Insight: Navigating AI Together – Eastside Prep’s Intentional Approach

By Sam Uzwack (Head of School) and Jonathan Briggs (Director of Strategy, Technology, & Innovation)

This fall, our community has engaged deeply with questions about AI in education…not because we have all the answers, but because asking the right questions together matters more than racing to certainty.

The work began with drafting an EPS AI Approach, a living document shared at opening-year meetings that articulates our current thinking. This draft will evolve through December before appearing in our Student Handbook this coming January. Meanwhile, faculty AI workgroups continue exploring concrete classroom applications, and most courses now include specific AI policy language in syllabi, clarifying expectations on a course-by-course basis.

We’ve also been listening. AI Listening Groups gathered feedback from our community about the effectiveness of our approach. In October, our annual board retreat devoted significant attention to AI strategy, followed by focused discussions with the Board’s health and safety committee. What emerged was perhaps the most important discovery: the Board and School leadership are remarkably aligned in their assessment and direction regarding AI and education.

This alignment gives us something rare: solid direction without the illusion of a predetermined path. We’re charting the course month by month, informed by continuous reading, conversation, and experimentation. The upcoming NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) AI Symposium will include a cohort of EPS employees and serves as an opportunity to further validate our approach.

Our partnership with Colleague.AI continues to deepen, offering student internships and teaching seminars in which students collaborated on AI ethics frameworks submitted to the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference. UW Bothell has also approached us about potential partnerships spanning environmental impact to biotech and public policy.

The future remains uncertain, but our community’s willingness to engage thoughtfully, from students to board members, positions us to navigate whatever emerges. Wrestling with this ambiguity has been challenging and rewarding as we imagine how our mission and vision can be further realized using powerful tools, responsibly, under continuous evolution.