About AI Field Notes
What staff at Happy Valley High (demo) are learning about AI.
Ask around any school and you’ll hear every view of AI. Some teachers want nothing to do with it. Some are quietly using it every day, getting real value from it, and haven’t said much because they aren’t sure how it would land. Most are somewhere in between, trying things and making up their minds.
All of those views belong here. This notebook is where staff write down what they actually tried and how it went, in their own words. What saved you time this week? What helped a student? What went wrong? What did you try once and drop? “I’m not sure this helped” is a useful note. So is “this worries me, and here’s why.”
Who can read a note
Anyone with Happy Valley High (demo)’s access code can read the notes, and so can the building’s administrators. Anyone with access can also ask for an AI-written summary of the whole notebook. Notes appear without a name unless you add one. Details can still make a person recognizable, so leave out anything that identifies a student or colleague. Privacy and access explains how entries are handled, including access by the people who run the service.
Questions worth writing about
- Where did knowing your students make the difference?
- What did you hand to AI, and what did you check or change before using it?
- What are you learning about AI that your students should learn too?
Here’s an example. AI feedback on a student’s essay flags a confusing passage. You know this is the first time the student has tried to make such an ambitious argument. Both observations matter for what happens next, and a note about a moment like that is what this notebook is for.
Why your administrators want to hear it
Your administrators want to help, and they want to start by listening: what’s working, where the pitfalls are, and where people disagree. The notebook and its summary give the whole faculty something concrete to talk about. From there, the aim is to work it out together, as a staff, so everyone can serve students even better. Sometimes that means using AI more, sometimes using it differently, and sometimes deciding where it doesn’t belong.
The notes reflect the staff who wrote them. Sometimes the most useful thing here is one teacher’s observation that makes a colleague say, “I want to ask my students about that.”