What happened when a school stopped asking what AI could do?
How Pinewood American International School Made a Crucial Shift In AI Adoption
Written by: Anju Shivaram, AI Project Manager, Middle States Association | Published September 11, 2026
A Committee Full of Energy, But a Faculty That Stayed Put
Pinewood finished the first RAIL endorsement in AI Literacy, Safety & Ethics with a policy framework, a Gen AI framework for the high school, and a committee that believed in the work.
But it had not brought along all of the faculty.
“The committee was full of energy,” said Roxanne Giampapa, Head of School. “But getting the wider audience to join was a little more difficult.”
Contrary to their change strategy, no visible cohort of early adopters had emerged to show the rest of the faculty it worked.
Divided Attention Was Only Part of the Problem
During that first endorsement process, Pinewood was also preparing for its Middle States Sustaining Excellence Colloquium, a re-accreditation protocol focused on action research. All sixty-four teachers were already conducting classroom research for it, which siphoned the faculty’s attention.
But the committee also came to see that it had been treating AI as a technology question rather than a question of purpose. Roxanne explained, “We had been choosing which tools to procure and deciding who would use them in which division. We lost sight of the purpose.”
Pinewood was also unsatisfied with the IB Learner Profile they had been leaning on for years. While the school fully embraced its attributes, the language read as a list, and a list could not describe who a student was becoming.
“We really wanted was to move from thinking about what students can do to how students choose to act,” Roxanne said. That emphasis—“how students choose to act”—is really a question about student agency. And student agency is central to the question that drives Pinewood’s mission: Given today’s global context, what kind of humans should emerge from a Pinewood education?
Answering Identity First
To answer that question, Pinewood realized that they needed to decenter AI and focus instead on students. After surveying teachers and students, they made some key shifts in their Portrait of a Graduate:
FROM AI as a tech question — TO AI as a purpose question
FROM what students can do — TO how students choose to act
FROM lists of qualities — TO coherent human development
FROM performance in school — TO preparation for life
With this new framing, they drew on their Greek roots and the international character of their community to arrive at their Portrait of a Graduate (below).
“Students are formed in school, but they’re not finished,” Roxanne said. They are in the process of “becoming,” which speaks to how student agency forms character—and, ultimately, identity.
The Portrait also shapes Pinewood’s Declaration of Powerful Learning, which describes success for the most important learning experiences at the school. (The Declaration of Powerful Learning is one of the foundational assets that schools create as they complete the second RAIL endorsement, Essential Learning Experience with AI.)
Whereas many schools still ask, “What can we do with AI?” Pinewood has chosen to start from a different position: Their mission, Portrait of a Graduate, and Declaration of Powerful Learning operate together as a north star, and AI is just one tool to guide them on their journey to that destination.
Why Faculty Came Along This Time
That may sound great in theory, but the faculty still have to make it happen in the classroom. Fortunately, the school’s work for their Sustaining Excellence Colloquium became the foundation for strong AI adoption.
“Through Sustaining Excellence, teachers came to understand the power of action research grounded in purpose,” Roxanne said. “They had had deep experiences with it over these last three years. So when we told them that they would have the opportunity to do action research for the second RAIL endorsement, they were familiar. A lot of people had also been playing in the sandbox of AI already… the conditions were right.”
The proof came in the form of faculty adoption: the endorsement in Essential Learning Experience with AI calls for 25% of faculty to do action research, but more than 40% of Pinewood’s teachers participated.
What the Sprints Taught Each Division
In the high school, two history teachers fed documents from the Russian Revolution into an AI platform, built a Lenin persona, and invited students to 'dine with him. Apostolos Rofaelas, High School Principal, calls the result the politeness paradox: “When we actually use AI, how do we behave? Aren’t we blunt? ‘Do this,’ ‘Give me this analysis,’ ‘Fix this’. Where is the human aspect?” In this exercise the students were the guests, with an authoritarian figure seated across from them. “So they have to remind themselves of what it means to be human when dealing with AI.”
For the middle school, the lesson was process-over-product. “In one action research sprint, you may not always find a solution,” said David Mannell, Middle School Principal. “Sometimes you finish a process and think, I don’t totally know what I learned, but it did help me to think about how to approach problem solving.”
The clearest result came from a student. In one sprint, a seventh grader wrote, “Now that we’re still in early grades when we learn how to learn or study, if we use AI, not only are we never learning, but also we will start depending on AI way too much.”
David reads it as “the identity question” arriving on its own: “What a powerful thing for a seventh grader to think of… it is a great example of phronesis in action.”
In the elementary school, no children use AI. “Our children are obviously too young to use AI,” said Karen Georgacacos, Elementary Principal. Her teachers were the ones learning, and she expected fewer early adopters given how hands-on planning is for elementary grades.
Yet by the end of two sprints, every age group had found a use. “Everybody found a way to use AI to increase reading comprehension, to help with the PYP exhibition,” Karen said. “Every age group realized that AI works across the board for every subject for every age group.” Teachers who had never opened an AI tool now use them regularly.
The action research structure mattered more than the tools. “We found that the two-cycle structure turned what you would call mistakes or difficulties into data for the teachers that they could then look at and reframe how they want to teach,” Karen said, “which is a breakthrough for us as we’re becoming a more data informed school.”
Demet Gökalp, IT Teacher and EdTech Specialist, works alongside those teachers. “Sometimes they don’t want to use the new tech tool, but I always try to support them,” she said. “We need a purpose, not only using a tool.”
The kindergarten action research sprints provide an illustration. The first sprint produced AI-generated storybooks personalized for each child, which the children loved. For the second sprint, inspired by Pinewood’s Declaration of Powerful Learning, the team let students choose what happened next. “Some quieter students can choose something,” Demet said.
What Comes Next
Assessment remains an open question. In addition, Roxanne said, “We are still struggling with how we’re going to KPI these things.”
Nevertheless, RAIL work includes designing and updating your change strategy and change plan, and Pinewood can point to important progress: The middle school has renamed its advisory program Character, Ethics, Joy. Meanwhile, the official Portrait of a Graduate will roll out to faculty this year.
“We came into RAIL to get better at AI,” Roxanne said, “and we left with so much more.”
If your school is still asking “What can AI do?” it might be time to find inspiration in Pinewood’s approach: look at your Portrait of a Graduate first. And if your teachers and students might struggle to say what those attributes look like in a Tuesday lesson that incorporates AI, designing your Declaration of Powerful Learning is the logical next step.
Pinewood American International School serves 600 students from PreK through Grade 12 in Pylea, Greece as a PYP, MYP and Advanced Placement school. The school completed the first RAIL endorsement, AI Literacy, Safety & Ethics, in 2024 and the second, Essential Learning Experience with AI, in June 2026.
Want to learn more about RAIL? Visit msaevolutionlab.com/rail
