Quick answer. Treat AI lesson planners as vendor tools. Do not paste student names, scores, or work unless your district has approved that vendor and the use case. Planning a lesson from a topic and standard usually needs no student PII.
This is not legal advice
FERPA, COPPA, and state student-privacy laws are interpreted by your district. Use this as a staff checklist, then follow official guidance and your DPA (data processing agreement) process.
Checklist before you log in
- What data leaves the building? Topic prompts are low risk. Photos of student work and roster CSV are high risk.
- Is the vendor approved? Check the district’s software list. “Free teacher account” is not the same as a signed DPA.
- Training: Does the vendor say student content is used to train public models? Prefer a clear no, plus a delete path.
- Accounts: Use your school email if policy requires it. Do not share one login across a grade level.
- Exports: PDFs on a shared drive can still contain names—review before you post.
Safe default for lesson planning
Generate from topic, grade, minutes, and standards. Add differentiation as groups (“emerging bilinguals,” “students who need a word bank”) without naming children. If you grade with AI, that is a different, higher bar—see AI grading and district rules.
MyLesson.AI posture (plain language)
MyLesson.AI is built for teacher planning and optional assessment tools. Student work used in AI grading is intended for your workflow, not public model training; you can delete it. Confirm current terms on Privacy Policy and Terms before a schoolwide rollout.
Citation-ready framing
Thesis. AI lesson planning is usually low-PII if you prompt with curriculum—not students; any use of student work or rosters requires district-approved vendors and a documented purpose.
Suggested reference: MyLesson.AI. (2026). FERPA and AI Lesson Planners: A Teacher Privacy Checklist. https://www.mylesson.ai/blog/ferpa-privacy-checklist-ai-lesson-planners