Educator-led partnerships for AI in schools
Most schools can't answer that. It's already happening in your classrooms, in the shadows, with no shared plan and no one owning it.
Where this work runs
AI is the gift you never wanted to receive, but have to look grateful for.
You've meant to get to it properly for ages. It keeps losing to the busy day. Meanwhile it's already in your classrooms, at each teacher's discretion, with no shared guidance and no one owning it. It's landed on one person, probably you, with nothing taken off your plate to make room.
I know, because I'm a Director of Technology at an IB World School in Thailand, carrying the same thing. So this isn't a consultant describing your job from the outside.
It was never a technology problem anyway. It's about protecting the thinking, and giving your staff the clarity to know what they can do and what they can't. You don't police it. You help them use it well. Proactive, not reactive.
And I won't hand you a framework and leave. We work alongside your own team, built for your context, until the change is theirs. Better to go together than alone.
Impact
Different pieces of work over several years: whole staffrooms, school leaders at conferences, a multi-part workshop series, and my own school. A few of the numbers, so you can judge the work for yourself:
“I went from having no idea where to start with AI to knowing what systems there were to use, how to prompt them to do what I want, how to refine the output, and how to manage my team and students…”
RachaelHead of Science · AI confidence 2 → 7Read the story
“The collaborative element is absolutely key and the live support, sharing, listening sessions.”
Gideon WilliamsFormer Head of Digital Learning · Vibe Coding CollectiveRead the story
“I would recommend it for all settings and roles.”
Deputy PrincipalLeadership conference, New South WalesRead the story
Every one of these has been tried in my own staffroom before it ever reaches yours.
The Littlejohns Method
We take a small number of schools at a time, because the work is hands-on, not handed over. Three stages.
We start where every leader says they want to: where are we, actually? The assessment hears the voice of your whole community, teachers, students, parents and leadership, and turns it into your baseline, so you decide from what your people actually said, not guesswork.
The shared foundation, built with your people: a governing-body-ready AI policy, communication that reaches the whole school, and a committee of your own Champions to own it. So everyone works from one understanding of what AI is for.
Where it becomes real, and then yours: training that builds fluency and agency, tools built alongside your staff, and the judgement of what to use and when. We measure what changed and stay until your team can run it without us.
Why someone alongside you
There is no shortage of AI resources. Frameworks, webinars, policy templates, tool lists. Schools have access to all of it and are still stuck, because a document doesn't change what happens in a classroom on a Tuesday.
What moves it is someone in the arena with you: making the calls in your context, sitting with the staff who are nervous, and staying long enough that the capability becomes your team's, not mine.
This isn't a model I read about. It's how I work inside my own school right now: not a visitor running a session, but the person leading the technology week in and week out, alongside the staff. Right now, that someone for your school is me.
Who's behind it
I'm Vaughn. I'm not describing your job from the outside. I'm in it too.
I'm a Director of Technology and a former deputy principal, leading the AI work inside an IB World School in Thailand right now: the board that wants answers, the staff who are nervous, the parent email. The same things you're carrying. I built Littlejohns because the resources alone are never enough. Someone needs to be in it with you.
It's built to be bigger than me, too. As it grows, Littlejohns Educators (practising teachers and leaders we train) come alongside more schools, so it was never going to depend on one person.
Writing
What I'm working out, as I work it out. Short, practical pieces on putting AI to work in a school. No hype, just the real version, written from inside the job.
Calm under pressure isn't a personality you're born with, it's a skill you can build. Borrowing five rules from scuba diving, here's how to keep your nervous system working while the pace of AI keeps rising, and why rest is structural, not a luxury.
Read on LinkedInMy most useful tactics on AI in schools — and nothing when I've nothing worth your time.
The podcast
Conversations with school leaders creating with AI, not just consuming it.
Cora Yang
Why the training so often fails to land, and what actually moves AI from a one-off session into the daily work of a classroom.
Listen
Ryan Noonan
The on-the-ground view from a teacher actually using AI day to day, not the version from the conference stage.
Listen
Ryan Krakofsky
What that says about what is now possible in a school, from a teacher with no coding background.
Listen
Trust as the working currency of an AI-dominated world: why communication, empathy and real relationships matter more as it gets harder to tell human work from machine-generated.
ListenCommon questions
It means the person guiding your school's AI work is a practising educator, someone leading technology and AI inside a real school right now, rather than a consultant or a software vendor. An educator-led partnership starts from how teaching and learning really work, keeps the human thinking at the centre, and builds your own staff's capability over time instead of handing over a report. That's what Littlejohns is: AI integration led by an educator, alongside your school.
A twelve-month, alongside-the-school engagement to implement AI across a single school. It runs across every layer, leadership, senior school, junior school, even parents, and covers policy, staff capability, the actual tools, and your own internal experts. It's done coaching-style with your people, in the room, not handed over as a report.
Start by finding out where you are now, before buying tools or writing rules. In my experience the sequence that works is: listen first (a baseline of staff, students and leadership), then build the shared foundation (a policy, clear communication, and your own internal champions), and only then scale up training and tools. Tools-first is the natural place to start, and it's where most of us started. In my experience it's also where things stall.
That's the most common place to begin, and it's the point. You start by finding out where your school stands. An assessment of your staff, students and leadership gives you that baseline, and it's a low-cost, low-risk first step that tells you what to do next.
Heads of School, Deputy Principals, and Directors of Technology who feel personally accountable for getting AI right and want a practitioner, not a slide deck.
Based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I work with schools across Southeast Asia, Australia and the UK, in person or live online.
Get in touch
30 minutes. No pitch, no slides.
Or email me directly:
vaughn@littlejohns.org