Cheshire Academy Uses Traffic-Light Labels to Set AI Boundaries in Class

At Cheshire Academy, an assignment can now carry a simple instruction for generative AI: green means it is allowed, red means it is banned, and yellow allows only the tools a teacher specifies. The system gives teachers a way to distinguish useful assistance from work students must do themselves, without requiring every instructor to use AI.

The approach is being tested at a private Connecticut boarding and day school with about 400 students in grades 9 through 12. Rather than mandate one product, Cheshire Academy uses MagicSchool alongside general-purpose chatbots including ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Rules attached to the work

The labels make the permission decision specific to an assignment. Under yellow, a teacher can permit a narrow aid such as spell-check while barring students from messaging a chatbot. Green permits AI use; red prohibits it.

That flexibility sits alongside staff training on prompt writing and on the technology’s failure modes, including incorrect and biased outputs. The school does not require instructors to use AI, though technology coordinator George Aiello said the vast majority use it in some form.

Teaching judgment, not just prompting

Some of the school’s classroom exercises put the model’s output under scrutiny rather than treating it as a finished answer. French teacher Miriam Przybyla-Baum asks students to have a large language model edit their work, then decide which changes are accurate and which strip away the student’s voice.

Where the school is drawing the line

• Teachers commonly use generative AI to prepare class materials, including lesson plans and grading rubrics.
• The school has not adopted AI to provide student feedback, citing concerns about quality, personalization, and privacy.
• A pilot Student AI Council has students create media and lead discussions about healthy AI use.

A tool choice remains a teacher choice

MagicSchool is one option in the school’s mix. It has free and paid versions; an individual plan costs just under $100 a year for unlimited access and complete records. Teachers can also use general-purpose chatbots for administrative work.

The more consequential boundary is not which generator a teacher selects, but where its output can enter the learning process. Cheshire Academy permits experimentation in planning and selected student tasks while holding back the more personal job of feedback. Whether its labels and reflection exercises change how students use AI is not yet established.