Teaching Sustainability in the Age of AI: A Practical Framework for K-12 Classrooms

Artificial intelligence is entering K-12 schools at the same time that students are being asked to understand increasingly complex sustainability problems: heat, drought, climate migration, pollution, environmental justice, and contested public claims about science. This article argues that AI can support sustainability education, but only when teachers use it as a guided instructional partner rather than as an authority or shortcut. We propose a classroom-centered framework organized around four practical commitments: helping teachers manage complexity, engaging students in inquiry with real data and local questions, teaching students to question AI outputs and datasets, and expanding access for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. The article offers grade-band examples for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms and identifies ethical concerns that should shape implementation, including algorithmic bias, privacy, digital inequity, and the environmental cost of large-scale computing. The goal is to help teachers make complex environmental issues more visible, discussable, and actionable when it is used with professional judgment and careful verification.