Whole-staff AI PD for around a hundred teachers

This is a large NSW high school of more than 1,200 students and around 120 staff, where I was Deputy Principal for nearly three years. So this wasn’t a visiting consultant’s session. It was run inside a school I helped lead, for colleagues I knew.

The session

Around a hundred teachers in one room, and 38 of them completed the exit survey afterwards. Whole-staff AI professional learning, spanning the full range from never-attempted to intermediate. Not a self-selecting group of the already-keen, but everyone: the enthusiastic, the sceptical, and the quietly worried they’d missed the boat.

The brief I set myself was simple. Nobody should leave with theory. Everyone should leave with something they could use in a lesson the next morning.

What came back

The written feedback kept returning to the same idea. One teacher named what made it work: “A good blend of teaching and learning experiences. An opportunity to create something that was timely. I could use it tomorrow.” Beginners left with a concrete next tool and the confidence to try it. The most common request was simply more time to keep building.

That’s the test for any AI session with a whole staff. Not “was it interesting,” because teachers are too busy for interesting. The test is whether a hundred people walk out with something concrete enough to actually use. This one passed it.

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