Picture this: A teacher excitedly introduces her class to a new AI-powered writing assistant. Students' eyes light up as they prompt the tool and generate paragraph after paragraph with minimal effort. Within minutes, they've produced essays that would have taken hours to write by hand. The teacher feels proud of embracing innovation, but something gnaws at her as she reviews the work. The writing is polished, yes, but where is the struggle that builds resilience? Where is the messy process of organizing thoughts that develops critical thinking? Where is the learning?

This scenario plays out in classrooms across the country as educators grapple with artificial intelligence's role in education. The question isn't whether AI belongs in our schools (it's already here).

The real question is this: Are we using AI to enhance meaningful learning, or are we letting the tool become the destination instead of the vehicle?

The future belongs to those who can both follow a recipe and invent a new one. Our challenge as educators and parents is to raise students who are grounded in foundational skills but empowered to question, create, and lead. In today’s world, we need learners who can be both cooks and chefs, who know the rules, but also when and how to break them. As I said years ago in our book EMPOWER:

"The problem is that the magic formula doesn’t work anymore, and I’m not sure it ever did... Ultimately we have to ask ourselves... what is the purpose for almost 15,000 hours of instruction and learning time in a school setting from K-12? Do we want to continue producing students who believe their life will be set as a cook? Or who want to live life like as a chef..."

The answer, perhaps, is to help every student become a chef who knows how to cook. To become a creator who understands the fundamentals, but is never afraid to ask, "What if we tried it this way?"