Connected at Brookwood - The Permission to Say "Not Yet"

The Permission to Say "Not Yet"

At McPherson Middle School in Kansas, something unusual happened this year.

Administrators asked all 480 students to return their Chromebooks.

The devices didn’t disappear entirely; they now live in classroom carts, brought out intentionally for specific moments, but the shift was clear. Technology moved from ever-present to purpose-driven. As principal Inge Esping put it, “This technology can be a tool. It is not the answer to education.”

For about a decade, the pressure in schools ran in one direction: adopt, adopt, adopt. One laptop per child. Apps for everything. If your school wasn’t racing to integrate the latest platform, you were falling behind. The assumption was simple: more technology meant better learning.

It feels like something has shifted.

A recent New Yorker article—shared by several Brookwood parents (thank you)—offers a glimpse into why. It describes what happens when schools enable Gemini, Google’s AI suite, through its education platform. A sixth grader opens an essay and is prompted: “Help me write.” A slide deck: “Help me visualize.” The tool arrives before the thinking does.

Google gives schools the option to turn Gemini on or off for students (at Brookwood, it is off), and researchers are beginning to weigh in. At MIT, scholars have cautioned that integrating AI into learning environments “may inadvertently contribute to cognitive atrophy.” A separate study across MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, and Oxford found that students who relied on AI—and then lost access to it—performed significantly worse and were more likely to give up.

What’s striking is not just the research, but the convergence. Families, teachers, school leaders, and researchers are all arriving at the same question at the same time: does this tool earn its place in a child’s day?

And more people are giving themselves permission to say: not yet.

For years, questioning technology in education carried a stigma. It suggested resistance, fear, or being out of step. But what’s emerging now feels different. It’s not rejection, it’s discernment. A growing insistence that technology proves it serves children before we hand it to them.

At Brookwood, we’ve been doing our own version of what you’re seeing in Kansas.

Over the past year, we have surveyed families, monitored usage, reviewed research, observed classrooms, and listened closely to students, teachers, and parents. Out of that work, we have been drafting our Technology Philosophy and Principles, which is grounded not in what tools can do, but in what children need.

These principles will shape how we approach technology across the school: how and when it shows up in classrooms, how it supports (rather than replaces) thinking, and how it fits into the rhythms of a child’s day. It will inform our practices, our curriculum, and even our schedule moving forward.

This is not about stepping back from the future. It’s about being deliberate in how we meet it.

“Not yet” is an underrated phrase. It leaves room for possibility without surrendering intention. It says: we’re paying attention, we’re doing the work, and we’re going to get this right for children.

If you have thoughts about what you’d like to see in this space, I would love to talk – email me at [email protected]. 

David Saunders
Director of Changemaking, Leadership, & Technology