On April 1, 2025, Del Val English teacher, Michael Fortino, was replaced by AI.

The robot’s name is Teach-O-Matic 7625, a hyper realistic Fortino replica, paid for by Del Val.

“It’s kind of freaky,” Del Val senior John Doe said. “It looks like Mr. Fortino but that’s the only similarity. The robot is very emotionless and just goes through the day.”

From home, Fortino just has to input a brief explanation on what students need to learn for a specified amount of time and the robot will design its own lesson plans.

“It’s really nice to be able to do less work—from home—and get paid the same amount,” Fortino said.

The Teach-O-Matic 7625 has a Bluetooth option allowing for teachers to connect via video to their smart boards for meetings or in class support.

Although it may seem like the robot would be less strict, it’s not. The Teach-O-Matic is also able to control smart passes and writes students up the moment they run out of time.

It is installed with automatic seat-belt launchers, which allows the robot to keep students in their chairs. This feature was quickly disabled because a number of school hold orders were seat-belt related injuries.

The Teach-O-Matic 7625 also has the ability to shut down any personal device. With extra programming, thanks to new Track and Field Coach, Tiffany, it can also control school devices.

“It’s caused a few issues, because when the robot loses control, it shuts down everything and the we cannot do our assignments,” sophomore Bob Brown said.

Despite a few minor cons of the robot, it can automatically grade assignments with partial credit. This saves Fortino even more time.

“Now, all I have to do is input the grades into the grade book for an assignment I didn’t create,” Fortino said. “From just a few sentences, the robot does almost everything for me, and I don’t even have to leave the couch!”