As the new school year has gotten underway, many district decision-makers have been asked quite pointedly how they’re going to manage the proliferation of AI — and technology more broadly — in the classroom. This represents a multifaceted challenge for administrators, as school boards, instructional leaders, teachers, and parents all want answers, but not always to the same questions.
Navigating this challenge successfully will take both deep knowledge of a district and strategic behind-the-scenes technological support. The former is table stakes for an effective district leadership team; the latter is where companies like Brisk have a role to play.
Brisk was founded with the goal of being the starting point for teacher work. This mission remains the driving force behind everything we do, but as education has marched toward its current inflection point, it has become necessary to contend with the broader context in which this work takes place.
That’s why, over the course of 2026, we’ve built a suite of tools that put administrators in a position to help teachers do their best work. These tools don’t dictate district policy, nor do they flatten the idiosyncrasies that make great teachers effective. What they do is equip district leaders with the data, visibility, and control they need to answer the tough but important questions they’re facing about the future of education.
1. Your board asks, “Which AI tools are being used in our schools?”
Even for districts with top-tier IT teams, the answer to this question tends to be a ballpark figure at best. Centralized IT rostering and single sign-on logins can tally the tools purchased at a school or district level, but they don’t account for any of the tools teachers sign up for on their own.
Brisk AI Governance shows district leaders which AI tools teachers are using regardless of whether the tools are authorized. AI Governance provides visibility into teacher usage of over 20 AI tools, from ChatGPT and Gemini to Kahoot! and Canva AI. Usage data is aggregated at the school level, so teachers needn’t worry about their individual habits drawing scrutiny.
In addition to charting tool usage over time, Brisk checks usage against a district’s approved tools list, giving administrators a clear picture of where policy adherence stands at every school. With this comprehensive, longitudinal data in hand, administrators will be better prepared for both board meetings and district-wide software reviews.
2. Your instructional leadership asks, “How can we shape teacher AI use?”
Districts invest a great deal of time and resources into professional development, pedagogical frameworks, standards prioritization, and other mechanisms for shaping what instruction looks like in their classrooms. Brisk Guidance gives administrators a way to ensure these investments make an impact on teaching day in, day out.
Brisk Guidance incorporates whatever matters to a district — from strategic priorities and cultural values to learning philosophies and assessment criteria — into everything teachers create with Brisk. If an administrator includes instructions like, “Use Workshop Model structure: mini-lesson, independent practice, debrief,” in their Brisk Guidance, when a teacher asks Brisk for help building a lesson plan, the plan the teacher receives will automatically fit into the Workshop Model.
Through Brisk Level Up, administrators’ instructions extend to all the AI tools covered by AI Governance, as well. Say a teacher types a quick request for a bundle of formative assessments into ChatGPT. In just a few seconds, Level Up will transform this request into a pedagogically rich prompt that reflects district-specific Brisk Guidance and shows the teacher a short note on what was enhanced. This not only gives districts visibility into how AI prompting in their schools is improving over time, but provides them with a way to scale instructional support for teachers across every AI interaction.
3. Your teachers ask, “How do I align my AI-assisted resources with our curriculum?”
Most AI tools don’t distinguish between high-quality instructional materials and random resources pulled from the internet, so teachers have to adapt every output by hand with little support or structure. That’s not efficient — nor particularly effective.
As a complement to Brisk Guidance, Brisk Curriculum Intelligence delivers a collection of tools that actually use a district’s curriculum as the starting point for everything they create. With Curriculum Intelligence, teachers get resources that automatically align with their district’s scope, sequence, and pacing and leaders get a sense for how curriculum is being applied across classrooms.
Proactive administrators can also build out a District Library in Brisk, putting a curated collection of approved instructional resources right at teachers’ fingertips. These bundles of lesson-specific resources can be based on pre-existing materials or generated using Brisk’s smart recommendations.
4. Your community asks, “How are you moderating AI-driven, screen-based learning?”
A number of state legislatures and boards of education — as well as many parents and advocacy groups — contend that there are already too many screens in the classroom, and worry that AI will only increase the prevalence of online learning.
While we at Brisk believe there are many ways technology is conducive to learning, we also recognize that technology isn’t automatically the best solution to every educational challenge. As such, Brisk is designed to provide teachers with a variety of ways to support student learning even if they’re scaling back screen time in their classrooms.
For instance, the Brisk Printables Generator helps teachers transform their favorite digital resources into print-ready pencil-and-paper activities. Teachers can currently use Brisk to build seven types of printables: Frayer Models, KWL Charts, Venn Diagrams, Q&As, Worksheets, Mind Maps, Newsletters.
That means an elementary school teacher can create a KWL chart for students to complete before the start of a unit on the water cycle without having to spend extensive time formatting a design file. Or, with just a few clicks, a high school history teacher can create a Venn diagram that asks students to compare and contrast the Roman Republic and Roman Empire.
Brisk also helps teachers provide timely feedback on handwritten work, translate, level, and print texts to support differentiated instruction, and come up with screen-free activities like science labs, escape rooms, and educational podcasts.
A strong foundation for any line of inquiry
There’s no definitive answer for how a district should address the disruption created by AI, as each district and community has its own unique priorities. What’s consistent across the country is that people have good-faith questions and concerns about what AI means for education.
Like everyone else, we’re experimenting, we’re learning, and we’re thinking deeply about how to support student learning in 2026 and beyond. Throughout it all, we’re working to equip district leaders with the data, visibility, and control they need to answer the kinds of questions posed above.
