AI-Enabled Learning: How AI Supports Students with Diverse Learning Profiles
At McLean, our work is always grounded in meeting our bright students where they are, including students with dyslexia, ADHD, and executive functioning challenges. To support this, we’ve invested in ongoing professional development to build AI literacy across divisions and disciplines, ensuring our approach to technology reflects our deep understanding of students’ learning strengths and challenges.
As a classroom teacher-turned-technology specialist, I support McLean’s educators and students in integrating technology—including AI—in meaningful, responsible ways. For educators, this can feel like reinventing the wheel while driving. But much like our students, McLean teachers are willing to embrace complexity and rise to new challenges.
We recognize the potential for AI to be a meaningful tool for inclusion by making learning more accessible and responsive to the full range of learners in our community. Whether students have needs or challenges, AI can be a tool to help level the playing field through differentiation, scaffolding, and more. At the same time, we recognize that AI can also reflect bias and inequity. Our commitment to inclusiveness means approaching AI in ways that critically examine its output for potential bias while still affirming every student’s place in our community.
While there are valid concerns that overreliance on AI could impact perseverance and critical thinking, we also see an opportunity: when used thoughtfully, AI can actually strengthen these skills. Our approach to AI is centered around reimagining learning design—not necessarily around what tool to use. At McLean, teachers ensure that students build foundational skills before engaging with any technology, including AI. Teachers create opportunities where students must think carefully about how they frame questions, evaluate responses, and refine their thinking—an important process for all learners, especially those developing executive functioning skills like planning, organization, and self-monitoring.
Our goal is not to replace learning, but to enhance it. AI is used to supplement instruction in ways that support deeper thinking, independence, and growth—particularly for students who benefit from differentiated approaches.
How this looks in practice:
In Adrian Moore’s Grades 9-12 Modern World History class, students practice debating and arguing. While many students have strong opinions, defending those ideas can be challenging—especially for students with dysgraphiaorexecutive functioning challenges who may struggle to organize and write their thoughts. After students conduct research, learn about structured debates, and prepare their arguments, they engage with a customized AI tool built on MagicSchool AI. The tool acts as a counterargument partner, prompting students to think more deeply, refine their reasoning, and consider alternative perspectives. If a student gets stuck, the chatbot offers guided support to help them re-engage with the process. This creates more opportunities for individualized feedback while allowing the teacher to monitor progress in real time.
In Middle School, grade 6 teacher Rachel Lugo uses AI to support writing development. Students used a chatbot to receive feedback on memoir poems, which became a lesson not only in writing, but in metacognition and executive functioning. When the AI initially misinterpreted the assignment, students had to refine their prompts and provide clearer context—building skills in communication, flexibility, and problem-solving. This iterative process is especially valuable for students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, or other language-based learning challenges, as it reinforces clarity, structure, and self-advocacy.
In the Lower School, teachers work with students in grades 3 and 4 to use AI tools like Adobe Firefly to generate images that accompany their writing. This process supports the development of descriptive language and helps students connect ideas to visual representations. For students with dyslexia or ADHD, this multimodal approach can strengthen comprehension and engagement, allowing them to express ideas in ways that align with their strengths. Students reflect on whether the generated images align with their intentions and revise as needed, reinforcing both communication and executive functioning skills.
When designing AI tools at McLean, we intentionally build for a variety of learners, including those with dyslexia, ADHD, and executive functioning challenges. Through careful prompt engineering, we ensure that AI tools can adapt language, provide scaffolding, and support different learning needs. Each tool is tested, refined, and aligned with instructional goals to ensure it enhances—not complicates—the learning experience.
We’ve observed that students with ADHD, who may be easily distracted in traditional settings, often become highly engaged when working with AI. The interactive, problem-solving nature of these tools captures their attention and encourages persistence. Similarly, students with dyslexia benefit from tools that support language processing, while those with executive functioning challenges gain structured guidance that helps them break down complex tasks.
AI is already embedded in everyday life—from streaming recommendations to autocorrect. The most important thing we can do is help students understand how it works, how to use it responsibly, and how to think critically about its outputs. Avoiding AI altogether would put students at a disadvantage; instead, we prepare them to engage with it thoughtfully and ethically. What we have found is that when we start with a strong foundation of AI literacy, students actually articulate themselves when and where AI might be helpful and where AI strips them of their own thinking.
At McLean, our approach to AI reflects our broader mission: to develop confident, capable learners who understand their strengths and challenges. By intentionally integrating AI, we foster critical thinking, support students with ADHD, dyslexia, and executive functioning challenges, and create opportunities for all learners to thrive.
To understand artificial intelligence is to understand that there is no AI without human guidance. At McLean, we are committed to teaching students how to use these tools responsibly, effectively, and with purpose.
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