Wondering which segments of the workforce are ChatGPT superusers? Well, OpenAI just revealed who they are: teachers and educators. And they’re about to get all the benefits of ChatGPT, tailored to their roles: for free.
“Of the 800 million people who use ChatGPT each week, teachers are some of the earliest and most active adopters,” OpenAI said in a statement on their website Wednesday.
And now, in return for their dedication, OpenAI has announced that it is now making its ChatGPT plan free for verified K-12 educators and even school leaders, through June 2027. This provides education professionals with a real advantage at work, not just for their own careers and productivity, but ultimately for enabling them to more efficiently develop the next generation of leaders, tech adopters, and business professionals who, no doubt, will enter into workplaces already heavily powered by AI.
Quick Rundown–What Is ChatGPT For Teachers?
ChatGPT for Teachers is a free ChatGPT plan announced by OpenAI that enables teachers to accomplish things like:
- Tool integration
- FERPA-compliant secure workspace
- Collaborative features
- Personalized features to support you based on the topics you teach, your classroom, grade level, etc.
All of this supports you in being way more productive and creative within your role as a teacher.
How To Access ChatGPT for Teachers
To be eligible, OpenAI notes that you must be a verified educator. When I checked their verification process, it appears that they use a secure third-party tool called SheerID, to verify your job title and association with a school using your name, school name, and school email address.
Once you complete verification on their website, you should be granted access.
Why This Matters
Teachers becoming AI-proficient and using an artificial intelligence tool that is specifically been adapted for them is a huge win for the education industry, especially in the U.S. where OpenAI is currently piloting this initiative with a cohort to support a number of U.S. school districts.
Back in 2022, there was a mass exodus of transitioning teachers post-pandemic. I remember seeing several educators on my LinkedIn feed using the hashtag #transitioningteachers to share their experiences of burnout at school, and to ask others to support them as they left the industry in the teaching function entirely and looked for new work.
During that time, some of the teachers I spoke to decided to leverage their existing skills to transition into HR and L&D. Others decided to work in edtech. Still others transitioned to work as an onboarding specialist or CSM, sometimes within edtech.
McKinsey did a study and noted that about a third of U.S. K-12 educators were quitting their roles in 2022. One of the core reasons? Burnout.
This is why OpenAI’s initiative is so important, because it could significantly help the remaining teachers in the workforce to maximize their productivity while reducing their workload, improving their wellbeing and hopefully leading to improved retention levels. And for now, there are no budgetary constraints.
How To Prepare For The Impact To Your Job
Here are a few things teachers can and should do right now as AI brings changes into education:
- Take an AI literacy course. For example, OpenAI has released a free course called ChatGPT Foundations for K–12 Educators, which would perhaps be a really good start before/while using ChatGPT for Teachers. It’s offered here. Grow with Google has a free Gen AI for Educators course featuring Gemini that you can access here as well. Also try Vanderbilt University’s AI specialization certificate for teachers on Coursera.
- Build a bank of trusted prompts that you know you’ll need to use regularly throughout your workflow as a teacher, from unit and lesson planning to creating extra learning resources.
- Update your resume to include examples of how you’re using AI tools (and the results) as a teacher or school leader/district head; you will find this an invaluable resource in the event you need to start job-searching again or want to move up the ladder into a senior-level role within your school/school district.
Of course, the full advantages of using AI tools like ChatGPT are yet to be fully realized across the education system in the U.S. But for now, leveraging ChatGPT for Teachers and upskilling to build your own AI literacy can help you master AI in your domain and assist your peers who may be falling behind, while making you more effective so you can actually enjoy your work again.
