The chatter about ChatGPT and K12 education is pretty negative, and I get it.
As a mom of a middle schooler who recently tried to pass off an essay written by ChatGPT as his own, I can see the downsides. But, as a former principal, I can also see the upsides. I was never fortunate enough to have a budget for an assistant, which meant that when I got spread too thin, important things could fall through the cracks. Or, get left until the last minute. Or, just not get done at all.
But with ChatGPT on the scene, school administrators suddenly have a lot more support. Take the schedule, for example.
As a trained AI assistant, ChatGPT can create your building schedule. As with any assistant or scheduler, ChatGPT needs to be given all the parameters. Different from a human assistant, however, ChatGPT will spit out a draft in mere seconds. Even better, it can then make refinements per your instructions. ChatGPT is in dialogue with you—so it remembers its previous task and can iterate on it. Imagine the possibilities:
- Show me a version of the schedule with 50-minute blocks
- Show me a version of the schedule as a 4×4 block schedule
- Show me a version of the schedule with a rotating flex block
Then get a response in a heartbeat. If there’s a staff member or teacher doing the schedule, all the better. Now they can oversee the process and have time to take on another helpful task. That schedule project you’ve put off because creating all the variations in order to land on the right schedule for your building is too complicated and time-consuming?
Now it becomes not only viable but manageable.
ChatGPT and K12: Enlist AI to be your ghostwriter
Keeping up with all the communications is no joke. As a middle school principal and a head of school, I spent a lot of time crafting the perfect email responses and updates; not to mention reports to the board. But with a few simple directions, in some cases, ChatGPT can help with writing these messages, and then, you can revise. It’s nuanced enough to take directions on tone. It’s not that you couldn’t do this without AI, it’s that with AI, you can do it faster.
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If time is money, with ChatGPT as your free ghostwriter, you suddenly have a lot more to spend.
Supporting teachers with ChatGPT
There are so many ways ChatGPT can help teachers. They can have ChatGPT help generate lesson plans and assessments, and suggest primary sources with links. They can upload student work, ask for ideas about how to strengthen that work, and then conference with students.
Research clearly shows the more teachers are in communication with home adults, the more their students achieve. Requiring teachers to send weekly updates home or to be in close communication with parents or caregivers of at-risk students is easier with an AI teacher’s aide. Having a platform that gives you all the information about a given student in one view, and then the ability to message students or parents from that same screen is also very beneficial.
ChatGPT then ensures that a tired, frustrated, or simply overworked teacher can communicate with patience and tact. Every time. No matter how hard their buttons have been pushed. School-home communications are the cornerstone of successful schooling.
So, when a tool comes along that facilitates easier, better communications for school leaders, school administrators, and teachers, it’s good to jump on the bandwagon. Especially when there’s virtually no learning curve.
Just ask my middle schooler!
