Newark High School students arise from AI by career exploration

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A recent Thursday morning, Michael Taubman asked his senior class in Washington Park secondary school of the North Star Academy: “In your opinion, what should be the role of AI in your future career?”

“In school, like the way we use AI as a tool and we do not use it to deceive our work … This is how it should be, like an assistant,” said Amirah Falana, a 17 -year -old interested in a career in real estate law.

Fernando Infante, a budding software developer, has agreed that AI should be a tool to “provide suggestions” and clarify the work.

“It's like having an AI as a partner rather than doing the work,” said infant during lessons.

Falana and Infante are students of the Taubman class called The Summit, a one -year program offered at 93 seniors this year and developing to the juniors next year which also includes a 10 -week IA course developed by Taubman and the University of Stanford.

As part of the course, students use artificial intelligence tools – often consulted in a negative light due to confidentiality and other technical concerns – to explore their professional interests and better understand how technology could shape the labor market. The class is also in a timely manner, because 92% of companies plan to invest in more AI in the next three years, according to a report by the World Consulting Company McKinsey and company.

Lessons offer students practical exercises to better understand how AI works and how they can use it in their daily life. They are also designed so that teachers in all areas can include them as part of their courses and help high school students to obtain a Google career certificate for ESSISTIALS, which introduces AI and teaches the basics of using AI tools.

Students and Infanta used AI and the coding skills they learned in class to create their own applications while others used them to create school surveys and trigger new reflections on their future career. Taubman says that the objective is also to give students the agency on AI so that they can adopt technological changes and remain competitive in the workfield.

“One of the key things for young people at the moment is to make sure they understand that this technology is not inevitable,” Taubman told Chalkbeat last month. “People have done this, people make decisions about it, and there are advantages and disadvantages like everything people take and we should talk about it.”

Students need to know the basics of AI, say the experts

As generation Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, graduates of the school and came into a workforce where AI is new, many wonder how the technology will be used and to what extent.

Almost half of the students of the Z generation interviewed by the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup said they Use Ai WeeklyAccording to the newly published survey exploring how young people see AI. (The Walton Family Foundation is a supporter of Chalkbeat. See our list of donors here.) The same survey has revealed that more than 4 students out of 10 Gen Z think they will have to know AI in their future career, and more than half believe that schools should be required to teach them to use it.

This school year, Newark public school students began to use Khanmigo chatbot tutor called khanmigothat the district launched as a pilot program last year. Some Newark teachers said the tutoring tool was useful in class, but the district did not publish data on the question of whether it has contributed to increasing students' performance and test results. The district in 2025 also launched its several million Project to install AI cameras Through school buildings to try to protect students.

But more than the use of AI at school, students want to feel ready to use it after obtaining their secondary school diploma. Nearly 3 out of 4 out of 4 students said their colleges or universities should prepare them for AI at the workplace, According to an investigation From the interior of the upper series Ed and College Pulse Student Voice.

Many of the challenges of using AI in Center Education on the type of learning approach used, the accuracy and confidence of the technology, said NHON MA, CEO of CEO Figure – An online learning assistant who uses AI and educators to help students learn STEM concepts. But that is why it is important to dive AI students to help them understand the ways in which it could be used and when to identify the problems, added my.

“We want to prepare our young people for this competitive world scene, especially on the technological front so that they can strengthen their own competence and their confidence in their future ways. This could also lead to higher income for them,” said my.

For Infante, the elder of the Taubman class, the AI ​​helped to arouse love for computers and to deepen its understanding of the coding. He used it to create an application that follows milestones and personal goals and rewards users with badges once they reach them. As a budding software developer, he believes that he has an advantage over other students because he learns AI in high school.

Taubman also says that it is particularly important for students to understand how fast technology is progressing, especially for students and infantiles who turn to a career in technology.

“I think it is really important to help young people attack the way this is new, but unlike other major new things, the pace is very fast and the implications for the career are almost immediate in many cases,” added Taubman.

Students learn that human emotions are important as AI develops

It is also important to remember the limits of AI, said Taubman, noting that students need the basic understanding of the functioning of AI in order to question it, identify errors and use it accordingly in their careers.

“I do not want students to lose an internship or a job because someone else knows how to use AI better than they do, but what I really want is that students get the internship or work because they are skillful with AI,” said Taubman.

Thanks to Taubman's class, students also identify how AI increases the demand for skills that require human emotion, such as empathy and ethics.

Daniel Akinyele, a 17 -year -old elder, said he was interested in a career in industrial and organizational psychology, which focuses on human behavior in the workplace.

During the Taubman class, he used a personalized AI tool on his laptop to explore different scenarios where he could use AI in his career. Many involved talking to someone about their feelings or listening to vocal clues that could indicate that a person is sad or angry. In the end, psychology is a career on human connection and “that's where I go into play,” said Akinyele.

“I am human, so I would understand what people feel, like the emotion that AI does not see on the faces of people, I would see and understand it,” added Akinyele.

Falana, as an aspiring property lawyer, also used the personalized AI tool to consider how it should count on AI when drafting legal documents. Similar to writing tests in schools, Falana said that professionals should use their original writing in their work, but AI could serve as a launch ramp.

“I have the impression that the legal field should certainly put regulations on the use of AI, as we should not be able to write our case using AI,” said Falana.

During Taubman's class, students also discussed false images and videos created by AI. Infante, who wants to be a software developer, added that he was planning to regularly use AI at work, but believes that it should also be regulated to limit online disinformation.

Taubman says it is important that students have a healthy level of skepticism with regard to new technologies. He encourages students to think about how AI generates images, more important questions concerning the violation of copyright and their training processes.

“We really want them to feel like having agencies in this world, both their ability to use these systems,” said Taubman, “but also to ask these broader questions about how they were designed.”

Jessie Gómez is a journalist for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.