About

I’m an educator, author, and musician. I love learning, I love teaching, and I love creating opportunities and structures for other people to learn and teach — in schools, in art, in writing, and all settings. Everything we do has an element of education, regardless of our work. And it is at intersections between unlike things that we learn the most.

My book Irreplaceable: How AI Changes Everything (and Nothing) in Teaching and Learning was published in 2026 by Solution Tree. It offers a research-based reflection and playbook for teachers, school leaders, and those who support them as they navigate an AI-saturated world. Schools across the country have selected it as a faculty summer read.

Schooled the Musical is a full-length musical currently in development. It’s set in and around a school — and it’s like a Hamilton meets The Sound of Music meets Good Night and Good Luck. A staged reading of the first act debuted at SXSW EDU in March 2026 as part of official programming.

I curate and edit The Educator’s Notebook, a weekly newsletter collecting education-related news from around the web. Now in its 500th+ issue with an archive of over 15,000 articles, it is read by teachers, school leaders, nonprofit directors, foundation leaders, startup CEOs, conference organizers, and more.

I consult on AI in schools, strategic planning, and more with Aptonym.

I serve on the Advisory Board for SXSWedu, the Center for Curriculum Redesign, and the Middle States Association Responsible AI in Learning. I’ve presented on the topics of creativity, cognitive science, and AI at SXSW EDU, NAIS, the College Board, the OECD, and elsewhere in the US and abroad.

Previously, I was Head of School at King’s Academy, a coeducational, American-style boarding school in Jordan, in the heart of the Middle East. King’s provides a world-class education to students from over 40 countries and from all socio-economic backgrounds. My work there focused on the pandemic, governance, financial sustainability, and scaling impact.

Before King’s, I taught at Deerfield Academy for fifteen years and held a variety of leadership positions. I particularly enjoyed teaching the history of the English language, Paradise Lost, the evolution of literary form, digital humanities, and fundamentals of grammar and rhetoric — and, well, lots of other things, too. There is so much to be curious about.

I founded Athena, a platform for teachers to collaborate and share practices, built on the conviction that education has no professional memory — while doctors and lawyers have centuries of practice indexed and recorded, teachers reinvent the wheel every day.

I love meeting people and learning from them. We and everything are all works in progress. Especially in the digital age, we only benefit from extending the discourse. Thanks for your contributions.

For more information on my work, visit my home page or LinkedIn.

Peter Nilsson mail: pbnilsson (at) gmail.com