“From no idea where to start” to choosing, prompting and managing AI with her team

The most useful proof isn’t a stat about a tool. It’s a leader describing, in her own words, how her own capability changed.

Rachael is a Head of Science. She came to one-to-one coaching after she’d been told to use AI for the challenges in her job, with no guidance on how. She put her AI confidence at a 2 out of 10. Not resistant, just genuinely unsure where to begin, like most people who feel quietly accountable for something that arrived without an instruction manual.

In her words

“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…”

Rachael, Head of Science

By the end she rated herself a 7. But the rating isn’t the point. The point is what sits inside it: she could now choose the right tool for a task, prompt it properly, refine what comes back, and manage AI with her team and students rather than being led by it. She used the coaching to build a scheme of work she could put in place at the start of the new term.

Why this is the shape that lasts

A consultant could have handed Rachael a list of tools. That list would be out of date within a term. What she has instead is judgement, the ability to make good decisions about AI as the tools keep changing. That’s the difference between training and capability, and it’s what an alongside-the-school partnership is built to leave behind.

One tactical idea a week on AI in schools: the Littlejohns Letter.