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From the Desk of the Head of School: We are integrating AI while promoting student agency and human connection

Welcome to the 2026-27 school year! I want to share with the wider RE community the content of an email I sent to families before the start of school. The subject of significant focus this summer has been enhancing and revitalizing our teaching practices around artificial intelligence. For the past few months, we have continued to integrate AI into our pedagogical approaches in ways that elevate student agency and keep human connection at the center of learning.
Our academic leaders have outlined an educational framework designed to promote advanced AI literacy while developing future-proof skills across all grade levels. Guided by legal, ethical and developmental considerations, our goal is for students to leverage AI as a thought partner and tool for innovation – while recognizing that technological advances will never replace their own creativity and critical thinking.

We offer a clear continuum for AI development:
  • Grades 6-7 (AI-Aware Thinkers): Building foundational technological awareness, understanding how digital tools operate and learning to question outputs.
  • Grades 8-10 (Guided Explorers to Capable Users): Using AI for active problem-solving, research and design while evaluating evidence, verifying facts and avoiding over-reliance.
  • Grades 11-12 (AI Literate Innovators): Leveraging AI as a sophisticated thought partner for high-level creative, analytical and ethical work.
This journey is anchored in our Future-Proof Skills Framework:
  • Analytical, Computational & Systems Reasoning (Thinks Deeply): Combining technical fluency with structural thinking to analyze data, model outcomes and solve real-world problems.
  • Critical Synthesis & Disciplinary Inquiry (Thinks Critically): Challenging assumptions, evaluating truth across media and forming evidence-based judgments across disciplines.
  • Divergent Creativity & Iterative Design (Thinks Creatively): Leveraging creative risk-taking, original interpretation and learning through the iterative process of growth.
  • Strategic Communication & Intercultural Insight (Leads with Integrity): Using authentic human voice to build understanding, communicate across cultures and engage in constructive feedback.
  • Ethical Leadership, Social Responsibility & Service (Builds a Better World): Grounding technological deployment in moral inquiry, academic honor and compassionate community stewardship.
  • Resilience, Wellbeing & Collaborative Agility (Pursues Excellence): Cultivating self-regulation, health advocacy and team synergy that elevates the collective group.
Given the constant evolution of AI’s capabilities, we approach this technology with humility, a commitment to continuous learning, and a determination to ensure our students possess the essential skills needed to thrive in an ever-changing world. This past summer, our entire faculty and staff engaged in dedicated AI-related professional development, and school leaders worked closely with our newly formed RE AI Think Tank – a group of parents and alumni who generously offered their expertise in AI and related technologies.

We are also assembling REAIC (Ransom Everglades AI Committee), a committee that includes internal constituents, including students. While focusing on AI operational use, this group will be partnering with our established AIRE (AI@Ransom Everglades) Task Force, the academic-focused committee, which will also be its own committee. The work of AIRE over the past three years has placed Ransom Everglades at the forefront of AI in education nationally and set the standard for pedagogical best practices. Their work to date has helped us enhance the student experience.

Our focus on technology remains deeply rooted in the liberal arts. During this summer of AI immersion, we also made steady progress on the planned Sundheim Humanities Center on our upper school campus. The work on this important center illustrates what has always been a core belief at RE: that the study of the humanities is foundational to producing exceptional leaders who will leave the world better than they find it.

All that we do is tied to our core values – The RE Way – and that important mission. I thank all of you in advance for your support this year!

Rachel Rodriguez
Head of School
Email Mrs. Rodriguez
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Middle School

2045 South Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove, FL 33133
Phone: 305 250 6850

Upper School

3575 Main Highway, Coconut Grove, FL 33133
Phone: 305 460 8800

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Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. It is rated the top private school in Miami and among the 10 private schools in North America. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.


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