Jaycie Homer is a sixth-grade teacher leader, career and technical education department head and technology mentor at Sixth Grade Academy in Lovington. NM. She is a 2025-2026 Teach Plus Leading Edge Fellow.
Lovington Schools serves nearly 3,500 students in grades Pre-K through 12. What makes our district unique is our grade-level school structure, with students attending one of 10 campuses organized by grade — a model we’ve successfully followed since the early 1990s.
Lovington is in located in the oil patch along the NM/ Texas border a bit north of Hobbs. Generally this is a very conservative part of the state, and is part of the Permian Basin Oil and Gas area where development has been rapid with a great increase in workers and their families.
Many oil field workers are single men, but the growth of communities in the oil patch does include more kids, and more jobs outside Oil and Gas, and there’s been an increase spike in students in Lea County where Lovington is since around 2014,
Also the number of hispanic families counted as “foreign born” has increased greatly too, which stresses schools with a need for a lot of ESL etc. As Jaycie Homer states, she was at her wits end until she discovered what AI could do for her teaching responsibilities.
Printed in the Las Cruces Sun News through their association with other Gannet newspapers in NM, Sept 21, 2025.
“Ms. Homer, you’re the only teacher who really gets me.”
I looked up from my desk as one of my students lingered behind after class. Her words caught me off guard, not because I hadn’t heard similar things before in my 11 years of teaching, but because this time, I felt like I could actually live up to them.
Like so many educators returning to the classroom this fall, I’ve faced the exhaustion of trying to do too much with too little. As a sixth-grade teacher in rural New Mexico, my days are regularly spent trying to juggle individualized education plans (IEPs), language accommodations, grading, and parent communication—all in addition to classroom management. Many nights ended with me hunched over the kitchen table until midnight, sacrificing time with my two kids just to keep up. In New Mexico rural communities like mine, where teacher shortages are severe and resources are stretched, the burden only grows heavier.
But last year, something changed.
I rediscovered the joy of teaching, and not in the way you might expect. It wasn’t a pay raise or a new curriculum. It was artificial intelligence (AI).
I teach Career and Technical Education (CTE) for a class of 20 students. Among those students, there are seven English language learners, one student with autism, and seven students with IEPs. Each day I must meet a wide range of diverse learning needs within a single 40-minute period. For years, this responsibility consumed my time, my energy, and sometimes even my belief that I could keep doing this work.
With the help of online resources and recommendations I discovered AI tools specifically for K-12 education, including programs like MagicSchool AI, Diffit, and Microsoft Copilot. What once took me hours to create leveled assignments, differentiated worksheets, accessible reading passages, behavior support plans, and progress monitoring tools now takes only minutes out of my day.
For example, I can use MagicSchool AI to instantly modify a lesson for my student with autism, breaking down complex tasks into manageable steps with built-in social-emotional check-ins. For my English learners, Diffit allows me to convert articles into multiple reading levels and languages in seconds. Further, Microsoft Copilot automates my parent communications and generates data summaries for IEP meetings that used to take entire evenings.
These tools not only save me time, but they’ve also restored my love for teaching. Gallup reports that teachers who use AI tools regularly save an estimated six hours per week. That’s the equivalent of six full weeks over the course of a school year. For me, that means going on family trips and making it home in time for dinner. The guilt that once weighed on me as a working mom has begun to lift. For my students, it means having an engaged teacher who’s present in the classroom.
Seventy-four percent of teachers who use AI for administrative work say it improves the quality of their teaching. Integrating AI has given me the space to build deeper relationships with my students, more emotional bandwidth to offer encouragement, or simply listen. I see my students not as checklists or data points, but as curious, creative individuals with unique potential.
At the end of the day, AI tools handle the tasks that drain me so I can focus on the ones that fuel me. Rather than taking the heart out of teaching, AI has brought it back.
While AI brings transformative benefits to teachers like me, it faces increasing threats from regulations and legislation that could restrict the innovation ecosystem that has enabled them. Maintaining a healthy innovation ecosystem is essential to ensure that educators can be better resourced and students can receive the individualized care that they deserve, especially those in rural areas.
By fostering thoughtful policies that balance safety with preserving opportunity, our policymakers can pave the way for AI to continue empowering teachers and enriching learning experiences. Every child deserves a present, energized teacher. And every teacher deserves the time and tools to be that person.