Allison Tuthill, Financial Advisor Modern Woodmen of America

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Allison Tuthill, Financial Advisor Modern Woodmen of America Financial Representative, Modern Woodmen of America

10/18/2026

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18: NO CHILD IS GENERIC. AND THE WORLD IS CHANGING FOR ALL OF THEM.

We've spent this week considering how AI might affect children differently depending on their developmental stages, abilities, educational needs, interests, health, resources, and circumstances.

And I think we've arrived at two observations that deserve to be considered together:

1. There is no "generic" child. Each one is an individual in a multitude of tiny ways.

2. All these wonderfully different children are growing up during the same extraordinary technological transition while that same technology is also rapidly changing itself and the rate at which it is changing is also rapidly increasing.

The same AI tool might remove an unnecessary barrier for one child, provide appropriately challenging work for another, help a third practice communication, give a fourth access to explanations or opportunities that weren't previously available, and potentially allow a fifth to avoid practicing something they need to learn.

Several of those things could even happen to the same child at different times. Because children change, their circumstances change, and AI itself is changing extraordinarily quickly.

Which brings us back to something I've been thinking about throughout this series. We're already living through what amounts to a global, species-wide natural experiment, without an overarching research design or a control group. And the actual implementation of AI in everyday life is moving far faster than our ability to study its long-term developmental consequences.

That doesn't mean we should panic. It also doesn't mean we should shrug and hope everything works out. I think it means we should become much more intentional about what we're observing, what questions we're asking, and what evidence we're gathering.

Which children? At what developmental stages? Using which tools? For which purposes? With what guidance? Under what circumstances? What happens immediately? And what happens over years?

Perhaps most importantly, are we willing to change our approaches when reality doesn't match our expectations?

Because the reason these questions matter isn't that AI matters so much. It's that children matter.

Next week, we'll turn our attention to the adults and institutions making decisions about all of this.

Question: What individual differences or circumstances do you think AI education research needs to pay considerably more attention to?

10/17/2026

**SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17: ACCESS TO AI IS NOT THE SAME AS ACCESS TO OPPORTUNITY**

Let's talk about educational equity. Imagine two students with access to exactly the same AI tool. One has strong foundational knowledge, reliable internet, supportive adults, experienced teachers, and considerable practice evaluating information. The other has limited educational resources, little guidance, significant responsibilities at home, and fewer opportunities to develop those same skills.

Both technically have access to AI. But do they have the same opportunity to benefit from it? Not necessarily. And even that comparison is far too simple.

What about children with serious health problems, whose families are under tremendous stress, or who have experienced educational disruption? Children living in rural communities where certain subjects or advanced classes aren't available, who need accommodations their schools struggle to provide? Or those experiencing several of those circumstances at once?

And that doesn't even scratch the surface. What about those with no reliable device they can use, or whose internet is non-existent, sometimes cut off, intermittent, or just not that strong? What about students who have more, or less emotional maturity? Those who don't have a quiet home? Those who have a lot of chores at home or who have to help their parents with their siblings once they get home? Those who are too shy even for AI engagement? Or those who get too hooked on AI engagement? There are literally millions of tiny data points about a child's life that can impact their ability to access or appropriately and productively use AI.

While AI could potentially help address some existing educational inequalities, it could also reinforce, surface, expose or create others. We don't know enough yet to predict how all of this will play out. But we do know that a technology existing is not the same as providing access to it and that providing access to it is not the same thing as providing the conditions necessary to use it well.

Those conditions include foundational knowledge, guidance, teacher preparation, critical thinking, privacy protections, and access to human help when technology isn't sufficient. And perhaps the most important question is whether AI helps expand genuine educational opportunity for children whose opportunities are currently limited, or if it just creates more types of inequality and lack of access.

Expanding genuine educational opportunity for all children, no matter their individual circumstances is a much bigger objective than simply distributing software. While there's much we simply can't know at this point, we'd better at least think about and talk about it.

**Question:** Beyond access to AI itself, what do children need in order to benefit from it educationally?

10/16/2026

**FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16: WHAT ABOUT THE CHILD WHO IS READY TO RUN?**

We've discussed children who need additional support, accommodations, or different ways to access learning. But what about the child who's ready to move considerably faster? -- the student who mastered the material weeks ago, the one who asks questions that go well beyond the lesson, the child who's fascinated by a subject that isn't available at their school, or the student who needs something much more intellectually challenging than the standard assignment.

Teachers have always faced the challenge of differentiating instruction for students who are ready to move ahead. There are only so many hours in a day, and a classroom contains many children with many different needs. This is another area where I think AI has intriguing potential.

Imagine a teacher being able to generate increasingly complex questions, competing interpretations, advanced readings, new applications, or entirely different approaches to the same subject. A student might be asked to defend an argument, evaluate conflicting evidence, identify weaknesses in a proposed solution, or explore a subject that wouldn't otherwise fit into the curriculum. And the teacher could potentially prepare those variations in minutes rather than hours.

But there's a catch here, too.

AI can also make it remarkably easy to produce sophisticated-looking work without necessarily developing sophisticated understanding. And it shouldn't become an excuse to eliminate human mentorship or advanced educational opportunities.

Perhaps the real opportunity isn't making advanced work easier:

**It's making appropriately challenging work available to more children.**

And sometimes that means making learning HARDER, in exactly the right ways.

**Question:** How might AI help schools better serve children who are ready to move substantially beyond the standard curriculum?

10/15/2026

**THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15: WHAT IF YOU COULD PRACTICE A LANGUAGE WITHOUT EMBARRASSMENT?**

I taught French for fourteen years, and differentiated instruction was a substantial part of how I taught. We didn't simply memorize vocabulary and conjugate verbs.
Students encountered language through reading, writing, listening, speaking, illustration, patterns, conversation, and repeated practice. I created conversation guides with sentence structures, correct spelling, and pronunciation assistance. Students practiced with different classmates, worked through variations, and eventually produced and organized their own electronic work.

We used different combinations of activities because students didn't all learn the same way or need the same amount of practice. And because learning to communicate in another language requires actually USING it.

Now imagine having conversational AI available to help a teacher generate multiple versions of those exercises. A beginning student could practice simple sentence structures. Another could work through more complex constructions. A student who needed twenty repetitions could have twenty. Someone interested in music, animals, history, or sports could practice the same grammatical structures using vocabulary that interested them without having to manually generate, find or buy those individual resources.

And, most importantly, students could potentially practice speaking without worrying about making mistakes in front of their classmates. That's a rather wonderful possibility.

But there's something else I learned teaching French:

**LANGUAGE IS NOT MERELY THE CORRECT ARRANGEMENT OF WORDS.**

It's culture, history, humor, context, relationships, and meaning. Actual human communication requires understanding other people, including people who don't always respond predictably or patiently. So I would want AI practice to prepare students for MORE meaningful human communication, not replace it.

**Question:** If you could give every language teacher an AI assistant, what would you want it to help students practice?

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10/15/2026

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10/14/2026

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14: DIFFERENT BRAINS, DIFFERENT POSSIBILITIES

Let's talk about neurodivergence and individual learning needs.

A student might understand the material perfectly well but struggle with organizing assignments, initiating tasks, processing multiple instructions, or translating ideas into written work. Another might need additional repetition, predictable structure, or opportunities to revisit a concept without feeling embarrassed. A third might have very different needs, even if all three have the same diagnosis.

AI could potentially help teachers create individualized instructions, break down complex tasks, provide additional explanations, or generate practice materials suited to a student's particular needs. And that's where the possibilities become really interesting.

But we should be careful not to assume that more assistance always means better learning.

For one child, additional structure might make meaningful participation possible. For another, that same structure might interfere with opportunities to develop independent organizational skills. For a third, reducing assistance over time might be appropriate. And for someone else, continued accommodation might be exactly what equitable access requires. For some, learning in a way that isn't their preference or strength, helps them more than learning in their preferred manner.

THE SAME SUPPORT DOES NOT SERVE THE SAME PURPOSE FOR EVERY CHILD. Nor does the same child need the same support for every task in every subject. This is why teachers having AI as a tool to help quickly differentiate a lesson or task is an exciting development, but it's also a reason to think long and hard before we use it or have students use it in the classroom.

Children do not remain static. Their needs can change with age, experience, health, circumstances, and the particular task. Their needs also change subject to subject, teacher to teacher, classroom to classroom and year to year.

I think AI could give teachers considerably more flexibility to respond to those differences. But the human judgment required to decide WHAT support is appropriate remains critically important.

Question: Where do you see the greatest potential for AI to help educators support children with different learning and developmental needs?

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10/13/2026

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13: WHAT IF AI REMOVES THE WRONG BARRIER?

One of the possibilities that most interests me about AI in education is how it might help teachers remove barriers that prevent children from learning or demonstrating what they know.

Imagine a child who understands a scientific concept beautifully but struggles to communicate that understanding in writing, or a student who needs information presented verbally, or someone who needs additional organizational support, more practice, a different format, or a little more time to process instructions. AI might make it considerably easier for teachers to provide those supports without having to manually create every variation of every lesson from scratch. That's exciting!

But there's an important complication. What if the barrier AI removes is ALSO the skill the student is supposed to be developing? If the educational objective is scientific reasoning, speech-to-text or writing assistance might allow a student to demonstrate that reasoning without an unrelated obstacle getting in the way. But if the objective is developing written communication, having AI do the writing could bypass the very practice the student needs. And sometimes a student needs an accommodation permanently. Not every barrier is something that should be overcome through practice.

This is why I think the distinction between SCAFFOLDING and SUBSTITUTION matters so much. Scaffolding changes the conditions under which a learner does the work while substitution may do the relevant work for the learner. Neither is automatically appropriate or inappropriate. It depends on what we're trying to accomplish. And it depends on the student.

The question isn't simply whether AI makes something easier. It's whether removing that particular difficulty helps the child develop or demonstrate the intended capacity.

Question: How should educators distinguish between barriers that should be removed and challenges that are important parts of learning?

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