The Science Teacher Running AI Office Hours at the Public Library
Once a month, a middle-school teacher fills a library community room with retirees, salon owners and skeptical teenagers. Theo Brooks asks her what people really want to know about AI.
By Theo Brooks
Staff Writer, Startups
On the second Tuesday of every month, the community room at the Callow Bend Public Library fills up by 6:15. There are folding chairs, a projector that needs to be hit gently on the left side, a tray of grocery-store cookies and a hand-lettered sign that reads: AI OFFICE HOURS. No question too basic. No question too weird.
The person behind the sign is Nadia Ferreira-Holm, who teaches eighth-grade science at the town's middle school and has, over the past two years, become the person Callow Bend calls when a chatbot does something confusing. Her sessions started with six people. Last month, she counted forty-one, including a retired machinist, two teenagers who came to heckle and stayed to help, and the owner of the nail salon on Front Street.
I talked to her about what people actually ask, what she teaches first, and why she thinks the public library might be the most important AI institution nobody's funding. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How it started
How did office hours start?
Honestly, it started with a phone call from a parent. One of my students' grandmothers had received a voicemail that sounded like her grandson asking for money. It wasn't him. She didn't send anything, thank goodness, but she was rattled, and she called me because I was "the science teacher, so you'd know about computers."
I didn't know much, actually. But I went home and read everything I could, and I realized that the people in my town were having this enormous technology arrive in their lives with no instruction manual and nobody local to ask. So I asked the librarian if I could borrow the community room for an evening. She said yes before I finished the sentence.
Who shows up?
Everybody, which is the best part. The biggest group is people over sixty, and they are the most fearless learners in the room, by far. They don't care about looking silly. Then there are small business owners — Linh from the nail salon uses AI to write her service menu in English and Vietnamese, and she's taught half the room how to do it. Parents worried about their kids. A pastor who wanted to know if it's okay to use it for sermon research. A couple of farmers using it to make sense of equipment manuals.
And teenagers. They came the first time to laugh at the old people. Now they run the troubleshooting table.
The first lesson
What's the very first thing you teach?
The "confident friend" lesson. I tell everyone: imagine you have a friend who has read the whole library and has a terrible habit. When they don't know something, they don't say "I don't know." They make up something that sounds right, in the exact same voice.
Then we prove it. I ask a chatbot about something local and specific — the history of our town's covered bridge, say — and it will often produce a lovely, detailed answer with a date or a name that's just wrong. People gasp. It's the most valuable gasp of the evening.
The goal isn't to make people trust AI or fear it. It's to make them check it, the way you'd check a recipe from a friend who exaggerates.
What comes after that?
Three rules, which are on a laminated card everyone takes home. One: never type anything you wouldn't write on a postcard — no Social Security numbers, no bank details, no medical records. Two: if it matters, check it somewhere else. Three: you are the boss. If the answer doesn't feel right, say so and ask again.
Then we do practical things. Writing a letter to the county about a pothole. Understanding a confusing medical bill — with the personal details blacked out. Planning meals on a budget. Asking it to explain a lease in plain language and then circling the parts to ask a real person about.
In her own classroom
You're a classroom teacher. How do you handle AI with your own students?
My rule is "show your conversation." My students can use AI for some assignments, but they have to hand in the chat alongside the work. I grade the thinking, not just the answer.
What I've found is that the conversation tells me more than the essay ever did. I can see where a kid asked a sharp follow-up question, or where they accepted something wrong without blinking. One of my quietest students turned in a chat where she argued with the AI for twenty minutes about photosynthesis — and she was right. I'd never have known how much she understood from a worksheet.
Some teachers would call that cheating with extra steps.
I understand that worry. There are assignments where I don't allow it at all, because the point is the struggle — learning to write a paragraph from nothing is a skill, like learning to ride a bike. You don't learn to ride a bike by watching someone else ride.
But pretending these tools don't exist doesn't protect kids. It just means they learn to use them alone, at midnight, with nobody showing them how to tell good answers from bad ones. I'd rather they learn in my room.
Worries and surprises
What worries you most?
Two things. The first is the scams. The voice-cloning call that started all this is happening more, and the people most targeted are the people least likely to have someone to ask. We now spend part of every session on what we call the "family password" — a word only your family knows, so if you get a panicked call, you can ask for it.
The second is a quieter worry: that the gap between people who know how to use these tools and people who don't will become another kind of inequality. The salon owner who can now write menus in two languages has an edge. The salon owner across the county who's never had anyone show her doesn't.
And what's surprised you?
How much people want to talk about the big questions. I came in thinking I'd be teaching people where to click. Instead we end up talking about whether it's okay to use AI to write a eulogy, or whether a machine can be creative, or what jobs our grandkids will have. A retired machinist named Walt told me last month, "I spent forty years learning to make things precisely. This thing makes everything approximately." I think about that a lot.
Starting your own
If a reader wanted to start office hours in their own town, what should they do?
Just start. You don't need to be an expert. You need to be curious and honest about what you don't know. But if you want a checklist:
- Ask your library first. Librarians are the original information-literacy teachers. They'll help.
- Keep it free and drop-in. No sign-ups. Lowering the barrier is the whole point.
- Bring real problems. Abstract demos don't stick. A confusing letter from the electric company does.
- Recruit teenagers. They're patient teachers when given responsibility. Who knew.
- Have a privacy rule from minute one. Say it out loud, every time.
- End with a question, not a lecture. "What would you use this for?" gets the best conversations.
What's next for Second Tuesday?
We're starting a spin-off at the senior center, on Thursday mornings, because some folks don't drive at night. And the teenagers want to run a session for younger kids, about how to tell when a video is fake. I told them they could, if they write the lesson plan. They're already arguing about it, which means it'll be good.
Editor's note: Nadia Ferreira-Holm, Callow Bend and the people mentioned here are fictional — a composite portrait created for Ideabro's launch issue.
How this was made Human-written
Human-written. Reported and written by a person. AI not used for the text.
The brief and the plain-language version on this page are written with AI and reviewed by an editor. The story itself is the source of truth.
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