Fast Company offers 10 practical ways for teachers, coaches, and school leaders to put AI to work:
1) Spark reflection
Ask students to reflect through a conversation with AI. A well-prompted AI will keep asking follow-up questions, pushing students toward real analysis.
2) Critique your syllabus
Give an AI assistant your syllabus and ask for a critique based on clarity, inclusivity, student-friendliness, and completeness. The AI won’t write your syllabus for you, but you’ll get specific, honest feedback that will challenge you to make yours better.
We don’t always have colleagues at our side who can offer input on our work. So this is an objective, independent, instant, constructive way to get a useful critique.
3) Create more visual materials
AI assistants can help create visual layouts and simple comics-style explanations without any design experience to turn your syllabus into a graphic version students want to read.
4) Improve lesson plans
Ask AI to generate 10 warm-up or closing activities based on descriptions of your learning goals, class size and constraints. Having options allows you to figure out better activities than what you would have designed alone.
5) Experiment until something clicks
Experiment with AI until it produces something that surprises or excites you. That moment of “Wait, I could actually use this,” is the moment that turns the conversation from theoretical to real.
6) Expand engaging class activities
AI assistants can help expand considerations for things such as a compelling analogy for a hard concept, a historical anecdote or a mini case study for a short role-play exercise. You can set the direction and be responsible for verifying when you’re teaching a subject you’re well-versed in. You’re not creating special effects but strengthening engagement and improving the learning experience.
7) Illustrate what not to do
Flawed examples are useful to illustrate what not to do. AI can intentionally generate a weak argument, a poorly structured paragraph, or circular reasoning. Students learn what to avoid. Never publicly embarrass a student by using their work as an example of a mistake.
8) Catch what you miss
AI can review your work and catch what familiarity made you miss. Ask an AI assistant to review your materials for accessibility gaps, unclear instructions or areas where your material could be more inclusive.
9) Analyze student feedback
After deleting names and any identifying information from end-of-semester feedback, ask AI to uncover themes, patterns, and gaps. Don’t spend hours manually categorizing open-ended comments when you can get a usable overview in minutes. Then act on what students told you: “What are some things that I’m not seeing? What are some assumptions I’m making or missing? What are some ways I might redirect the course?”
10) Document what was discussed
Use an AI note-taker to capture transcripts of student meetings, advising sessions, and office hours. Request permission first. Searchable records of what was discussed, questions that came up, and what you suggested are useful as time passes and it gets harder to remember the nuances of what you talked about.
Fast Company
