AI Literacy + Human Skills: Your PD Day!
Every AI tool still needs a person deciding what to trust. That judgment is a human skill, and teachers can practice it before AI training starts.
Before anyone opens an AI tool, the staff spends the first hour of PD on human skills. They practice collaboration, communication, and problem-solving, the skills that decide how well any tool gets used. By the time AI literacy training starts, teachers are still talking about what makes them human, and they are about to need it.
The Skills AI Puts Pressure On
In a 2025 Gallup survey, 52% of teachers said weekly AI use would weaken students' critical thinking. Meanwhile, nearly 70% of employers call analytical thinking a core skill, the top spot in the World Economic Forum's latest Future of Jobs Report.
Teachers and employers are naming the same skill. The thinking students need most to use AI well is the thinking teachers expect AI to wear down. That thinking grows through practice, and teachers teach it best when they have practiced it themselves.
How UNLOCK Works
Staff work in small teams on timed, hands-on challenges no one can complete alone. An AI companion observes how each team collaborates, communicates, and solves problems. Every team leaves with a Human Skills Report showing its strengths and its areas for growth.
Why UNLOCK Comes First
In the same Gallup survey, 68% of teachers said they had received no AI training from their school or district. AI literacy belongs on this year's PD calendar, and what happens right before it shapes how teachers take it in.
Good AI use runs on the same moves teams make in UNLOCK: testing an idea before trusting it, noticing what's missing, and deciding together which problem is worth solving. An AI tool can draft a lesson in seconds. Judging whether that lesson is right for the students in the room is still the teacher's call.
Teachers who have just practiced those moves walk into AI training with that judgment fresh, and their report gives them a shared language for it. They carry both back to classrooms where students are learning to use AI themselves.
Fitting It Into Your PD Day
UNLOCK sits alongside the AI PD you already have. One session runs 75 to 90 minutes, so it fits the opening block of a PD day already on the calendar, for one school or several together. For two or three schools, a keynote can frame the day before teams begin.
What would change in your classrooms if every teacher left AI training with a clear picture of their own human skills?
Sources
- Gallup and Walton Family Foundation (2025). Teaching for Tomorrow: Unlocking Six Weeks a Year With AI. Read the report
- World Economic Forum (2025). The Future of Jobs Report 2025, Chapter 3: Skills Outlook. Read the chapter
Dr. Michelle Ament
Dr. Michelle Ament is a national voice for reimagining learning and leadership in the Intelligence Age. She spent 30 years inside K-12 as a classroom teacher and district administrator. As ProSolve's Chief Academic Officer, she helps districts measure, report on, and improve the human skills the workforce is asking for. Michelle is Co-President of the Human Intelligence Movement and host of Unscripted Intelligence.
