You're on track to get doubled donations (and unlock a reward for the colleague who referred you). Keep up the great work!
Take credit for your charitable giving! Check out your tax receipts
Donate
To use your $50 gift card credits, find a project to fund and we'll automatically apply your credits at checkout. Find a classroom project
Skip to main content

Help teachers & students in your hometown this season!
Use code HOME at checkout and your donation will be matched up to $100.

Your school email address was successfully verified.

AI Literacy & Student Well-Being

Thank you for your interest in AI Literacy & Student Well-Being! Our interactive lesson helps students understand both the strengths and limitations of AI chatbots. Through this lesson, students will learn how AI chatbots generate responses and how to think critically about them. The lesson will also help students discern when AI chatbots aren't the right tool, using two real-world, mental health scenarios as examples of why some situations call for human support instead. By the end, students will walk away knowing what healthy, informed interactions with AI can look like.

This lesson does not cover academic uses of AI, such as whether or how students should use AI for schoolwork or in the classroom.

Every AI chatbot response featured in this toolkit is real and was generated by an actual AI chatbot, not written or edited by our team. We've curated these examples to illustrate key lessons about how AI works and where its limitations lie. Keep in mind that AI chatbots are unlikely to produce the same response twice. Factors like model variability, conversation context, and timing all influence what response an AI chatbot will generate. So if you or your students give an AI chatbot the same prompt, you'll likely see a different response. That's part of what makes AI so important to understand.

This 30-minute lesson plan includes three short videos about how AI chatbots work, healthy AI use, and AI's limitations when it comes to providing mental health support, and a discussion-based activity about discerning between AI versus human responses. There is a teacher worksheet for the pre- and post-lesson polls, a teacher handout and a student handout for the discussion-based activity, and a student take-home handout with mental health resources.

We want teachers to be aware: Video 2 ("Mental Health and AI") contains a scene in which a youth character hints at suicidal ideation. It does not include graphic detail and is only mentioned briefly. This scene illustrates one of AI's most important limitations: its inability to appropriately take action when a youth's safety or mental health may be in danger. We encourage teachers to use the video to open a conversation about who students can turn to instead for important concerns. Crisis resources and mental health support information for youth are included in the student take-home handout ("Healthy Interactions With AI").

Teach your class about AI literacy, provide feedback in a survey, and receive a $400 DonorsChoose credit. The Child Mind Institute will use your feedback to improve our educational materials and product offerings for future classes.



What Students Will Learn:

  • How AI chatbots generate responses, including prediction, mirroring, and engagement
  • Why AI responses can sound confident and supportive without truly understanding what you're saying
  • When AI tools can be helpful and when they fall short
  • The importance of real people for mental health support, safety, and decision-making
  • Practical strategies for using AI critically, responsibly, and safely

To be eligible for this reward, you need to:

  1. Teach 6th–12th grade in California.
  2. Have a printer and A/V equipment. Be able to print worksheets in advance for each student and have a way to show videos with audio to the class.
  3. Conduct a pre-lesson poll. Students will answer questions to assess their current knowledge of AI chatbots.
  4. Show the three videos about AI literacy and mental health to your class. Students will watch the videos that explain how AI chatbots work, the pitfalls of using AI for mental health support, and how to promote healthy interactions with AI.
  5. Lead a class discussion-based activity. Guide students through an exercise where they will identify whether responses were written by an AI chatbot or a real person.
  6. Conduct a post-lesson poll. Students will answer questions to assess what they've learned about AI chatbots.
  7. Tell us how it went by completing a feedback form. Your responses will be shared with the Child Mind Institute.


Time Activity Description
2 min Pre-lesson poll Assess initial understanding
17 min Video 1: "How to Think About AI"
Video 2: "Mental Health and AI"		 Explore how AI chatbots work and limitations for using AI for mental health support
5 min Class discussion activity: Identifying AI Analyze AI-generated responses versus real human responses to different common challenges
4 min Video 3: "Healthy Interactions With AI" Reflect on ways to interact with AI tools given what students have learned about AI literacy and well-being
2 min Post-lesson poll Measure learning gains

Materials for the lesson



After you submit your responses and if all eligibility requirements are met, you will receive your $400 DonorsChoose gift code by email within three weeks.

With support from

Please sign in to your DonorsChoose teacher account to access the survey.