In this episode, Priten speaks with Brian Merusi, a special education teacher at Niles High School working with students aged 14–19 who have cognitive impairments. Brian brings two decades of international teaching experience across Abu Dhabi, Poland, Penang, and rural development contexts. The central tension: how do we unlock AI's potential for accessibility and student expression while protecting students from its ethical risks and exploitation?

Key Takeaways:

• Speech-to-text accessibility tools matter more to this population than ChatGPT ever will. For students with typing challenges and diverse communication styles, the ability to speak and have systems capture their thinking credibly is transformative in ways that generative AI is not.
• Pandemic developmental delays hit hardest where social interaction was irreplaceable. Students with cognitive delays experienced compounding losses during remote learning—missing not just content but windows of social and executive development that cannot be fully recovered later.
• Teachers are curators of development, not content deliverers. Brian frames his role as shepherding students toward independent learning and workforce readiness, making technology decisions based on what advances that mission, not on what's trendy.
• AI's dual promise and peril is most acute for students with fewer safeguards against manipulation. The same tools that could help students with dyslexia access reading can also draw them into harmful spaces they wouldn't otherwise encounter—requiring active pedagogical intervention.
• Educators need unified policy guidance, not individual teacher judgment calls on authenticity. Without district-wide clarity on what constitutes authentic work in an AI world, each teacher invents their own standard, creating inconsistency and confusion.

Brian Merusi is a mission-driven educational leader and community developer who combines over four decades of diverse global experience with a passion for practical solutions. Deeply rooted in Special Education and Learning Support across the U.S., Malaysia, the UAE, and Poland, his career also encompasses executive roles as a biotech CEO and development leadership in the D.R. Congo and Uzbekistan. A specialist in technology integration, Brian currently leverages this unique cross-sector expertise to create accessible learning environments where technology opens doors for every student.