at St. Veronica School in Chantilly.
“We actually do our writing in-class,” Rouck said. “They’re (writing) with their composition books and pens,” Scott added. “It’s very old school, and it makes more work for us.” But both teachers said the extra work is worth it. “There is a certain point in the writing when the first step is to get your thoughts out,” Rouck said. “It really interrupts the flow of their work if they’re constantly looking for these tools.”
In Scott’s Latin class, “there was a great temptation to use Google Translate,” which uses AI, “but that doesn’t teach you anything, and that doesn’t help you grow.” Working for the answer also boosts the students’ self-confidence, she added. “The idea of education is for them to make mistakes. And there’s so much satisfaction in figuring it out for themselves.”
As AI capabilities grow, diocesan educators said the future is uncertain. But from Ireton teacher Fabacher’s perspective, teaching students about AI is not intended to make them reliant on it, but rather the opposite.
“That’s the great thing about Catholic schools,” he said. “We’re not only able to give them instruction on curriculum, but we’re able to give them guidance on morality, so that they can make these good choices.”
