How AI and robotics can improve education and school safety | Opinion
Originally published at The Tennessean: CONTRIBUTORS | Opinion This piece expresses the views of its author(s), separate from those of this publication. - See the link here: https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/contributors/2026/01/31/ai-robotics-education-school-safety-teachers/88444664007/?gnt-cfr=1&gca-cat=p&gca-uir=true&gca-epti=undefined&gca-ft=0&gca-ds=sophi
How AI and robotics can improve education and school safety
The author's son survived a school shooting. That moment made him a proponent for AI in education and robots as a solution to school safety.
Mitch Mitchem - Jan. 31, 2026
Key Points
A Colorado father argues for integrating AI and robotics into schools following a shooting at his son's high school.
He advocates for AI as a personalized, unbiased teaching tool and for armed robots to enhance school security.
The author is moving his family and business from Colorado to Tennessee, citing the latter's more progressive AI policies.
In Sept. 2025, my son was heading back onto campus at Evergreen High School in Colorado when a fellow student started firing a revolver, a 38 special, apparently a family heirloom. Two students were critically wounded. The shooter had been radicalized online in different groups, including one on Reddit. He ultimately shot himself when deputies arrived and died at the hospital.
My son survived. Over two thousand parents got lucky that day. I was one of them.
Let me tell you what that does to someone like me. I stopped caring about politics. I stopped caring about who's offended by what. I no longer cared about winning arguments about things that did not matter. I saw the system for exactly what it is, a machine that has failed to protect our children in every way that counts. At that moment, I remembered the school system that was only a week earlier accusing students of using AI to cheat, meanwhile, a predator was in the building and they never even noticed. And I got very, very clear about what actually matters.
So when I say I want AI helping to teach our kids and armed robots in the hallways, I'm not theorizing from some ivory tower. I'm a father who stared into the void. I have four kids. Two in college, one in high school, one who's three and a half. I've seen this broken system from every angle. And I am done allowing the friction to continue. So here goes.
The system was never built for today's kids
Here's what nobody wants to admit. The education system we have was designed in the late 1800s to produce factory workers. Compliant. Punctual. Able to sit still for eight hours and follow instructions. Bells. Rows. One teacher talking at 30 kids. All of it modeled after the assembly line. All of it is antiquated.
Then we layered on unions that protect bad teachers, administrators who protect themselves, and a political system that treats schools as ideological battlegrounds instead of places where kids actually learn. We put kids last in the very place they need to be first.
The result? A system built for compliance, not curiosity. For credentialing, not capability. For institutional survival, not student success.
And here's the kicker. I am a human adult learning expert, among other areas, including audience engagement, and you may not know, but only about 8 to 11 percent of humans are auditory learners. Yet the entire school model is built around a teacher standing up front and talking while not letting kids use the most advanced tech on earth, and administrations that aren't really protecting, at least not in Colorado and most other states.
AI and robots do what teachers physically cannot
AI will explain something 47 times without sighing. Without judgment. Without making a kid feel stupid. Every one of us remembers a teacher who made us feel small. AI won't create that wound.
AI adapts in real time. If a kid learns better through visuals, it shifts. If they need the big picture before the details, it gives them that. If they need step-by-step, it meets them there. No teacher with 30 kids can do this. It's physically impossible. AI can give every single child a personalized learning experience, and with the right educator relaying real-world wisdom, the child can learn at super speed.
AI has no ideology, and the biases, if they exist at all, can easily be repaired. AI does not have bad days to take out on a student. No ego. It won't punish a kid for having an opinion the teacher disagrees with, political or otherwise.
And AI won't groom your child. It won't sexually assault them. If you think that's an exaggeration, look up what's been happening in Jefferson County schools here in Colorado over the past three years. I've watched it unfold. The humans running this system have proven they cannot protect our kids from threats inside the building, let alone outside it.
And for Robotics, well-placed robotics can be AI trained right now to spot behaviors, and kids that might be getting off track to become violent. And the robot is always watching, always learning and always in one mode, to protect.
The future I'm fighting for
My three-and-a-half-year-old is already ahead of most five-year-olds in numbers, reading, attention, adaptability, understanding, problem-solving, creativity and communication. Not because he's a genius, but because we home-school him with AI as his coach. He loves it. He talks to it. It stays with him, adapts as he grows and reinforces what he learns across real days and real moments with my wife and I as his human guide for wisdom.
That's what I want for every kid. AI coaches that go home with them. Holographic mentors on every device. A companion that grows up with them, one that has no ego, no sexual impulse, no pension to protect.
But here's the part people miss. This isn't about replacing humans. It's about revealing which humans actually matter.
The teachers who survive this transition, in my opinion, will be the ones who were never about content delivery anyway. They were about activation. Seeing a kid and making them feel seen. Transferring wisdom, not just information. Teaching discernment, emotional intelligence and how to navigate failure.
That's not a job AI takes. That's a job AI reveals.
Some states get it. Mine doesn't.
Tennessee is one of only two states in the nation requiring school districts to have comprehensive AI policies. Metro Nashville Public Schools has already embraced AI tools for teachers and students. The state is funding AI-powered weapons detection systems in schools. Tennessee educators aren't running from the future. They're building it.
Meanwhile, Colorado passed SB 24-205, one of the most restrictive AI laws in the country. Within a day of its signing into law, nearly 100 companies, mostly start-ups, began leaving the state. Instead of leading, my soon-to-be former state chose fear. Instead of empowering teachers and protecting kids with better technology, Colorado decided to regulate innovation into the pavement.
That's why I'm moving my family and my business to Nashville in 2026. Not just to return to my Southern roots (I was born and raised in the South) but to give my youngest son hope for a better future. Tennessee is creating something real: human mentors who teach wisdom, AI coaches who teach knowledge and security that actually works.
And we need to stop pretending the old keys will unlock new doors.
Incidentally, I've trained over 60,000 people on human-centered AI. Given 3,400+ presentations across 12 countries on human learning and development. Performed in front of 6 million people as an entertainer. Co-founded a dating app with 300,000 users before we sold it. So my opinion is coming to you as an expert in these areas. And I am telling you, we need to wake up and integrate all this now.
But none of that matters as much as this. I'm a father. And I'm done watching broken systems fail our kids while states like Tennessee show it doesn't have to be this way.
The friction in education is killing our children. Sometimes literally. My wife and I are thrilled to be moving to a state that gets that, with leadership that is getting it done.
Tennessee is building something better. I am excited to be part of it.
Mitch Mitchem is the founder of HIVE, an AI transformation corporate educational firm working with major league sports teams, healthcare, energy companies and many of the world's top brands. He is relocating his company and family from Colorado to Nashville in 2026, where he will focus on removing friction in our systems and helping in any way he can to build up the community and organizations of Middle Tennessee and beyond.
