October 27, 2026A Message from the Head of School - AI, Education, and Shaping the Future at Aberdeen Hall

Dear Aberdeen Hall Community Members,

I recently returned from Toronto, where I had the pleasure of attending the annual Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS) National Heads' Conference. This gathering brings together leaders representing 99 independent schools across Canada to collaborate, exchange ideas, and explore the opportunities and challenges shaping education.

CAIS is also our national accrediting body, providing a framework for educational excellence and continuous improvement. With Aberdeen Hall's next accreditation evaluation beginning next year, the conference was a valuable opportunity to reflect on our progress and consider our future direction.

This year's dominant theme was Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its profound implications for teaching, learning, school leadership, and the future of our children.

Understanding the AI Revolution

Much of the discussion focused on large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google), Llama (Meta), and Grok (xAI). These increasingly sophisticated systems can analyze information, generate content, solve problems, and assist with complex reasoning tasks.

At its core, artificial intelligence can be understood as a collection of computational and statistical systems that make predictions.

Two particularly engaging presenters were Professor Ajay Agrawal, a leading AI economist at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, and Sonia Sennik, Executive Director of the Creative Destruction Lab, a globally recognized organization supporting science- and technology-based entrepreneurship.

Professor Agrawal suggested that we are approaching a critical bend in the curve, where AI's influence on society will accelerate dramatically.
The implications are enormous. AI will create exciting new industries and opportunities while fundamentally reshaping existing professions, employment, and our economy. Many future careers remain uncertain, and even leading experts acknowledge how difficult it is to predict the direction and pace of these changes.

What Should Schools Be Teaching?

Perhaps the most thought-provoking question emerging from the conference was:
What should we be teaching young people in a world where artificial intelligence can access, synthesize, and apply more information than any individual could possibly acquire in a lifetime?

For centuries, education has been organized partly around acquiring, retaining, and demonstrating knowledge. While foundational knowledge remains critically important, increasingly sophisticated AI challenges us to reconsider which human capabilities deserve greater emphasis.

Professor Agrawal suggested that as the cost of prediction declines, the importance of human agency and judgment increases.
The ability to obtain answers is becoming easier. Knowing which questions to ask, evaluating the answers, and deciding what to do with that information will become increasingly valuable.

I believe three capabilities deserve particular attention.

Imagination - Envisioning What Could Be

Students must develop their curiosity, creativity, and capacity to imagine a better future. In our classrooms, this could mean designing innovative solutions to environmental challenges, developing new business concepts, or exploring unconventional approaches to community problems.

Agency - Turning Ideas into Action

Knowledge and ideas are only the beginning. Students must develop the confidence, initiative, and determination to act. Imagine students identifying a community need, launching a social enterprise, or developing a product that solves a real-world problem.

Entrepreneurial thinking, including resilience, adaptability, resourcefulness, and responsible risk-taking, will be valuable regardless of students' eventual careers.

Judgment - Making Wise Decisions

Perhaps most importantly, students must learn to question assumptions, recognize bias, evaluate evidence, and make thoughtful ethical decisions.

Consider students using AI to research a complex social issue, only to discover conflicting recommendations. The real learning occurs when they evaluate the evidence, consider competing perspectives, and defend their own conclusions.

AI may help us predict what could happen. Human judgment helps us decide what should happen.

The Enduring Value of Human Intelligence

Beyond these three capabilities, I believe excellent education must increasingly emphasize critical reasoning, asking meaningful questions, original thinking, ethical responsibility, empathy, collaboration, and intellectual independence.

Importantly, this does not diminish the value of foundational academic knowledge.

Quite the opposite.

Strong foundations in literacy, numeracy, science, history, and the humanities enable students to recognize inaccuracies, ask intelligent questions, and challenge AI-generated conclusions.

Our responsibility is not to replace traditional academic excellence with technological proficiency, but to thoughtfully combine the two.

What Does This Mean for Aberdeen Hall?

I see an extraordinary opportunity for Aberdeen Hall.

We must continue delivering a rigorous, knowledge-rich academic program while expanding opportunities for students to think independently, exercise initiative, collaborate, solve authentic problems, and develop sound judgment.

This will involve ongoing professional learning for our teachers, thoughtful integration of AI into our curriculum, and continued dialogue with families.

AI should enhance learning, not replace thinking. It should stimulate curiosity, not diminish it. And it should expand human potential rather than encourage intellectual dependence.

I envision Aberdeen Hall graduates who are not simply proficient users of artificial intelligence, but capable directors, thoughtful critics, and creative collaborators of increasingly sophisticated technology.

I returned from Toronto energized by the conversations and excited about the opportunities ahead. Although the future of AI remains uncertain, our educational purpose has never been clearer.

Our goal is not simply to prepare young people to succeed in the future, but to give them the imagination, agency, and judgment to help shape it.

Warm regards,

Chris Grieve
Head of School

Coming Soon, a new series: Learning in the Age of AI Series

How do these concepts translate into our day-to-day teaching and learning at Aberdeen Hall? Over the coming weeks, our Mr. Derek Cutler, our Director of Innovation will publish a four-part series taking a deeper look into the classroom, exploring the science of learning, rethinking assessment, and nurturing the human connection that matters most.

Look out for Part 1: What We Don't Know About AI (and What We Know About Learning)