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Adult, adolescent, and artificial intelligence, working as one.
Teachers, students and artificial intelligence each bring something the others can’t. Together they find the wonder in every key concept.
- What actual intelligence is
- Competency, creativity, character and celebration: the four traits, together.
- How it is built
- Adult, adolescent and artificial intelligence, working as one.
Better, together.
Choose a circle, an overlap, or all three.
All three together: how Actual Intelligence™ is built
Teachers, students and AI together produce learning beyond what any one could accomplish alone: competency, creativity, character and celebration.
Clear the teacher’s desk
AI can take on the jobs that eat a teacher’s week. Hand them over, and see what’s left for people.
The teacher’s desk
What only people can do
- Show up and keep showing upA teacher can earn a student’s trust by keeping promises, especially on the days when keeping them takes effort.
- Take responsibility for a student’s careAn adult can step between two students in a fight, get help, and stay with the child who is shaken.
- Make a student feel missedA classmate can welcome a child back after an absence and say, “We saved you a seat.”
- Model character when it costs somethingA principal can admit a mistake in front of the school and take responsibility for putting it right.
- Listen, and let a student change their mindA teacher can try a student’s unusual pencil grip, discover that it works, and change what they teach.
- Repair a relationship they have damagedA student can apologize to a classmate, make amends, and rebuild trust through what they do next.
- Experience discovery firsthandA child can feel a bridge they built begin to buckle, rethink the design, and feel the satisfaction when it finally holds.
- Choose courage when peers are watchingA student can risk losing social standing by defending a classmate who is being mocked.
- Celebrate a victory they helped earnA class can cheer a new all-time best knowing how many weeks of practice went into it and who kept encouraging whom.
- Decide together what their school should becomeStudents, families, and educators can choose what they value, make commitments to one another, and answer for the results.
AI, the teacher’s assistant
Hand it a job.
0 of 6 jobs handed over
Find the wonder: dead and perfect
Asked for facts about adjectives, an AI taught Dr. Jenkins something new: some adjectives can’t bend.
- happyhappier
- beautifulmore beautiful
- dead
more dead - perfect
perfecter
I wonder how many students can find? That question is the spark.
One of the best uses of AI in education is finding the wonder for all topics listed on the annual key concept list.
Dr. Lee Jenkins, “Education’s Trifecta”, Education Today, 2025Silk, olive oil and sand
Two thousand years ago in Ephesus, silk dipped in olive oil and coated with sand cut marble. Dr. Jenkins tells it as an allegory for schools: each material stands for an intelligence educators already have, and none of them cuts stone alone.
1Put each material on the saw
2Then cut
Nothing on the saw yet.
Every concept, connected
Take bronze. AI can show its connections to occupations, history, geography, science, literature, art, music, theater, the Bible and geometry, and where to see it nearby. Connected to what students care about, a key concept answers the ever-present “why?”
Car taillights have to follow simple safety rules, yet manufacturers make them wonderfully creative. Safety and creativity coexist. The odometer gives educators the same assurance: learning is not compromised by student creativity.
Read the article: Actual Intelligence Education Today (Australia), September 2026. The whole framework is in Dr. Jenkins’ forthcoming book, Learning That Lasts: The Structure for Actual Intelligence.Help your teachers use AI to find the wonder, not the shortcut.
One of the most helpful aspects of Lee’s work is it helps secondary teachers drop external rewards and restore the intrinsic motivation they started kindergarten with.