Drive along Route 117 through central Massachusetts and you'll pass through three towns and six schools, each with its own culture, community, and relationship to change. Nashoba Regional School District spans all of them.

When Jed arrived 4 years ago, he brought with him a decade of experience in larger suburban districts, an orientation towards innovation, and a clear sense of what to look for to support his vision: teachers with the capacity and interest to pilot, tinker, and design new approaches that can inform a district's knowledge base. The challenge was building a structure that could identify catalysts across different towns & schools, and turn their individual curiosity into something the whole district could learn from.

A Four-Year Arc

Year 1: The Study Group

In the fall of 2023, Jed sent a simple email to the district. He was looking for people who wanted to learn about AI together. No formal commitment, no deliverables, just a group of educators willing to show up once a month and think together.

About 20 people responded and initiated the AI Study Group. Meetings had a rough agenda, but the real value was in the conversation: What's new this month? Should we look at Gemini for students? What's too fast, too slow? Without realizing it, the group began functioning as an informal advisory team for navigating decision points and collecting perspectives.

Year 2: The Innovation Team

In 2024, Jed recirculated the opportunity and renamed the group the Innovation Team, deliberately excluding AI from the title to broaden discussions. Monthly meetings sometimes featured outside guests; others centered on practitioners sharing what they'd tried. Attendance was voluntary. But the group built trust, a shared knowledge base, and a foundation for what came next. 

Year 3: The AI Leads

The fall of 2025 was a turning point. Jed wrote a formal AI Leads job description for potential participants and posted it as a compensated opportunity for professional learning, collaboration, and resource development for the district. He sent the posting across the district, and also tapped people directly. 

Moving from a voluntary discussion forum to a stipended position added accountability and direction to the group. The 12 selected AI Leads were expected to present at the district's AI-focused professional development day and contribute to the district's online Learning Library, a growing collection of short, teacher-made recordings showing colleagues how to use specific tools in practical ways. For example, a seven-minute screencast demonstrated how to make an exit ticket with Curipod, or how to build a class syllabus with NotebookLM. AI Leads also offered Office Hours for their peers to test the value of this adult learning model. 

Running in parallel, a book study group centered on Tony Frontier's AI with Intention, was open to interested staff members who preferred the voluntary, discussion-based entry point, and included approximately 20 educators. Jed was now leading two on-ramps for educators with different levels of experience and readiness.

Year 4 (Upcoming): Project-Based Leads and the Pathfinder Program

Paying close attention to feedback from AI Leads, book study participants, and the larger faculty, Jed is redesigning again for the fall of 2026. While the concept of Office Hours wasn’t maximized across schools, developing the library the screencasts in the Learning Library were more successful and the capacity and expertise of AI Leads was a valuable asset. Jed is asking SY27 AI Leads to identify a project for the year, which could include a problem of practice to address, a resource to build, a monthly PLC to run; something that resonates with the Lead in terms of value, relevance, and priority. Jed will support each through periodic check-ins and coaching sessions. 

Simultaneously, the launch of the Learning Library is expanding into a planned Roadmap model featuring leveled AI literacy development opportunities for all staff. Jed is infusing Nashoba language, values, and priorities into levels while leveraging strong existing resources from DESE and across the field. 

• Level 1: Exploration: A homegrown baseline around AI Literacy in Nashoba schools, as defined by the durable skills of judgement, critical thinking, adaptability and ethical reasoning . These are the skills that district principal Sean O’Shea describes as essential thinking and metacognitive skills for students and staff. His administrative role and partnership grounded the development of  the district's “driver's ed” model: elementary school as learning AI rules of the road, middle school as a learner's permit (guided access through Magic School or School AI), high school as a license (more open access based on responsible use). This shared framework, and the overview of the district’s AI handbook, gives AI conversations a common starting point. 

• Level 2: Navigation: The DESE AI Literacy certification, CommonSense AI Basics course
• Level 3: Innovation: A choice of Google AI Certified Educator or MagicSchool modules
• Level 4: Leadership: Share Learning with Colleagues through homegrown PD contribution, which could include leading a staff meeting topic, a PLC session, or a MassCUE presentation.
• Level 5: Pathfinding: Lead and collaborate in district change

The Roadmap system offers a district-wide approach to AI adoption across the full adoption curve. The literacy levels and accompanying badges aren't mandated; they're an invitation. But completing progression levels and earning badges is a signal that an educator is ready to go deeper.

Conditions for Success

None of this happened in a vacuum. Nashoba Regional is a mid-sized regional district serving three towns, serving approximately  students across six schools. Unlike many Massachusetts districts its size, it has no dedicated instructional technology integration staff below the district level which is a constraint that shaped the entire model. Several conditions made the model possible. 

Voluntary participation produces variable commitment. Formalizing the role with an application, a job description, a deliverable structure, and compensation shifted the Leads to a working team. The application process helps determine “goodness of fit” intentionally. The compensation doesn't have to be monetary; PDPs, substitute coverage for a half day, or even a book and lunch can signal that the work is valued. But the signal matters.

The annual PD day provides a dedicated forum for district-wide professional learning. Allocating half the day to AI gave Nashoba a chance to host their first scaled conversation about the arrival of AI, share the district’s stance and core beliefs, and recruit teachers to follow-up opportunities. 

The book study gave curious-but-cautious staff a lower-stakes entry point, and the crossover between groups kept the opportunities inclusive.

Flexibility and a proclivity for iteration allowed Jed and his team to quickly pivot away from this approach.

The presence of a superintendent willing to support an AI-focused PD day, and an assistant superintendent driven to advance student learning while remaining attentive to accountability structures, created the conditions for the AI Leads program to succeed.

The Leads group didn't just build for teachers, they unpacked student survey data together, which grounded their decisions in what students were actually experiencing and asking for.

Nashoba's early adoption of Gemini at the high school created real learning about where guardrails were needed and why. That willingness to try, reflect, and adjust is a condition worth naming.

Jed was a catalyst. This is worth saying plainly: the model exists because one person in a district without integration infrastructure decided to build something to support integration. The Pathfinder framework, the Lead Learning Library, the driver's ed model, and the Leads program all came from a director of digital learning who was, in his own words, "stuck in his office" and determined to find ways to reach teachers and students.

Recommendations 

Find your catalysts and make their work visible. Start with a simple email. Who wants to learn together? The early adopters are there; give them a reason to raise their hand.

Find a way to formalize the role. A study group is a start. But to build something durable, the work needs to be recognized through compensation, PDPs, substitute time, or even just a half day out of the building with lunch. Perceived value is still value.

Keep deliverables tight and practical. Ambitious programs fall apart when accountability is vague. A job description, a clear ask, and a manageable output (a 7-minute recording, a PLC session, a badge) are more sustainable than open-ended commitments.

Build for the whole adoption curve. The AI Leads opportunity serves early adopters. The book study serves the curious. The Pathfinder badges serve everyone else. No single program reaches the whole district and multiple on-ramps are an effective way to differentiate.

Start with what you believe. Before tools, before policies, before programs, what does your district stand for? Nashoba's AI mandate (Authenticity and Intention) gave the work a moral center that made the harder conversations easier. Putting that stake in the ground, even imperfectly, is better than waiting until everything is figured out.

As Jed puts it: "The worst thing we can do is nothing."

This case study was developed through an interview with Jed Stefanowicz, Director of Digital Learning at Nashoba Regional School District, in June 2026. It was prepared by Cathy Sanford, Director of Communications at Throughline Learning as part of PEA2K (Partnership for Educators Advancing AI Knowledge) Cohort 1 documentation.