4 Ways Administrators Can Use AI to Be More Efficient

The daily life of a school administrator is anything but routine. A day that starts quietly can quickly fill up with unexpected drama, must-do tasks, and surprise meetings. In this context, tracking and reflecting on your own progress, as well as that of the school in general, can become a daunting task.

Lately, I have been leveraging AI to help make reflection and holding both myself and my team accountable simpler. The following four strategies have helped me use AI to better identify patterns within my day and across the school that make it easier to determine where I need to focus my attention.

KEEPING A LEADERSHIP JOURNAL

The first way I’ve leveraged AI is through what I call my AI leadership journal. I wanted to find a way to better keep track of how I was moving through the school and what I was noticing each day, especially as it either did or did not align with my school’s standards, the Ontario Leadership Framework (OLF). To help me do this, I created a leadership journal custom GPT in ChatGPT to help me.

First, I set the custom GPT up by giving it some necessary context about my school and about me, including my role, my experience, the professional standards to which I aspire, my school’s geography and grade level, and our OLF standards. Depending on your specific context and role, these things will look different, but the important thing is to give the GPT the information it would need to help you assess how you and your school are performing against your goals.

Throughout the week, I journal about my movements around the school, my thinking, and any issues or attempts at problem-solving in the custom GPT. In response, the AI provides me with ongoing commentary on how closely I am meeting the standards in the OLF.

If there is something that I want to focus on (like being more visible or efficient, etc.), I can prompt AI to ensure that I receive feedback on that particular goal. I’ve found that the outputs from the AI tool have been both affirming and occasionally insightful in terms of identifying gaps in my thinking or how I spend my limited time each day.

ANALYZING TEACHER CONCERNS

A second way I have leveraged AI is by using it to help me more efficiently uncover trends in what my teachers were noting as concerns for their students. In our school, teachers submit concerns about students using a short Google Form in which they outline the basic details of their concern about a specific student: focus and attention, impulsivity, social skills, self regulation, etc. From there, the data goes to our special education department and to me. Previously, I hadn’t been able to easily identify any patterns, but AI has changed that.

Now, once I have about 20 forms, I remove any student names or identifying information and upload them all into ChatGPT. I then prompt the AI to identify trends in what teachers were noting. For example, I was able to see that my elementary teachers were struggling to provide students with differentiated materials to align with their personal needs and were struggling with student impulsivity (students calling out) in class.

With that information, I was able to meet with my grade-level leaders and plan professional development sessions specifically targeted for those needs.

PROVIDING READING DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERVENTION PLANS

Similar to how I used AI to identify trends in what my teachers were noticing about student behavior and academic needs, I’ve also leveraged AI to help me with the previously daunting task of analyzing student reading data and creating intervention plans.

Teachers at our school collect data on student reading in many different ways, and I am able to then take that data, remove any student names or identifying information, and prompt AI to help me analyze it.

Specifically, I prompt the AI to create a one-paragraph class profile for each class based on the reading data, and then to provide me with three instructional interventions that each teacher could implement to meet the needs of the lowest-performing students. I then meet with individual teachers to go over the data and decide which interventions we will pursue.

The AI allows me to understand the data much more quickly and provides interventions that directly align with student performance. However, it is important to look at the intervention recommendations critically and then discuss them with teachers to determine what should actually be done.

CAPTURING MEETING NOTES

Finally, the last way I’ve leveraged AI has really helped me stay more present throughout the day and in my conversations with teachers, while still ensuring that I have a record of what was discussed.

As a leader, I attend a lot of meetings, and I want to be attentive in those meetings, which means I don’t want to divide my attention between the conversation and taking notes. But, I also know that it is important to take notes during meetings to ensure that whatever is discussed can actually get done.

This is where AI can help. I began using a free AI app (Fireflies.ai) to take minutes of meetings. I should note that I do not use AI note-taking apps for sensitive topics, drop-in meetings, or informal conversations. I want and need staff to feel comfortable talking with me, and that won’t be the case if I am always recording them. Instead, I use the note-taking AI during formal meetings with individuals, groups, or our entire school.

First, I ask the people in the meeting if they are comfortable with the meeting being summarized by AI, and then I turn on the AI app and let it capture everything that is said. The app quickly learns who is talking and transcribes what is said verbatim.

At the end of the meeting, I can ask the AI to summarize our conversations and provide a to-do list for each person who attended. This can also be automatically shared with attendees. Our agenda for our next meeting is simply this summary and to-do list.

By leveraging AI, I’ve become more efficient in my role as a school leader, leaving me more time to focus on my teachers and my students.