What Happened
Thursday afternoons at 3:45. If you've ever taught high school, you know exactly what that hour is: the one where everyone has already been on their feet for eight hours and is running on whatever's left in the staff room. Fourteen teachers signed up anyway, entirely opt-in.
We started with Gemini and ChatGPT side by side and no assumptions about who knew what. Some had been quietly using AI for months. Others had never opened it. Session one ran a little loose — one teacher later noted, generously, that the instructors were still getting to know the room. Fair. By session two we were writing prompts against their actual work: lesson plans, parent emails, the endless small stuff.
"We could ask questions and get answers that were directly related to our needs. It felt personalized."
Then something useful happened. Each week's agenda got built from the previous week's questions. Math wanted data analysis. English wanted assignment design. Somebody wanted to know whether NotebookLM could build a slide deck. So that's where we went.
By session four, most had already changed how they used AI in their own work — not planned to, had. Every teacher surveyed said they'd recommend it. The most common complaint was that it wasn't long enough.
The line that stuck with me came in the final comments:
"We need to be talking about this at the district level, but if they won't, then I am glad that you are doing something at the school level."
That's the whole reason this work exists.