In this episode, Priten speaks with Alyssa Muhvic, a high school history teacher in Indiana navigating AI's reshaping of her classroom. With experience on her district's AI task force and deep expertise in both AI literacy and equity concerns, Alyssa demonstrates how educators can lead rather than resist technological change. She challenges the assumption that AI's presence signals either inevitable dependence or straightforward disruption, arguing instead that the work is fundamentally pedagogical: helping students develop the judgment to use these tools responsibly while still engaging with core historical thinking skills.

Key Takeaways:

• Treating AI as a search engine reframes citation, sourcing, and critical thinking as one unified practice. Students must learn to evaluate AI outputs with the same skepticism they'd apply to any source—examining bias, verifying claims, and contextualizing information. This makes digital literacy inseparable from historical literacy.
• The equity issue isn't access; it's reliability and responsibility at different price tiers. Paid AI plans produce output 20% more accurate than free versions. When affluent students get more reliable tools, the learning gap widens. Teaching responsible use becomes a justice issue.
• Academic dishonesty with AI reflects overwhelm, not moral failure. High-achieving students risk-taking for perfection; struggling students disengaging entirely. Neither group benefits from prohibition. Both need to understand why checking your work still matters.
• Transparency about your own AI use gives students permission to use it thoughtfully. When teachers hide their tool-use, students either view AI as forbidden or adopt it covertly. Showing your process—and its limits—normalizes critical engagement over sneaking.
• Districts need protected time, not more mandates, to equip teachers as active learners. Asking educators to master AI literacy while managing diploma rewrites, state standards shifts, and dual-credit pipelines is unsustainable. The bottleneck is time, not will.

Alyssa Muhvic is a Social Studies Teacher at Noblesville High School in Indiana, where she has been shaping young minds since 2021. She teaches United States History, Pre-AP World History, and Indiana Studies, and was the driving force behind launching the school's Ethnic Studies course — designing and implementing the curriculum from the ground up. Alyssa earned her degree in General History and Secondary Social Studies Education, with a minor in African American Studies, from Ball State University in 2021.