New teachers warned against AI over-reliance in classrooms

The Teachers’ Colleges of Jamaica (TCJ) and The University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona, marked the presentation of graduates with a pointed message for the country’s newest educators: artificial intelligence (AI) may reshape schooling, but it cannot replace the human core of teaching.

Addressing some 790 graduates from eight teachers’ colleges, senior academics and public officials urged the cohort to fuse technological competence with tradition, empathy, and national service.

Delivering the university’s address, Professor Aldrie Henry-Lee positioned AI as a tool that must “magnify — not replace — the teacher”. Speaking under the theme “Pelicans in an AI-driven future: where tradition meets tomorrow”, she described the pelican as a symbol of resilience and collective care—traits she argued are essential as classrooms absorb rapid technological change.

Henry-Lee insisted that the profession’s value lies in qualities AI cannot mimic: empathy, cultural understanding, ethical judgement, and the subtle craft of motivating young people. She encouraged graduates to deploy AI for inclusion – for personalised learning, support for students with disabilities, and outreach to learners on the margins. Ethical AI, she added, could transform the prospects of struggling students, recalling her mother’s success as a primary-school teacher who taught children “once labelled ‘D’ and ‘E’ students” who later became professionals.

Noting UWI’s own approval of an institutional AI policy framework, she warned that students must be trained not only to use new technologies but to interrogate them – governing their risks, questioning their outputs, and turning them towards Caribbean development.

Keynote speaker Paula Llewellyn, former director of public prosecutions, reinforced that message with a reminder that teaching remains a vocation rooted in human development. “No one forgets a good teacher,” she said, reflecting on her own path from a shy schoolchild to Jamaica’s first female DPP. She pressed the cohort to cultivate resilience in the face of classroom indiscipline, social pressures, and what she termed a “microwave generation”, while treating AI as a tool rather than a crutch. Emotional intelligence, she insisted, is still the educator’s most powerful asset.

Dr Garth Anderson, dean of the Teachers’ Colleges of Jamaica, praised the class of 2025 for perseverance through demanding training. He called on graduates to be lifelong learners and to uphold integrity, quoting Marcus Garvey’s view that education must strengthen cultural roots while shaping national identity. His charge to the cohort was direct: create classrooms of “safety, creativity, discipline, and hope”. “Jamaica is counting on you,” he told them.

The ceremony recognised graduates from Bethlehem Moravian College; Church Teachers’ College; the College of Agriculture, Science and Education (CASE); GC Foster College of Physical Education and Sport; The Moneague College; Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College; Shortwood Teachers’ College; and St Joseph’s Teachers’ College.