AI for School Leaders: 62 Ways To Lighten Your Workload and Focus On What Matters

[00:01] Announcer:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, helping you build capacity for instructional leadership. Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center, Dr. Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.

[00:13] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to welcome to the program Vicki Echols. Vicki is a veteran educator who has served as a K-12 and university teacher, elementary principal, and district communication director during her career in public education. She currently serves as a school transformation coach for the nonprofit Wellness for Educators, and she's the author of the new book, AI for School Leaders, 62 Ways to Lighten Your Workload and Focus on What Matters.

[00:40] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:42] SPEAKER_01:

Vicki, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:45] SPEAKER_00:

Thanks, Justin. I do appreciate this chance to reconnect. As I was saying to you earlier, you came into my career path at a critical time and I was transitioning jobs and really your guidance made a lot of difference. I got the job and the principal center gave me a lot of great tools, including repertoire, which I know you are working on AI integration. So yeah, I used those when I was a campus principal and it's really an honor to reconnect, talk to you and your listeners today.

[01:15] SPEAKER_01:

Likewise, and I was very happy to endorse the book. If you open the front cover, I see I'm listed first there with some things to say about the book, and I was very impressed with it. And I'm excited to talk about the topic because I think this is something that's going to be with us for the foreseeable future. We're going to have access to these tools. But of course, that raises a lot of questions about the best ways to use them. So Vicky, what did you see happening in the field as these tools became available that prompted you to write the book?

[01:41] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I didn't really pay much attention to AI. I mean, I know it's not new, but when the ChatGPT platform came out, the free one, my husband casually mentioned it. I mean, he noticed it before I did. And those who know me weren't surprised that I just dove in deep. I was really blown away about how fast, intuitive it was. And Honestly, I thought this is a treasure chest because I started to think, what if school leaders could use this tool, you know, really to be more efficient, more focused so that they could save time, reclaim time for building relationships, supporting teams, maintaining relationships.

[02:17]

their own wellness, you know, that was really the foundation of the book. And as many of you say, school culture is something that doesn't just happen. You really have to spend time on it. And there's quite an epidemic, I guess, of school leaders, you know, really losing their own sense of well-being and burning out principals and teachers alike, you know. So I thought the challenges that face school leaders could really be shaped by this book's content. And my own experiences as well, right?

[02:48]

It's difficult to balance work-life balance. And I just think that AI could really help with some solutions, some real practical things. So I dove into some topics and I explored, and it really came fast. I mean, as far as just, oh yeah, this really is a great tool. And I wrote it with school administrators in mind, but I started thinking, you know, really it could work with people in the central offices, even in boardrooms, because it really does help you work smarter, not harder. so to speak, yeah, to focus on what matters.

[03:19] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that time-saving opportunity, I think is a big one for us because there's always too much to do, right? There are always too many emails to answer, always too many decisions to make, too many people to follow up with. And just the breathtaking speed of AI's ability to write or to answer questions can really be a big time-saver if we use it the right way. And I think probably we have all now seen people use it poorly, where it's like, clearly this was written by AI, clearly this is not very good writing. It's very generic sounding, definitely sounds like chat GPT. And I really appreciate the way in the book you take people beyond those obvious kind of, you know, write me a paragraph about the importance of reading to your child or whatever.

[03:58]

You've got lots of very, very specific ideas. Take us into some of the big categories, though. You talk about some kind of starting points around safety.

[04:08] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, actually the book has seven chapters and I really wanted to start with the idea that maybe people don't know what this tool is, right? It's much more than say Siri or Alexa, but it does have some things that make it work better than other things. And so I wrote it with the first chapter of just really going into the basics, the crash course. And I learned on ChatGPT, but I also really liked Gemini and Claude, and I think Microsoft has a version. There are a lot of different platforms, but I just kind of wanted to give an idea of how to really write a prompt effectively and how to get the most out of the platforms. I want to give a shout out to Pritin Shah, who has been on your show.

[04:52]

I think he's an author as well. And he was an expert on describing generative AI. I mean, I'm a practitioner in the classroom, so I had to, I was really happy to lean on some experts, and I really did a lot of research on finding out what it means. So I tried to condense that in the first chapter. The second chapter, you're right, I went into staying smart with AI. And the editors really, I had this at the end of the book at first, and they were like, no, push it up to the front, because if you're going to use this tool, before you jump in, you really need to understand what it's about.

[05:24]

And then the next chapters, three through seven, I dive into some themes that are really drawn from research about effective leadership. And I tried to tie in how these AI-driven solutions could be applied. And then I also, ISTE is the publishing company that I worked with, and they have some very practical and important standards for technology, which I aligned with. So I dive into collaborative decision-making and building trust, professional learning, data management, and family community engagement. But yeah, safety was a big issue. And I tried to really work through what that means by giving it essentially six focuses.

[06:09]

You know, the first one being primarily safety, looking at guidelines. We all have acceptable use policies, but we've got to update those, obviously, and then work with our tech teams, IT teams, and really think about how to make that align with what we're dealing with. I think before we start to work with students, we've got to work with teachers to understand protecting data privacy and using it for good. You know, there's a lot of FERPA guidelines and these companies do read our prompts and our, we don't want to put any identifying information into them and want to keep everything within the guidelines. And then something we've talked about is that, you know, you can't be over relying on this technology. You've really got to guard against just a copy paste.

[06:56]

You can't, You've got to have critical thinking. Our human intelligence still leads and it's not a replacement. It's definitely an enhancement. I like to think of it like an electric bike. We're still steering it. My husband and I have electric bikes and it's the bomb, getting up a hill.

[07:12]

It's just so much better. But we have to be the ones to guide it and put on the brakes and so to speak. And then I've also read a lot about the bias and ethic issues because, I mean, they're trained, these machines are trained by humans, right? And all the biases that come with all the content that's out there in the training and each company, you know, selects their own training material. So I would suggest reading and really vetting the tools because there's a lot of integration now. A magic school bus, I think Khan Academy's using it.

[07:43]

There are a lot of integrations of AI. So I would suggest a good resource is the Algorithmic Justice League, looking at equity and ethics and how they're trained. And then two more things. One is promoting access, making sure this digital divide isn't going to keep some people out. And then a biggie to me is accuracy. It's not always accurate, right?

[08:05]

You can't just take it face value, even if you're researching any topic. The good news is we can use it. help us learn about these different pillars of safety, but staying smart is really how we've got to keep it straight.

[08:21] SPEAKER_01:

It's been interesting to see other fields grapple with that as scientists will ask chat GPT questions and they'll get fake citations hallucinated back to them, or attorneys will cite previous case law using AI and it turns out that that case law doesn't exist or the citation was wrong.

[08:39] SPEAKER_00:

Right. Well, yeah, if it doesn't know, it will make it up because it wants to please in a sense, you know? So it acts as a very eager assistant, but yeah, you can't always believe it.

[08:50] SPEAKER_01:

And in our field, one of the interesting things I've come across is the persistence of education myths that are still alive among educators who create content that of course then is used to train the AI. So if you ask AI, about learning styles, it will gladly tell you how important learning styles are, even though they've been, you know, debunked by researchers for many years now, we're still trying to squash those myths that are out there. So we do have to exercise judgment. We do have to use our expertise. and use it as a tool. I love the electric bike metaphor that you're still steering, you're deciding when to apply the brakes, but the extra juice from that motor can be helpful.

[09:26]

Now, you talk about some surprisingly human topics pretty early on in the book around collaborative decision-making and building supportive relationships and trust. A lot of people probably would not go there first and think that AI can help with those things. How can it?

[09:42] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it is true. There are some very good basic things to start cutting your teeth on this. I think professional learning is one of them, you know, and even just getting communication and revising your emails. But I found it fascinating on a couple of, I mean, some issues that are complex that take a lot of time and it really helps. This has helped kind of streamline the process. So one of them, decision-making, you know, it's consensus or compromise.

[10:11]

I mean, really getting to those points with a team, they're important and they're really good work. But an AI can help with that process by just helping balance out everybody's ideas and keeping things moving. Because I know one of the biggest frustrations I have in collaboration is like, dragging on, you know, and spending the whole day coming up with one daggum vision statement. So it really can speed up, I guess, the tedious parts and get you more into the deep thinking and critical discussions. So one idea I've just explored is like when you're trying to get them to structure a decision-making process and you've got something you want to, I haven't tried this out with yet, but I'd love, I've been working with some colleagues to test it out. And, uh, So if the discussion starts to stall, what we can do is what are some different options?

[11:02]

So I've tried this prompt out. You would type into the prompt the role. So I'm telling the AI, you are working toward consensus or compromise with a team of people seeking to reach agreement. So I've given it a statement. And then I've told it what to create, what's its task. Create a list of group protocol exercises that we can use together.

[11:24]

to reach consensus, such as, and giving it examples is always a good idea. You don't have to, but I put it in the prompt, such as dot voting that we could use in this task and explain to me how this protocol works and give me five. You know, I mean, it can then really research and give you some explanations of things. And they're all suggestions, of course, but there are things that you can use to help Like dot voting to visually rank preferences. Affinity mapping is another one that came up when I was trying this out. And I think these structured exercises really help streamline the discussion.

[11:57]

But I agree with, you know, I was listening to your broadcast with Joshua Stark. who said, you know, in this decision-making process, you still got to keep everything transparent and that you're using AI to help with some ideas and even giving it a chance for the group to know that you're either getting advice from them or that you're making the final decision and letting them know how AI can help. I mean, this is, like I said, a vision statement is another good one. If everybody in the room writes their ideas down in a digital format and sends it to a central location, you can then dump all of those examples into AI and ask it to come up with a set of 10 suggestions that collate everybody's thoughts. Then you put those thoughts up and then you do the dot voting and see what is it we like? Did it capture what you wanted to say?

[12:49]

I think that would be a really interesting exercise and a way to let AI consolidate. You know what I'm saying?

[12:57] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because that consolidation and summarizing and wordsmithing is the tedious, time-consuming, difficult part. But you're still putting the humans back in the loop. I think that was one of the early safeguards that people identified in any kind of professional use of AI is you don't want to send the AI output out into the world without looking at it first and making sure you like it. So there's that review process.

[13:21] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, you've got to let everyone's voice out. who contributed also validate that this is, yes, this hits the mark because that's what I've found. It really is strong in being able to just give you options to try to hit the note that you're singing, right? And just finding that right. Another way that I think AI can help is using its speed to analyze observation feedback. And I think the output then is that you have more time to build a trust and relationship because you're able to spend more time really thinking through that, how the conversation's going rather than how you're going to phrase it.

[14:00]

So what I did was I used the observation notes that I typed up to put into the prompt, but I also asked the AI to use the framework that you have posted on your website called 10 questions for better teaching feedback. And I think it really was, it was like magic to me to see how well it correlated. the observation with the question. So let me give you an example. Your first one is about context. I noticed your lesson objective is blank.

[14:34]

Could you talk to me about how the objective aligns with your lesson? And so in my notes, I would have had the observation objective in the notes and it just slides it into that slot. And the second one was, here's what I saw the students doing, blank or colon or brackets. And then I would drop in the observation and tell me what you about the rest of the question is, tell me about what you thought about those actions. So this is a chance for the AI platform to really just consolidate or analyze and just drop in specific details that go with each of these questions. And you have 10 of them.

[15:14]

And I was really shocked that it did a good job. And it wasn't perfect. And certainly my notes were de-identified. There was no personal information. So I had to tweak it. But I really found that it saved a lot of time and then also gave me some very good ways to frame the question that were specific.

[15:35]

And I didn't have to spend a all my notes to drop it in. It did it for me. So bottom line, it's not about replacing the human connection. I definitely had to still think about the intentionality of my work with them, but with my teachers. But Being specific and phrasing it so that it's a question and an inquiry and a focus on reflection really is more possible because I hadn't had to spend so much time analyzing. Does that make sense?

[16:02] SPEAKER_01:

I think so. I want to ask some follow-up questions because that's really interesting. And while we were chatting, I checked to see if ChatGPT knew those 10 questions. And now that it can search the web in real time, it does. If you ask it for my 10 feedback questions, it knows them and can do things with them. It just pops it up.

[16:17]

Now tell me a little bit more about what you asked it to do. Did you ask it to pick the question or to kind of assign sections of your notes to the various questions or say a little bit more about that if you would?

[16:29] SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, no, actually what I did was I wrote the prompt to say, use this framework, the 10 questions, and then I dropped your framework in exactly with the brackets, right? So it had objective and bracket. And then I dropped in and I said, use these observation notes to inform the questions. And I just dropped them in as is without personal information, underline that. But it really, then it analyzed and went through. Now I did have to say, use a tone of encouragement and reflection and not to advise because what I wanted to give the teacher a chance to give me feedback, not for me to give them feedback.

[17:16]

I think you mentioned this in your book. It's important for the teacher to come up with their own understanding of what they need to do. And if they ask, of course, in a coaching situation, you're going to, if they ask for advice, that's going to be the best place to put it. But chat's really eager to tell the teacher what to do. So I did put that in there as a tone. That's it.

[17:35] SPEAKER_01:

Another great reminder that, you know, the more specific an assignment we're giving it, the better we're going to get the kind of output that we want. Wow. That is impressive. And I think we'll continue to see new things become possible. You know, one thing I've noticed is that any kind of summarizing, any kind of matching up, any kind of alignment with standards, like it knows the professional standards for educational leaders, the ISTE standards, if you're looking for any kind of alignment. And again, now that the web is accessible.

[18:02] SPEAKER_00:

And if it doesn't have them, I've gone to the primary source and copy sometimes and then give it the information. It's really good if you provide it with what you want and say exclusively this, you know, and use that with my own writing too. I'll be transparent. You know, I wanted to have a really good way to describe myself today. So I did use some of my book and drop it and go, how would you summarize this? And it did a good job with it.

[18:30]

Yeah.

[18:30] SPEAKER_01:

Let's talk more about that. Let's talk about our own professional learning and professional goals and advancement. What are some ways that you describe in the book, especially in Chapter 5, that people can use these tools to further their own professional growth?

[18:46] SPEAKER_00:

Right. Yeah, that's the cool thing. I think that's the area, Justin, I think it's going to really reach our classrooms in time. I'm not an expert on that and I know there are a lot of people researching how students will get to that point, but I think it's very important that leadership and our staff learn how to use it for our own professional growth first. and really get a feel for how the guardrails and how the cautions are there. But it definitely is a good way to get, I tell you one of the examples I use is a book study.

[19:15]

You know, the faculty book studies are really popular, but managing and organizing them and even finding books as topics are helpful with AI. gone through and given a guide for how to use, like find questions, get extensions, how to give a survey, how to, you know, really design a book study so that AI can really help bring that about. And it's really good about finding a way to craft questions that everyone around the room can discuss. And I think that's part of the professional learning is learning how to work with teams. And, you know, especially with topics that, like you said, you do want to get primary sources in, but if you could take an article and if you, copy paste the whole article that's on the web and then drop it into AI and ask it to summarize the key points and give me questions for discussion, it's a great way to just enhance the conversation around it.

[20:15]

But it works for personal learning too. I mean, because it works in a conversation mode. So I have asked it to say, I'm interested in this topic blank and then ask me some questions about what I may or may not know about this. And it will give you a chance to have an interaction with, this machine. So it's really fun. It will give you the chance to tell it what you don't know, what you do know, and then it will help give you some resources for those areas.

[20:43]

Yeah, it is definitely an interactive resource. Really fun. But I have to admit, I've used it for other areas of learning, like how do I make my travel plans? You know, it is great for a vacation, which all good, healthy leaders need, right? And if you're going to take that spring break trip, AI's in your back pocket. It's good.

[21:06] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. And really any kind of, you know, like help me consider some options or tell me what I need to think about that I'm not thinking about, or give me a plan to start with, or here are some constraints. What can I do within those constraints? Anything like that, where, you know, I think one of our main limitations is in a busy day is just the mental bandwidth to think through things, you know, and not having to start from scratch with a professional growth plan or an agenda for a training, or as you said, travel plans, even, you know, I have six hours in this city. What can I do? That's within an hour of the airport, that kind of thing.

[21:42]

Just so many possibilities that are out there. I wonder if we could talk a little bit about parent communication. And again, this is where a lot of people start, help me write a paragraph for the parent newsletter. But often we don't really take full advantage of the possibilities that are out there. And I'm very intrigued by the ability of these tools to adjust the reading level. So if I write something, can I adjust the reading level of it so it's appropriate for my audience?

[22:07]

Can I translate into different languages? What are some of the big opportunities that you see and talk about in the book?

[22:13] SPEAKER_00:

That is an interesting one. And it's something that I've found that it surprised me. Let me start with one of the principals I was working with here in Dallas. He was willing to try out a few of these ideas and He wanted to be able to communicate with the parents on his campus. And in a social media, they all were, you know, using some kind of a social media platform. And so he wanted to know some quick descriptions that he could use as social media posts.

[22:41]

And if you give it the details of an example of like, let's say a science night and a date and a time, it will spit out a hundred of them if you want. I mean, you can do 10 at a time. You give it the number and it will give you hashtags and emojis. And it will specialize in being able to give you those as many as you want. But it also he wanted to know ways to help his particular population was a lower economic. And how could I reach them in other ways if they don't use social media?

[23:14]

So he was able to really. use the AI platform to get any, his comment was interesting in that, you know, you can Google that. Sure. You could get those answers in Google, but the AI platforms really streamline the information in a much easier format. You know, you don't get 10,000 ideas. You get as many as you want at a time and it's in a more concise format.

[23:35]

But I would, I was principal. I know we had a lot of volunteers and sometimes volunteers, getting those appreciation ideas to float. What do you use? You know, it's a great brainstormer for that. It also is great for writing guidebooks, you know, giving you an outline and then elaborating on those guidebooks on how volunteers need to, what they need to know to work in your building. And I feel like those letters, like you said, email, it can be overwhelming.

[24:04]

It can stream your box and chain you to your desk for a long time. But if You use the AI platform to help write some of those and depending on the audience. So say you're taking a field trip and you've got to give me a list of things I need to include in an email for a field trip to parents, to the bus department, to the lunchroom, all of those different places that I've got to inform and keep communication going. And it really is very thorough in that regard. Also, you can use it for a team of teachers who are going to present for a family night and come up with a list of ways that I can relate to the families and then write me a script for a slide presentation and give me examples of images. Jim and I will even create images for you.

[24:53]

I is great for that. It's got an AI component. Clipart's really easy to get now. You can do that. And they're also looking at creating video. It's still rudimentary.

[25:04]

It's not really great yet, but it's coming, you know, and we will be able to have at our fingertips so many more tools. It's kind of like how I felt when spellcheck came around. I'm a terrible speller. And so I was like so excited when that happened, but AI is just even better. Yeah.

[25:21] SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So many great ideas and keeping human judgment, professional judgment at the center of it, but finding ways to speed things up, to generate ideas. Yeah. So many great specifics. And as you say, in the subtitle of the book, you've got 62 ways to lighten your workload and focus on what matters. And I think ultimately that's what this allows us to do is focus on what matters and the people that we're working with.

[25:44] SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. Yeah. I hope that that I have encouraged some people to just lean in. Justin, I've seen a lot of pushback, some people banning it, right? And just not even...

[25:54]

allowing it to happen. And I get that there are challenges, but I just want to invite leaders, especially to lean in and really help us lead the way, because I think we can use it for the greater good and really help to build not just better processes, which definitely will happen, but also to gain a better sense of sustainability and wellness for ourselves, because that's a crisis right now. And I think that that is coming back to it. I think we've got to have a way to really support our profession. and make sure we really bring joy back to our work.

[26:28] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, because certainly the workload itself can grind a lot of the joy out of this work, you know, which otherwise could be a lot of fun and very rewarding.

[26:35] SPEAKER_00:

Schools should be the most joyful places on the earth. And that's why I think we should look for tools to help us get to that place. Yeah.

[26:44] SPEAKER_01:

Very well said. So the book is AI for School Leaders, 62 Ways to Lighten Your Workload and Focus on What Matters. Vicki, if people want to get in touch with you online, where's the best place for them to go?

[26:55] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you. I hope that your listeners will connect with me on LinkedIn and on my website, VickiEccles.com, because I really am eager to hear how practitioners are using it.

[27:05] SPEAKER_01:

I'd like to join your journey. Vicki Eccles, thank you so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio.

[27:10] SPEAKER_00:

Thank you, Justin, so much. It was good to be with you.

[27:13] Announcer:

Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.