AI takes center stage at Maryville City Schools teacher training

AI takes center state at Maryville City Schools teacher training

The Daily Times

July 24, 2026

By: Mathaus Schwarzen

Maryville City School teachers got a glimpse of the future Thursday, July 23 at the district’s iReach University seminar.

According to keynote speaker Becky Keene, the future starts now.

“I truly believe we have to stop thinking about the future of education as this thing that’s 10 years out, or 20 years out or even two years out. It’s right now, it’s happening, you’re living it,” she told guests at the event.

“The future of education is you,” she added later.

Ongoing education

Maryville’s iReach University got its start as a way to train teachers on incoming technology, and it shares a name with the systems’ iReach tech program. Maryville maintains “iReach coaches” at every school — full-time teachers and instructors who double as tech coaches for their coworkers. Those staff, Assistant Director of Schools Josh Oliver said, help plan the event every year.

Oliver said the seminar offers a flexible way for teachers to get some of their professional development hours.

Teachers need 19.5 hours of professional development annually. iReach University offers them six, if they attend the whole day, although Oliver said some staff come for just the morning or afternoon instruction.

About 240 people had registered, he said.

The event offered about 30 sessions to choose from — allowing teachers to customize the instruction. The school system works to identify needs among the body of teachers over the course of the school year and then schedules sessions to cater to those needs.

Thursday’s offerings ranged from educational chatbot integrations to the basics of iPad use. Maryville City Schools recently spent $1.69 million to purchase iPads for multiple grades, and some teachers Thursday may have wanted additional instruction on the new devices.

AI in the classroom

During her first presentation of the day, “Preparing Students for an AI World,” Keene told local educators not to think of generative AI as a hurdle to be cleared but as a part of life for students.

Students, she said, are already familiar with AI tools in nearly every aspect of life — to the point that some of the youngest learners assume every device can hold a conversation. Blocking tools like AI, in her opinion, is similar to blocking other parts of a student’s daily life like a pencil, the internet and calculators.

“We’re blocking the very thing that they assume is part of their world,” she said. “It’s just a part of their learning experience. So we have to figure out how to do that in a way that’s really productive and healthy and safe.”

Keene urged educators to think of plagiarism and cheating as “a character issue, not a technology issue.”

She advocated mindful implementation of the new tools, reminding guests present that the technology will only advance. The best approach, she said, teaches a responsible application of a new part of modern life.

“We can stop seeing innovation as disruptive, as a problem child that should be put back in its corner,” she said. “Instead, we can start seeing incremental innovation as a possibility.”