We have SO MANY AI options as teachers
Claude has become my constant teaching companion.
The big issue isn’t getting access to AI tools that can help us as teachers.
The big issue? Picking among allllllllll of the options.
You have the major AI platforms: ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Claude.
You have the big teacher-centric planning assistants: MagicSchool, SchoolAI, Brisk Teaching, and others.
You have specialized K-12 AI apps like Diffit, Snorkl, and others.
… and the list goes on and on and on … and the list keeps growing!
Good news: You don’t need to use all of them.
Also: You don’t need to keep up with all of the newest features on all of them, either.
I’ve really enjoyed using Claude for brainstorming, learning, and coming up with new ideas. It feels like it gives me more context, shows me what’s missing, and gives me the whole picture.
Recently, Anthropic released a new program: Claude for Teachers. It’s a way to get the premium features of Claude — plus some specialized teacher tools — for free for verified U.S. K-12 educators.
I wanted to write about it … not because I have a partnership with Claude or anything (I don’t), but because I’ve really enjoyed using it — and we all love when things are free.
👥 HOT DISCUSSION TOPIC: I just added a new discussion post in our online community — How are the cell phone bans going? It’s been live for 20 minutes and we already have seven comments. Jump in and tell us what YOU are seeing (and read what others are saying, too).
Inside:
📺 Virtual Back to School Event starting SUNDAY!
👀 DTT Digest: 4 resources worth checking out
👥 New Community Discussion: Cell phone bans in schools
👥 Community Quotes: a “Ditcher” and AI cheating
👥 Upcoming Community Event: Open Door
💡 The Big Idea: What’s Claude for Teachers? (+ 8 ways to use it)
😄 Smile of the day: I can’t decide!
👋 How we can help
📺 Virtual Back to School Event starting SUNDAY!
Join me in the Complete 180 Conference in August!
Back to school is a time to come back with confidence … to come up with a solid plan … to build momentum for the school year.
That’s what the virtual Complete 180 Conference is all about!
I’m partnering with Daryl Williams Jr. to put on this virtual event on August 23-25, 2026!
You can join the opening night live session for free, but with a General Experience ticket, you’ll get:
Access to 3 days of live sessions
Leadership + teacher workshops
Nightly keynotes
Conference workbook
Access to the IMPACT Community
Limited replay access (7 days)
The VIP Experience adds lifetime access to replays and an exclusive post-conference implementation session with me and Daryl.
How to register:
Head to the conference registration page.
Choose “Save My Seat” and enter your contact details.
Click “Save Your Seat.” That’ll sign you up for the free ticket.
Next, you’ll be able to add a paid General or VIP ticket if you’d like.
FYI: You’ll get a confirmation text message to let you know you’re in. We send those automated text messages between 8am and 8pm U.S. Eastern time, so if you don’t get it immediately, it’ll be coming soon!
👀 DTT Digest
4 teaching resources worth checking out today
🎶📜 Turn history into music with AI! — In this video I shared from ISTE teacher Nicole Lipps uses Suno AI and Google Gemini to create US History songs that bring lessons to life.
🦸🏾♀️ Create your own action figure with Adobe Express — Design an action figure and share your personality + goals + achievements in one collectible card.
🚌 Get practical back to school tips with Microsoft Copilot — Use Microsoft Copilot to save time and reduce workload by automating back-to-school preparation, such as generating lesson materials, creating study quizzes, organizing schedules, and drafting classroom communications.
ICYMI 👋🏼 Get to know your students with interest surveys — Student interest surveys help us know what makes our students tick, which helps us build relationships and learning that matters. Check out this posts for more about interest surveys including templates you can use tomorrow.
🗣️ COMMUNITY DISCUSSION🗣️
👥 New discussion: Cell phone bans in schools
Lots of schools have digital device bans that are starting this school year. Others started theirs last year or in the past.
How are they going? At my school, we can already see students talking to each other more — and the engagement in the classroom is up.
What are you seeing? What do you think?
🗣️ COMMUNITY QUOTE 🗣️
Quotes From this Week’s Discussions…
Earlier this week we shared our first Community Spotlight, Tim Belmont. We wanted to highlight his answer to the question What makes you a Ditcher? because we loved it so much!
Share your own answer! Just head to this Spotlight thread and reply.
I'm always on the lookout for alternatives and new ideas. If a practice is still happening just because it has been that way for a while, I'm not afraid to ditch it for something better.
Yesterday, I posted a new discussion in the community pulled directly from the AI for Admins newsletter regarding why students use AI to cheat.
There are some thoughtful reflections taking place, and Bob Clark had one of them. Join the discussion with me, Bob, Stephanie, and others. Oh, and more focus on AI integrity is coming soon … 👀
I think that the one point that might make the biggest impact is getting students to see the relevance to not just the assignment but also why they need to be able to do the assignment on their own without using AI.
📺 LIVE EVENT 📺
Every Friday, an Open Door to the Community
Did you know that every Friday in the community there is a New Member Open Door live room? Hosted by Sara, our Head of Community, this is a live room where you can drop in and introduce yourself, meet Sara, meet other members that might be there, ask questions about the community or how it works, or even suggest ideas. You don’t have to be a brand new member to join, just someone who wants to be more connected!
📺 WHAT: New Member Open Door
📆 DATE: Every Friday
🕝 TIME: 12pm PT / 3pm ET
✅ RSVP FOR THIS WEEK by clicking here
✉ RSVP FOR AN UPCOMING FRIDAY by viewing the full events channel
For DTT Community members. (Not a member yet? It’s free! Register here)
💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡
🤖 What’s Claude for Teachers? (+ 8 ways to use it)
When OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, that was the AI assistant that everyone was talking about. (At least after we realized it existed … and once we were able to remember the letters “GPT”.)
Then came Google Bard (which is now called Gemini) … and Microsoft Bing (which is now called Copilot).
OpenAI was the new name with the trendy product — ChatGPT. Google and Microsoft were established players.
Around the same time, Anthropic released its AI assistant — Claude. For lots of folks, it flew under the radar. It wasn’t the trendy product everyone was talking about (ChatGPT). It wasn’t a household name for a tech company (Google and Microsoft).
But as time has gone on, more and more people — including educators — are being drawn in to Claude as their go-to AI assistant tool.
Including me.
Now, Anthropic has released Claude for Teachers, an offer for teachers to get premium features for free for a full year. Let’s dig into it …
Why I use Claude — and what I use it for
In my position (providing tech/AI workshops to teachers and writing this newsletter), I keep premium accounts for three main AI tools — ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude.
I use them for different things. Here are my personal observations from my use (which might be different from yours!) …
ChatGPT is a good all-around quick response AI tool. I LOVE that I can hit the little speaker icon at the bottom of a chat response to listen to it text-to-speech. (This is my favorite when I’m out jogging … I’ll voice type a prompt and listen to the response almost like a custom podcast.) Its image generator is really good right now, too.
Google Gemini connects really nicely to all of my Google services. It’s even integrated into tools like Docs, Slides, the Google Chrome web broswer, etc. Its image generator is really good right now, too. Plus, I can use it with my school Google account and get secure interactions that don’t train the AI model.
Claude seems to give the most insightful responses. It does the best job telling you when it doesn’t know something and when there’s nuance you need to pay attention to. Claude’s models, to me, seem to be a bit smarter than Google Gemini and ChatGPT. (But that’s just me.) It does not have an image generator, but it will make amazing designs with HTML that visually organize things. Plus, it’s really good at vibe coding a quick app.
What is Claude for Teachers?
Claude for Teachers is a version of Claude built specifically for verified K–12 educators in the United States.
Once verified, educators get access at no cost — and Anthropic says educators who sign up by June 30, 2027 receive a full year of access.
Right now it's an individual educator offering, not a school- or district-wide product. Anthropic has said a dedicated offering for schools and districts is coming soon.
The difference isn't just a special teacher-flavored chat window. Claude for Teachers connects Claude to:
Academic standards
Learning progressions
Evidence-based curricula
Teaching-specific AI skills
Classroom data workflows
K–12 education tools
Recurring tasks and automation
AI professional learning
How to set up Claude for Teachers
I’ve been using Claude for years, but I just set up my Claude for Teachers account on my school email this morning.
(FYI: When I did mine, I clicked “verify” and had to set up a new account with my school Google account. Then I had to go back and click the “verify” button AGAIN to actually start the verification process.)
Here’s how long it took me …
I started my verification at 9:28am.
I finished the verification process and submitted it at 9:36am.
It took me a few minutes to find a verification document. I used a pay stub with all of the sensitive information blacked out. A school ID or employment letter will work, too.
I was verified at 9:46am. It took 10 minutes to get access to the premium (and teacher-specific) features.
I finished filling out their teacher survey by 9:51am.
My set-up process took a little more than 20 minutes all together.
8 things you can do with Claude for Teachers
In many ways, Claude is a lot like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and lots of the other AI assistants (aka “LLMs” or “large language models”). You can ask it to explain things to you, answer questions, write first drafts of text, and more. It can be a great teacher planning tool and instructional aid.
But the Claude-specific features? Here’s what makes it different …
1. Plan lessons from your actual state standards.
One of the biggest differences with Claude for Teachers is its connection to Learning Commons, a standards database that gives Claude access to academic standards across all 50 states.
Claude can also access the smaller learning competencies underneath a standard and the order in which students typically learn them. It actually works from the standards — and the learning progressions underneath them.
2. Build from evidence-based curriculum.
Claude for Teachers also connects to established curricular resources — Anthropic specifically highlights OpenSciEd and IM v.360 from Illustrative Mathematics.
That means you can use Claude to help plan instruction from existing, vetted curriculum instead of asking AI to invent a lesson from scratch every time.
3. Differentiate one lesson for multiple students.
Claude for Teachers includes a teaching skill built specifically for differentiation.
Give Claude a lesson and ask it to adapt the materials for students at different readiness levels. It can generate a differentiation plan along with personalized student-facing materials for different proficiency levels.
4. Analyze a whole folder of classroom data.
Claude for Teachers includes Claude Code and Cowork, which let Claude carry work forward across files and workflows instead of treating every conversation as a blank slate.
Anthropic describes a scenario where a teacher hands Claude a folder containing things like:
A student roster
Diagnostic results
Attendance information
Teacher notes
Other classroom data
Claude can analyze those materials together to help build a clearer picture of student needs. Imagine a workflow like this: Monday you upload diagnostic results, Tuesday you add your notes, Wednesday you add student work — and instead of starting over each time, Claude works across the whole collection.
That could help you spot:
Class-wide strengths
Common misconceptions
Students who need additional support
Potential instructional groups
Areas that need reteaching
Caution: Anthropic says Claude for Teachers data isn't used for model training, and that student information is protected by its K–12 Data Processing Addendum. But it’s a good practice to strip out any student personally identifying information (PII) before giving it to Claude.
5. Automate something you do every day
We have plenty of tasks that aren't hard but are tedious and time-consuming. If we do them over and over again, we might benefit from an automation. Exit-ticket analysis is a good example: collect them, read through them, figure out what students understand, spot misconceptions, decide what to do tomorrow.
Claude for Teachers can take some of that off your plate. Anthropic specifically describes using Cowork to schedule a recurring task that reviews the day's exit tickets, identifies what students mastered, and adapts the next day's instructional plan — automatically, in the background, before you even open your laptop the next morning.
6. Connect Claude to your edtech toolkit.
Claude connects with edtech tools you might already be using, like: ASSISTments, Brisk Teaching, Canva, Coteach, Diffit, Eedi, MagicSchool, Snorkl, and TeachFX.
The more these systems can talk to the tools you already use, the more useful the whole stack becomes.
7. Use teaching-specific AI skills.
Claude for Teachers comes with teaching skills, co-developed with Learning Commons around tasks that teachers have identified as important. They’ve been evaluated for rigor, pedagogical alignment, and classroom usability, and refined using feedback from real classroom teachers.
8. Learn AI fluency along the way.
Claude for Teachers also includes access to AI Fluency for PK–12 Teachers. The course is model-agnostic, practical, Creative Commons licensed, and built specifically for educators.
It covers questions like:
Which classroom tasks are appropriate for AI?
How should teachers work effectively with AI?
How can educators use AI responsibly?
How should teachers approach AI with students?
5 things you can try first
Once your verification goes through with Claude for Teachers, here’s where you might start …
Connect to your standards. Pick one upcoming unit and ask Claude to help you understand the learning progression behind the standard.
Build from your curriculum. Give Claude a lesson or resource you're already using and ask it to help you adapt — not replace — it.
Differentiate a lesson. Take something you're already teaching and create different levels of scaffolding while keeping the learning goal intact.
Analyze one set of student work. Try Claude with a collection of exit tickets or student work you're authorized to share, and ask: What patterns do you see that I might miss?
Automate one repetitive task. Find something you do every afternoon or every week, and ask: Could Claude handle part of this workflow for me?
😄 Smile of the day
The intense debate inside your mind at the beginning of the school year …
👋 How we can help
There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:
Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.
Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.
Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!
