And now she can — sort of.
The technology teacher at Memorial Elementary School in Howell began playing around with artificial intelligence a few years ago. She used it sparingly, like the time she incorporated her students’ names in an age-appropriate scary story to read aloud for Halloween.
She didn’t regularly deploy AI in the classroom until she attended a session in March on chatbots at an educational technology conference.
“That was a game changer,” said Cutillo, who has been teaching since 2004, including in third, fourth and fifth grade. “It made a huge difference to me.”
Through SchoolAI, a Utah-based AI platform, Cutillo created a chatbot to act as a teacher’s assistant. She copied and pasted instructions to a Google Slides assignment, so her students could ask the chatbot for help and receive assistance in real-time.
Not only did it help them, it also offered Cutillo valuable intel. By reviewing the students’ chatbot questions, she could tell who was struggling — those asking basic questions — and who had mastered the assignment — those wasting time with the bot. Cutillo then devoted more time to the students who needed help.
“The one thing that we need is more time,” she said of teachers. “And this gives you more time.”
For the past few years, students’ use of artificial intelligence has generated scores of alarming headlines, ranging from academic integrity concerns to AI-generated photo scandals. But some New Jersey teachers are now incorporating generative artificial intelligence — AI that can create new text, photos and other materials — in the classroom to augment lessons or enhance learning.
Scores of school districts are fostering cautious exploration of artificial intelligence for practical learning tools, mirroring state officials’ larger embrace of the new technology.
It’s unclear exactly how many of the roughly 118,000 public school teachers in New Jersey use AI in the classroom, but so far it’s been a largely uneven landscape.
Some of the applications are coming from teachers in more affluent districts, but school officials are also employing AI tools in less wealthy areas like Newark.
“And it’s not even a factor of the usual things, like demographics,” said Betsy Ginsburg, the executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. “It’s more related to interest. So the people who are interested in tech innovations will immediately gravitate to AI.”
“Others will follow,” she added. “If one teacher finds something that’s a really great educational tool, they tell their colleagues about it and then people kind of jump on board.”
In January, the state awarded $1.5 million in grants to fund artificial intelligence education and new AI-related career programs in public schools. Some school districts are also investing portions of their own budgets into AI products.
“I think there’s fear, but I think there’s also a recognition as you learn more about it, that if used properly, this can be a powerful tool,” said Mark Russo, a director of curriculum for the Pascack Valley Regional High School District. “But we have to be very careful in the way we do it.”
An explosion of startups and established companies are offering slick new AI products and targeted training to educators and school administrators.
For instance, the nation’s second largest teachers’ union recently announced a $23 million initiative with Microsoft and OpenAI, an artificial intelligence company, to provide free access to AI and training to all American Federation of Teachers members, starting with K-12 educators.
“If I had $5 for every ad I’ve seen for AI training from vendors, I would be a rich woman,” Ginsburg said with a laugh.
Cutillo, the Howell teacher, has used the technology in other ways.
When her school had Down syndrome and autism awareness months, she used a chatbot so the curious elementary students could ask thoughtful questions about the diagnoses.
Does Down syndrome hurt? What does it feel like? Can you get married and have kids?
“They just got a lot more personal with it, and they asked a lot more meaningful questions than if it were just them asking me,” said Cutillo, who is able to monitor every chatbot conversation to ensure it’s appropriate and on topic.
The chatbot itself also redirects the conversation if students veer off.
Noemí Rodriguez-Grimshaw, a Spanish teacher at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, uses AI to help plan and create her curriculum and resources. Students in the district have access to Gemini, Google’s AI tool, which integrates into the other Google products.
Rodriguez-Grimshaw has also designed several chatbots for her students to use, enabling them to converse in Spanish with a practice partner or interview dead historical figures such as Mexican painter Frida Kahlo or labor leader Cesar Chavez.
And she’s looking into platforms that enable live AI video conversations to help students practice their language skills, provided the student and their family are comfortable with it. One of those platforms is Speakology AI, which offers AI language instructors for students.
If students don’t want to participate, she will find an alternative assignment, she said.
Rodriguez-Grimshaw and other educators recognize the concerns surrounding AI — ranging from environmental impacts to students’ safety to accuracy concerns. There’s also the lack of regulation and a fear of overdependence on the technology — for both students and teachers.
“I don’t want everything to always go through artificial intelligence, because I want their minds to be doing the work,” said Rodriguez-Grimshaw, noting the same goes for her as a teacher.
“I need to still be in that driver’s seat,” she said.
©2025 Advance Local Media LLC. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
