Our Impact
The Alchemy Effect: From federal policy to high school classrooms, we're proving that AI can amplify human potential rather than replace it.
Our Impact - Building a Human-Centered, AI-leveraged approach
From federal policy rooms to high school classrooms, we're proving that AI can amplify human potential rather than replace it.
🎯 The Headlines
National Recognition
- AI Vanguard Fellow with AI for Equity
- U.S. Department of Education Contributor Department of EdTech
- SXSW EDU 2025 Featured Speaker
- TIME, EdSurge, CBS News, CPR, and NPR Work Featured
- Colorado AI Roadmap: CEI contributor
Measurable Impact
- 1,000+ voters empowered through student-built AI
- 20% reduction in teacher prep time
- 100% student engagement in AI-leveraged classes
- 16 schools implementing AI governance framework
- 7,500 Students and 1200 Staff impacted through AI Leadership at DSST Public Schools
- Doubled AP Psychology pass rate, leveraging AI for building assignments and delivering immediate feedback
Innovation at Scale
- Created The RCP Method™ for Promoting AI: Simple Steps to Great Prompts
- Launched VoteWise Colorado with student developers
- Leading collaborative partnerships across DSST
- Building an intergenerational AI Fluency curriculum
From One Classroom to National Movement: What started as a late-night sketch of a prompting framework has grown into a comprehensive approach to human-centered AI in education. Here's how we got here...
Institutional Leadership & Systems Change (May 2025 - Present)
May 2025 - DSST AI Governance Framework Led the development of DSST Public Schools' comprehensive "Position, Priorities, Beliefs and Policy" document for AI in education. This living framework now guides:
- Top-down and bottom-up approach to AI Innovation
- Ethical AI implementation across 16 schools
- Teacher and educator professional development approach
- Student safety and data privacy protocols
- Community engagement strategies
"Policy without practice is just paper. Practice without policy is just chaos. We need both," informed our Top-Down and Bottom-Up Strategy.
AIxCoherence Academy Partnership Collaborating with AIxCoherence Academy to build sustainable AI literacy programs that center coherence between:
- Technology capabilities and human values
- Individual growth and systemic change
- Innovation pace and educational equity
- Student agency and institutional responsibility
This partnership is creating replicable models for districts nationwide seeking thoughtful AI integration.
Increasing Impact (Summer 2025)
AI Vanguard Fellow Recognized by AI for Equity as a leader advancing AI implementation for underserved communities.
Aaron Cuny
Featured in TIME by author Andrew Chow focused on the importance of positioning educators to lead on how and where to leverage and integrate AI across education:
Zach Kennelly, a teacher who has been leading AI integration into DSST, a network of Denver charter schools, sees more potential for AI in the classroom. He taught AP Psychology last semester, and used AI tools to give students immediate feedback on their short analyses of psychological research. He also gave his students an AI bot trained on study guides and practice exams, allowing them to develop their own personalized, interactive learning approaches to study for the AP exam.
“Creating a brand new learning experience, giving individualized feedback for 60 students, then helping them internalize it—we’re talking 60 hours to do that effectively over two assignments,” he says. “Leveraging specific AI tools, I can move that process to two hours.”
Kennelly still harbors concerns about how AI tools are impacting critical thinking, as well as the motives behind tech companies’ education initiatives. “Positioning tech companies to lead the conversation around how to do this in education: That has messy incentives and is a real concern,” Kennelly says.
Andrew R. Chow
Scaling Our Approach (Early 2025)
February 2025 - EdSurge National Feature: "AI Early-Adopter Schools Band Together" The article opened in my civics classroom, where students are building AI chatbots for social good. As I told EdSurge:
Emily Tate Sullivan
March 2025 - SXSW EDU: "Enough Talk! Let's Play with AI" Leading a 90-minute hands-on workshop for educators from across the nation. No theory—just practical implementation.
The Line was around the block...
2025 AI Conference - Keynote Speaker Presenting alongside Microsoft's Chief Learning Officer on "Creating an AI-Ready Workforce"—bringing classroom wisdom to corporate leadership.
Oakton is leading the way with AI certificates in Community Colleges. i was proud to Keynote.
InnovateEDU Webinar with Erin Mote: Contributed to "Decoding the recent 2025 AI Executive Order: What K-12 Educators Need to Know" with Erin Mote, Keith Krueger and Vera Cubero.
Commenting on our Federal Policy alongside these incredible leaders.
Launching Alchemy Learning taking nearly 15 years of education innovation and The RCP Method to scale.
Building Bridges - Hackathons & Fellowships (2024-2025)
Playlab Hackathons - Intergenerational Innovation Partnering with to create something unprecedented: hackathons where high school students, teachers, and community elders collaborate to build AI solutions together.
Intergenerational Hackathons with Playlab, DSST students, teachers, system leaders and board members.
Key Outcomes:
- 4 intergenerational hackathons facilitated
- 75+ participants across age groups
- 50+ community-centered AI projects launched
- Bridging digital divides through collaborative creation
aiEDU Fellowship (Year 1 and Year 2) Selected as a Fellow with aiEDU, joining a national cohort of educators shaping the future of AI in education. This fellowship deepened our understanding of:
- Ethical AI implementation at scale
- Cross-district collaboration strategies
- Student voice in AI governance
The fellowship's influence is woven throughout our current work, from policy recommendations to classroom practices.
Chapter 4: The VoteWise Success Story (Fall 2024)
"This might be a massive failure," I told my co-teacher Gianna Geraffo as our seniors pitched their ambitious idea: an AI app to help Colorado voters.
Two weeks later, those same students had built VoteWise Colorado—a multilingual voting guide that would serve their community in ways we never imagined.
The Results by Election Day 2024:
- 1,000+ voters empowered to make informed decisions
- 10,000+ AI interactions helping citizens understand ballot measures
- 3 languages (English, Spanish, Vietnamese) serving immigrant communities
- Featured on CPR News as a model for civic engagement
One student developer told reporters: "I wanted to connect to more people to let them know that their vote really matters."
The game-changer? When students build for authentic audiences—their families, their communities—cheating becomes irrelevant. The work becomes sacred.
Chapter 3: The AP Psychology Pilot (Early 2024)
April 2024 - Colorado Public Radio Feature: "AI Isn't Just for Tech Students"
Cameras captured something new in my AP Psychology class: students using AI for instant essay feedback and actually improving their writing within two weeks.
The Results:
- Essay feedback time: 3 days → instant
- AP exam prep efficiency: 75% time reduction
- Student engagement: 100% (literally running to class)
- Writing improvement: More concise, expanded vocabulary, deeper analysis
As one student explained: "It's like having a built-in teacher available 24/7, but I still have final say."
Building custom bots to create aligned and rigorous FRQ questions.
Using AI tools, directed by me, to deliver instant feedback. Not replacing teacher and peer feedback, but adding a new step.
From Classroom to National Stage (2023-2024)
The recognition came fast once word spread about our work:
School Teams AI Collaborative Selected among only 80 educators from 19 schools nationwide for this exclusive year-long pilot with Leading Educators and The Learning Accelerator.
May 2023 - Federal Policy Contributor Selected to contribute to the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology report: "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning"
Going Public & The Birth of The RCP Method (2022-2023)
May 2023 - CBS Colorado Feature The first major media spotlight. They'd heard about a teacher doing something different—not banning AI, but embracing it responsibly.
On camera, I demonstrated MagicSchool.ai creating differentiated materials at "mild, medium, or spicy" difficulty levels. My student looked directly at the lens: "It helps me lay out my project faster, but don't use it to cheat."
Winter 2022-2023 - The Genesis Late 2022. ChatGPT had just launched. While others panicked about cheating, I saw opportunity.
Watching my students struggle with generic, biased AI outputs, I realized they needed a framework. Late one night, grading papers, I sketched out what would become The RCCP Method (later refined to The RCP Method):
- Role: Define who the AI should be
- Context & Content: Provide necessary background
- Prompt or Plan: Clear, specific instructions
https://gamma.app/docs/RCCP-Method-for-AI-Prompting-Zach-Kennelly-m7wyo7g322z2otp?mode=doc
"This changes everything," I thought. And it did.
Our Measurable Impact Today
Students Empowered:
- 1,000+ voters served through student-built technology
- 100% engagement in AI-enhanced classes
- 50+ intergenerational collaborators in hackathons
- From consumers to creators of AI solutions
Teachers Supported:
- 75% time savings on routine tasks
- 100+ educators trained through workshops and webinars
- National fellowship networks activated
- The RCP Method adopted across disciplines
Systems Strengthened:
- DSST AI governance framework serving 16 schools
- AIxCoherence Academy partnership scaling best practices
- Federal and state policy contributions implemented
- Institutional change models documented and shared
Communities Served:
- Multilingual civic engagement tools
- Intergenerational AI literacy through The Rithm Project
- Student-created solutions for mental health, financial literacy, immigration
- Real problems solved by diverse innovators
Policy & Thought Leadership:
- U.S. Department of Education contributor
- Colorado AI Education Roadmap architect
- AI Vanguard Fellow for equity
- aiEDU Fellow shaping national standards
- InnovateEDU thought partner
Ready to Build Your AI-Empowered Educational Ecosystem?
We don't just theorize about AI's potential—we've proven it in classrooms, shaped it in policy rooms, scaled it through communities, and bridged it across generations.
[Start with The RCP Method] [Book a Consultation] [Join Our Movement]
"People who don't understand this technology are the ones most likely to be exploited by it. Let's change that together—across all ages, all backgrounds, all communities."