Brophy's new high school AI Guidelines come with a big paradigm shift—assistive AI is now allowed by default. This ensures students can use AI for research, brainstorming, and refining ideas—ethically. On page 3, there is a poster with 4 levels of acceptable usage. It shows which are allowed unless specified and which require explicit permission.
Brophy's team is proud that their Student AI Committee originally created these guidelines. In a true ground-up process, they moved to the adult AI committee, our Academic Council, and finally the administration for the stamp of approval. The guidelines are built to serve students and faculty across campus.
Mica Mulloy from Brophy advises to: "1) Involve students. It is a policy largely for and about them. To not include their voice in the process that will so significantly impact them is the ultimate being talked at rather than being given academic ownership. Ask them what they are using AI for and what reasonable guidelines should be in place to protect a culture of academic integrity and also utilize the amazing tool. I bet anyone who does that will be amazed. And, 2) Try to move beyond 'how can we detect it?' That's a losing battle and there are much better solutions and productive uses of AI. It is the process, not the tool."
Other resources from Brophy College Preparatory:
"Essentially, the policy is that students should not use AI unless their teacher specifically tells them that they can and that students can always ask. So, if a student has an idea of how he can use AI and the teacher has not specified that he can use it, then he just needs to ask. Teachers should then be receptive to that. It doesn't mean they have to immediately say yes, but it means that we're aware that kids are really good and smart and creative with this sort of stuff, and that kids are going to find productive, helpful ways to use AI that we haven't even thought about yet. We want to make sure that we're giving them an opportunity to do that."
Mica Mulloy
Brophy College Preparatory • Assistant Principal — Instruction & Innovation
