🤖 10 AI efficiency tips for admins

🎙️ I’m keynoting the FREE Back to School AI Summit

If you’re looking for practical strategies and big ideas around AI in education, the Back to School AI Summit is a great free option.

From Sept. 8-12, 2025, you’ll find thought-provoking keynote speakers, educator-led sessions, and informative tool-centric demos.

I’ll present the closing keynote — “AI Literacy in Any Classroom … in My Classroom” at 9am U.S. Eastern time on Friday, Sept. 12, 2025.

Check out all of the sessions — a full week’s worth! — and register for free.

📚 New AI resources this week

1️⃣ The new encyclopedia: How some kids will use AI at school this year (CNN, via WENY News)

2️⃣ New National Educator Survey Reveals AI and CTE are Key to Preparing Students for Future Careers (PR Newswire)

3️⃣ For $65,000 a year, a teacher-less AI private school comes to Virginia (The Washington Post)

📢 Your voice: Google’s AI updates

Last week’s poll: How do you feel about Google's AI updates?

Back in July, I shared some Google AI updates that had me worried. Here’s what you thought of them …

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ I'm very optimistic (13)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 I'm cautiously optimistic (22)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I'm somewhat pessimistic (7)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ I'm very concerned (3)

I’m very concerned: I agree with you, Matt. Too much, too soon. When are WE - the educators - going to stand up to tech companies and say, enough is enough? We need to implement AI with thought and consideration to the developmental appropriateness of our students. — Sarah

I’m very optimistic: I personally feel it will help to upgrade or enhance my teaching & learning experiences and boost my professional development standard. — L. Gitanjali

I’m very concerned: These appear to have been rolled out with little to no real input from educators yet use identifiers that sound appealing to educators. With the widespread influence that Google has on education through Classroom, I worry that this will continue to further impede the efficacy and development of our teachers, rather than support and augment their work. — M. Berkshire

I’m somewhat pessimistic: I'm relating it to the recent elevated concern regarding cell phones. There are districts, and states for that matter, that are creating policy (or laws) to combat the issues we're seeing with phone use. If we aren't careful, we're going to see the same thing with student use of AI. Our first priority needs to be AI literacy, followed closely by protecting the safety and security of students. Sometimes, that means doing better to vet AI tools and have protocols in place to better manage them. Or, we need to use tools that have those controls built in. — C. Sussex

I’m very optimistic: I love that this is built into a safe, known platform, rather than teachers just continuing to share data/information/student PII with the newest flavor of the month.

What would you like to read in AI for Admins?

What’s a topic you’d like to see covered here? Hit REPLY to this email and let me know.

Have you done anything you’d like to share with the AI for Admins community? Hit REPLY and let me know.

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🗳 Poll: Your admin AI efficiencies

In today’s newsletter, we’re talking about AI efficiency — actual ways real administrators are using AI to be more productive. How are you using AI — and what are your strategies?

Instructions:

1. Please vote on this week’s poll. It just takes a click!

2. Optional: Explain your vote / provide context / add details in a comment afterward.

3. Optional: Include your name in your comment so I can credit you if I use your response. (I’ll try to pull names from email addresses. If you don’t want me to do that, please say so.)

💼 10 AI efficiency tips for admins

You don’t have to go very far to see an ad, a social media post, or a speaker at a conference talking about AI efficiency.

“You’ll save so much time!”

“You can be more efficient!”

“AI helps you to be more productive!”

But all of those feel like hyperbole if you don’t know how to actually do it.

A reader emailed me recently asking about this problem directly:

I think the answer is “yes, I do have ideas!” … but it’ll take a little unpacking.

The problem with searching for tools

Your fellow reader above fell into the same trap that so many of us do …

When we look for solutions, we look for tools.

We’re hoping that someone has already developed an app or a site that will solve our exact problem.

Sometimes, they have.

But more often than not, in our internet searches, we find for-profit tools (because, honestly, they’re all for-profit, right?) that kind of fit but kind of don’t.

Why?

Search engine optimization (aka “SEO”). Specialists will help companies rank highly on Google searches for specific keywords — like “AI tools for school administrators”. They’ll pour a ton of money into SEO so you’re more likely to click on those top search results.

The search engines deliver you what they think you’ll want … and the search engines can be gamed by good SEO specialists.

Instead of tools, think in terms of tasks

Now, like I said … sometimes, there are great ready-made tools that are a perfect fit.

But I’ve found the most value, personally, in the general purpose AI assistants — ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic’s Claude, etc.

These “frontier models” are capable at a wide variety of tasks — if you know how to prompt them.

The exception? If someone I know (or trust online) tells me a tool is getting them good results, I’ll give it a shot.

Instead of thinking, “What tool can help administrators (or teachers)?” …

… I’d rather ask “What task do I need to do, and can an AI assistant help with it? (And if not, is there something else?)”

The educator AI apps are OK, but …

Your big all-encompassing educator tools will support administrators. The big three in my mind right now are:

• Brisk Teaching (briskteaching.com)

• SchoolAI (schoolai.com)

• MagicSchool (magicschool.ai)

All three have teacher tools (with some tools for admins) that’ll let you fill in a few blanks and it’ll generate something for you.

Examples: emails, letters of recommendation, newsletters, observation notes, PD plans, etc. (In fact, MagicSchool has an “admin” category in its teacher tools section with 18 quick-use tools.)

A few problems with leaning too hard on these …

• You’re not really learning how to prompt AI effectively.

• It’s transactional (fill in blanks, get resource) … so you’re not really learning how AI works by just filling in blanks.

• The responses can be really general … too general to be helpful sometimes.

Instead, let’s learn how to do some specific things with specific tools …

10 AI efficiencies for K-12 admins

I’m going to lean pretty heavily into the phrase “AI assistant” in this section. That’ll mean ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Anthropic Claude … whatever your big AI model of choice is.

1. Wording emails (with AI assistant of choice) — Write out the basics of what you need to say. Then, tell your AI assistant: Can you make this email sound more professional … more conversational … funnier … more serious? Keep asking for revisions (longer, more detailed, include this idea, etc.) until you get what you want — or you’re ready to copy it into an email message and start making revisions on your own.

2. Letters of recommendation (with AI assistant of choice) — Tell an AI assistant that you need a letter of recommendation for (insert reason). Describe the student you’re recommending. List their accomplishments and awards. Say why they’re the right person. PS: Be sure you leave out personally identifying information. You can add it when you copy it over into a document.

3. Analyzing documents (with AI assistant OR NotebookLM) — If you get a long document and would like a summary, just upload it to your AI assistant and ask questions. Or, you could use my preferred tool for this — NotebookLM. (I wrote a post about using it here.) Upload your document and then ask questions about its contents in the chat — or generate a podcast, mindmap or video about it.

4. Analyzing data (with AI assistant (with AI assistant OR NotebookLM) — Have piles and piles of school data to analyze? AI is really good at identifying patterns and trends that aren’t so easy for us to see with our human eyes. Upload spreadsheets or PDFs full of data and ask an AI assistant for general insights/analysis — or specific queries. NotebookLM is great for this, too. PS: Again, be mindful of personally identifying info of students or staff.

5. First draft of policies (with AI assistant) — Not sure how to get started with a new school policy (maybe about AI)? Ask for suggestions of what to include in the policy. Ask about legal implications and any challenges the policy might face. Ask for objections that might be made by students, parents, teachers, etc. Ask for a first draft — but only use the AI-generated policy as a draft. Then, use your human insights to craft it into what you need.

6. Act as an advisor (with AI assistant) — Give your AI assistant a role. Act as a student discipline advisor. Act as a expert scheduler. Act as a professional development strategist. Then, ask it questions. Remember: It isn’t actually these things. It’s going to play the role based on everything it’s learned about the topic. Take its advice with a grain of salt.

7. Brainstorm solutions (with AI assistant) — One thing AI is really good at? Coming up with lots of suggestions. Describe a problem you’re trying to solve. Ask it to help you brainstorm solutions — or ideas — or different ways of approaching it. (You might even ask it to brainstorm ways NOT to solve it — and explain why.) The investment of a few minutes of prompting AI might give you something useful. And if not, you’ve only wasted a few minutes.

8. Strategize scheduling or something logistical (with AI assistant) — Having trouble making all of the classes fit in a schedule? Trying to come up with room assignments — or locker assignments — or an agenda for a meeting? Anything logistical could be assisted by AI. Give it all of the pieces and see if you like its solution.

9. Agenda prep and follow-ups (with AI assistant AND/OR note taker) — I liked that agenda idea in #8 so much, it needed its own line! Ask it to help you draft an agenda based on past notes or messages from others. Just provide them to the AI assistant and ask it to make suggestions. Plus, you can use an AI note taker like Otter.ai or Fireflies.ai to listen to the meeting, take notes, and make action item lists afterward.

10. Draft job postings (with AI assistant) — If you have a position open up that needs filled, AI can help you write a job posting. Ask an AI assistant for the sections/segments of a possible job posting … then ask it what it would suggest to fill each of those sections. You can even give it a job description or any existing documentation you already have.

2 bonus tips to supercharge your efficiency

1. Create custom GPTs in ChatGPT (or Gems in Gemini) — Think of these as reusable prompts. You write the prompt (or the necessary context) for a custom GPT / Gem once. Then each time you use it, it relies on that information you provided the first time so you don’t have to write it over and over again. Anything you’d want your AI assistant to have for each prompt, include it in a custom GPT / Gem.

2. Voice dictation + text to speech — If you’ve made it this far, you’re getting one of my best AI productivity hacks. (I might need to write about this in more depth later!) When I go for a run, I don’t listen to podcasts or music. I chat with ChatGPT … but I don’t use the voice mode. I’ve found that the voice mode jumps in and interrupts me before I’m done talking to it — and its responses aren’t as long as I’d prefer. Instead, I’ll use voice dictation (aka “voice typing”) to tell it what I want. Then, when it has generated a response, I’ll hit the speaker button at the bottom to have it read to me in text-to-speech. That way, when I’m on the go, I can have in-depth, detailed voice conversations.

What else do admins need?

I’d love to share more efficiency and productivity hacks in a future newsletter!

If you have anything to share — tips or strategies or prompts or tools — please hit reply and share them … or complete the poll at the top of this email and share there!

PS: What ChatGPT said …

Why wouldn’t I ask ChatGPT what its top AI time savers would be? Here’s a quick copy/paste to supplement my human-created list above …

Top 10 AI Time-Savers for School Administrators

Artificial Intelligence can help school leaders save time on repetitive tasks, improve efficiency, and free up energy for the important work of leading people and shaping vision. Here are 10 ways AI can help K-12 administrators:

1. Draft Emails & Newsletters
Use AI to generate professional drafts for parent updates, staff communication, and newsletters.

2. Summarize Reports
Turn lengthy documents into concise executive summaries and highlight key data points.

3. Meeting Support
Build agendas, capture notes, and generate follow-up action lists automatically.

4. Calendar Optimization
Let AI analyze schedules and suggest efficient meeting times.

5. Data Analysis & Reporting
Identify trends in attendance, academics, and behavior data without manual number crunching.

6. HR & Hiring
Draft job postings, screen resumes, and create onboarding resources.

7. Instructional Support
Generate standards-aligned lesson resources and refresh handbooks or policies.

8. Community Engagement
Draft social media posts, celebrate school events, and translate messages for families.

9. Form Automation
Simplify routine processes like permission slips, purchase orders, or surveys.

10. Grant Writing Assistance
Speed up proposals by drafting narratives, budgets, and justifications.

✅ By offloading routine tasks, administrators can focus more time on leadership, relationships, and making a lasting impact on students and staff.