Teaching the Machine to Teach: The Quest for a K-12 AI Tutor

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Caleb Hicks, CEO & Co-Founder at schoolai; Jon Woodard, Executive Director, Emerging Technology Initiatives at Wolfram Research; Karttikeya Mangalam, CEO & Founder at SigIQ.ai; Maureen Heymans, VP, Learning & Education at Google; and Jill Barshay, Writer at The Hechinger Report.The speakers discussed how building an effective AI tutor is not just an engineering challenge, but a pedagogical one. They explored what it takes to design AI systems that support how students learn, reason, and build confidence in real classroom settings.Using live classroom use cases, the panel examined how tools such as AI tutors, translation, and lesson generation can be embedded into daily instruction with appropriate guardrails, teacher visibility, and alignment to standards. The session highlighted how AI can act as a sidekick for both teachers and students—coaching thinking without shortcutting the learning process.