Alabaster Scales Responsible AI for English Learners

When Alabaster City Schools began piloting Telo AI, the district wanted to explore a question many school leaders are now asking: How can artificial intelligence be introduced responsibly into classrooms in a way that supports teachers and creates meaningful learning opportunities for students?

After seeing Telo used with English learners, the Alabama district decided to expand, purchasing four additional Telo AI robots for the 2026-27 School Year.

For Superintendent Dr. Wayne Vickers, the decision reflects the district’s approach to emerging technology: Innovation has value when it addresses a real classroom need while keeping educators at the center of instruction.

“We want to be thoughtful about how we bring AI into our schools. For us, technology should support our teachers and create meaningful opportunities for students. What we saw during the Telo pilot gave us the confidence to expand its use and see what it can do for more of our English learners.”

Dr. Wayne Vickers, Superintendent, Alabaster City Schools

Giving English learners more time to speak

English learners need significant opportunities to speak English to become comfortable and proficient. Yet teachers have limited time to provide every student with extended one-on-one conversation. Adding more teachers or instructional assistants could provide more individualized attention, but that is increasingly difficult amid staffing shortages and budget constraints.

Telo AI is designed to help address that gap. The AI-powered robot interacts individually with students through spoken conversation, giving them additional opportunities to listen, understand, and respond in English while their teacher works with other students.

The goal is not to replace educators, but to provide additional individualized practice at a fraction of the cost of adding instructional staff.

Mandy Heatherly, an EL teacher at Alabaster City Schools, piloted Telo with her students.

“One of the things I liked most was seeing students get another opportunity to actually use English. They weren’t just answering multiple-choice questions on a screen. They had to listen, understand, and respond. For English learners, having that additional speaking practice can be very valuable.”
Mandy Heatherly, EL Teacher, Alabaster City Schools

AI that adapts to the teacher, not the other way around

Telo does not introduce its own curriculum. Teachers select the activity or learning objective, and the AI adapts the interaction to what they want the student to work on. Educators reuse their existing content and instructional materials while Telo adapts to each student’s English proficiency.

Heatherly says that flexibility makes the technology easier to integrate into everyday instruction.

“I don’t have to change what I’m teaching or adopt a new curriculum. I can use the materials and activities I’m already working on with my students, and Telo adapts the interaction around them. The teacher is still deciding what the student needs to work on.”
Mandy Heatherly

More personalized learning with less screen time

Unlike a traditional chatbot or learning application, Telo combines conversational AI with a physical robot. Students speak directly with it, which creates a voice-first interaction rather than putting students in front of another laptop or tablet for conversational practice.

The district’s pilot experience led it to purchase four additional robots. For Dr. Brent Byars, who oversees the district’s English learner program, the expansion provides a way to increase individualized practice despite limits on teacher time and district resources.

“Our EL students come to us with different backgrounds, proficiency levels and needs. We want to give them as much individualized practice as possible, but adding enough staff to provide that level of one-on-one support isn’t realistic. Telo gives us another way to expand that practice while our teachers remain in control of what students are working on.”
Dr. Brent Byars, Director of Testing and Federal Programs, Alabaster City Schools

AI-supported practice gives districts another way to extend their existing teams and provide more individualized interaction at a fraction of the cost of adding instructional staff.

Turning conversations into actionable information

Telo gives teachers visibility into student sessions, including participation, session length, vocabulary development and performance across language skills. Educators can use those insights to identify where individual students need additional support and track their development over time.

Telo is also aligned with English language proficiency standards used across the country, including WIDA, Texas ELPS, California ELD, ELPA21 and Arizona ELP, helping teachers connect everyday practice with the skills measured by assessments such as ACCESS, TELPAS, ELPAC and AZELLA.

Teachers determine what students should work on, Telo provides individualized practice, and educators can use the resulting insights to guide future instruction.

Responsible AI as additional classroom capacity

Much of the conversation around generative AI in schools has focused on content generation, academic integrity, and concerns about students using AI to do work for them. Alabaster’s deployment represents a different model.

Rather than doing the work for students, conversational AI asks them to do more: speak, listen, explain and practice.

Responsible AI also means paying close attention to student data. Telo is designed around data minimization: images, audio recordings and transcripts of student conversations are not retained on Telo’s servers, and student data is never used to train AI models. Once an interaction has been analyzed, only the educational insights teachers need to understand student progress are retained.

Together, these principles point to a broader definition of responsible AI in education: technology that keeps educators in control, minimizes the student data it retains, reduces reliance on screens and increases the individualized support schools can realistically provide.

“AI is already a part of education, but the important question for school leaders is how we use it responsibly and purposefully. If we can use these tools to provide students more individualized support while empowering our teachers, that’s an opportunity worth exploring.”
Dr. Wayne Vickers, Superintendent, Alabaster City Schools

With four additional Telo robots joining the district. Alabaster City Schools is moving beyond experimentation and exploring how responsible, teacher-directed AI can give English learners more opportunities to practice while extending what educators can provide.

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