My STSS work has been bolstered by my extensive work in pre-college teaching. I have facilitated philosophical conversations and courses with elementary, middle, and high schoolers since 2022. Most of my efforts are supported by a residency at Rainier Beach High School through the Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization. Current high school students have been raised alongside technology as previous generations have, but they have the unique experience of having their high school years punctuated by the emergence of generative AI. Technologies like ChatGPT have brought conversations about trust to bear on the classroom. Students are often exposed to such technologies without receiving the requisite education about how they work; they are often unaware that they essentially function as statistically-laden next-word-guessing machines. Some of the trust that they put in LLMs is thus misplaced, and overreliance on such technologies can alienate students from the truth; the (purportedly) omniscient machine couldn’t possibly get things wrong. I also taught two online pre-college courses – one on technology and one on truth and misinformation – during the 2024-5 academic year  in which students confronted these questions. 

Beyond AI, there are other student concerns with the role of technology in schools that the Residency has brought to light. For instance, during the 2024-5 school year, Rainier Beach adopted a digital hall pass program. In addition to disrupting classes, the program created student concerns about digital surveillance. The new policy was used as a jumping off point for Ethics Bowl-style discussions about digital surveillance in other areas of students’ lives.

In 2025, I was awarded a Philosophy in Media fellowship through the Marc Sanders Foundation to develop a podcast exploring the ethical implications of different educational technologies.