Led by Brett Vogelsinger, the Tools for High Impact and Immediate Use cohort is creating timely materials for immediate use across grades 6-12. This cohort recognizes that while AI tools and usage are changing rapidly and in ways that cannot be anticipated, these tools are simultaneously already being used in classrooms and by students.
Meet the Cohort
An English teacher with over two decades of experience in a middle and high school in a public school district, Brett Vogelsinger lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his family and can often be found in his garden when he isn’t teaching, reading, or writing. He approaches teaching as a craft that evolves over time, continually seeking new ways to foster student learning in a changing world. His current work focuses on embedding poetry into instruction, integrating AI in thoughtful and transparent ways, strengthening students’ essential ELA skills, nurturing independent reading lives, and using writer’s notebooks to support practice and growth. He also serves as a keynote speaker and workshop presenter, sharing his expertise with educators beyond his own classroom. His work has been featured in Edutopia, The New York Times Learning Network, NCTE’s blog, and NPR’s MindShift podcast.
Aerin Bender teaches high school English in Colorado and has worked in education since 2011, with licensure in secondary language arts, elementary education, and K–12 ESL. She holds master’s degrees from Duke Divinity School and the University of Southern California, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Louisville. Her academic background includes theology and language study, which continue to shape how she thinks about meaning, interpretation, and the power of language in human experience. She reads voraciously, practices paper quilling, and shares her home with two college students, a ball python named Veralidaine Neverfell, and Merlin, a free-range tortoise who answers to no one.
Eric Gietzen teaches English at Shorewood High School, consistently ranked among Wisconsin’s best. After earning his degree in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Eric traveled by train, bus, and foot through Europe, Ukraine, Russia, Mongolia, and China, beginning his teaching career at Lau Wai Language Institute in Taipei, Taiwan. Eric holds a master’s degree in information science and has taught English language arts in grades 7–12 at Shorewood since 1994. He is the cofounder of Watershed Wisdom, an interdisciplinary, experiential program exploring the Milwaukee River Watershed, part of Shorewood’s curriculum since 1998. The program has received two EPA certificates of recognition. In 2001, Eric received the Jarvis E. Bush Award for excellence in teaching writing. Outside the classroom, he is an avid reader, traveler, and Great Lakes surfer.
Elyn Krüger is a 7–12 ELA teacher at Hoonah City Schools in Hoonah, Alaska, a remote Tlingit community. She holds an MBA in sustainable business from Bainbridge Graduate Institute and a Master of Teaching from Seattle Pacific University, with certifications in K–8 education and 4–12 English, history, social studies, and environmental science. She brings over two decades of experience in education, digital curriculum development, and organizational strategy, from preschool through graduate levels. She is GLAD-certified, served as a Highly Capable and Gifted program coordinator, and held board positions in educational nonprofits and union organizations. At Hoonah, she works to implement dual pathway learning initiatives and project-based learning across K–12 classrooms. Her work emphasizes culturally responsive teaching that integrates Indigenous educational traditions and relationship-focused neuroscience. As a contributor to the NTCE AI Framework Project, she is curious how AI can support often underrepresented rural and Indigenous students.
Timothy Sinclair teaches at Northern High School in Calvert County Maryland. While currently teaching ninth grade ELA and Advanced Placement literature and composition, he has also taught in the Teacher Academy of Maryland program and in various regional special education programs. He has received National Board certification in Adolescent and Young Adult ELA. He received his Bachelor of Arts in English from the State University of New York College at Potsdam and his Master of Science in curriculum and instruction from McDaniel College. He has had the opportunity to work with the University of Maryland Writing Project on multiple teacher inquiry projects, most recently as part of the Re-Storying project, in conjunction with the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, developing instructional methods and materials to support multimedia literacy.