The Urgent Need for Teacher Training
Teachers are being asked to prepare students for an AI-shaped world without the training to do it. This conversation is about what's blocking that preparation, and what happens to students if we don't fix it.
Foundational Skills / AI in Classrooms
Karim Meghji, CodeAI
Robert Alonso, Miami-Dade Public Schools
Dr. Sabba Quidwai, Designing Schools
Teachers are being asked to do the impossible
Schools have the devices. The policies are being written. But teachers — the people who actually determine what students learn — are being asked to lead an AI transformation without the training, funding, or support to do it.
That gap is what this conversation is about.
CodeAI President and CEO Karim Meghji sits down with Robert Alonso, Miami-Dade School Board Member and lead of Florida's AI Task Force, and Dr. Sabba Quidwai, an education transformation expert, to examine what's blocking teacher preparation and what it actually takes to move a system.
The gap between policy and preparation
Across Florida's 67 districts, the same story plays out: mandates arrive without funding. Districts are told to act without the means to act. "The worst thing we can do," Alonso said, "is roll out policies that are unfunded and turn into failures. Not just for districts, but for our country."
The equity dimension runs deeper than most policy conversations acknowledge. The problem is not device access. It is how devices get used. In wealthier schools, students use AI to think differently. In lower-income schools, the same tools are used for repetition and memorization. "We don't have a digital divide," Quidwai said. "We have a digital-use divide."
We don't have a digital divide. We have a digital-use divide. In higher socioeconomic areas, they're changing the tasks. In lower-income areas, it was more drill-and-kill.
- Dr. Sabba Quidwai
Designing Schools
The window is narrowing
The urgency is not abstract. "It'll be too late to change things," Quidwai said. "But now, this moment we are in, you can influence." Alonso put it in human terms: "Our number one priority is to protect our students, educating the future workforce, the future president, the future doctor."
Every year without action is a year another class graduates unprepared.
When there are no shared norms, trust breaks
Alonso described a student whose grade was docked for using AI on an assignment as the teacher's own course materials were AI-generated. No shared norms had been set. In that vacuum, a student was penalized for something the adult in the room was also doing.
"It's important we train teachers on open communication about ethical use," Alonso said. Not top-down rules. Actual conversation, teachers and students building shared understanding together. The norms have to be built, not assumed.
What actually moves a system
Alonso and Quidwai don't agree on where change starts and that tension is productive. Alonso makes the case for structural policy: AI literacy in teacher credentialing, state mandates backed by real funding. "States really need to take that initiative and work with the federal government to fund these programs within districts," he said.
Quidwai pulls the lens back. Real change, she argues, has never come from federal policy alone. It comes from people already moving. "This is truly, in many ways, a country by the people, for the people."
They agree on one thing: find the teachers who are already excited. "Find teachers who are excited about AI, empower them to share their experiences," Alonso said. "By focusing on these individuals, we grow adoption across entire systems." The spark starts with a person, not a mandate.
The worst thing we can do is roll out policies that are unfunded and turn into failures. Not just for districts, but for our country.
- Robert Alonso
Miami-Dade Public Schools
The foundation and what comes next
CodeAI's work with Miami-Dade introduced computer science to every student in every school. That was the right foundation. But the table got bigger. Computer science alone is no longer enough. The work now spans computer science, AI science, and data science. Every student deserves fluency across all three and the ability to understand, direct, question, and create with the systems shaping their lives.
What educators can do right now
Quidwai's answer: reconnect with why you chose this work. "If you reconnect with why you do what you do, especially in education, it unleashes a part of you that's been buried by standardization and the grind." Purpose is infrastructure. Without it, no tool matters.
Alonso's answer: invest. "It's time that we invest in that teacher training and that we invest in innovation within our classrooms." Funding. Time. Professional community. The signal from leadership that this is real.
Purpose without resources burns teachers out. Resources without purpose get wasted. The educators who move this forward will have both.
The choice
Students were taught physics, chemistry, and biology because it was believed every student deserved to understand their world. The digital world is here. The question is whether we extend that same commitment or decide, by inaction, that only some students get to understand the systems shaping their lives.
Give teachers what they need. They will give students the future they deserve.
What's next?
District implementation
Bring computer science, AI science, and data science to every school in your district, backed by curriculum, training, and ongoing support.
Policy
Advocacy work that pushes every state and nation to make digital fluency a graduation requirement, not a privilege of zip code.
Teacher support
Practical tools and professional development that help teachers put digital fluency to practice, starting on day one.
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