AI 56: How a teacher used AI to ease the classroom workload

The workload of a teacher can be incredibly demanding: beyond delivering lessons, there’s planning, administrative work, student support, and countless other tasks competing for time. All this can quickly become unmanageable.

As a Multiverse coach working with an education charity, Rachel O'Hehir sees this first-hand. “What every teacher has told me is just how demanding their role is,” Rachel explains. “They’re under a lot of pressure which can easily lead to burnout. So, removing the administrative burden is a no-brainer, allowing teachers to reinvest that time into what’s important.” 

Teachers lose 2-3 hours each week on manually preparing and reformatting slide decks, so it was no surprise that one teacher Rachel was coaching wanted to find a smarter way of working. That’s why she enlisted the help of AI to transform the way lessons are planned.

She built a new AI tool: a slide engine that automatically creates lesson decks, applies standard formatting templates, and pulls in the government-required literacy and vocabulary homework content.

“By inputting all the key resources needed for a lesson, teachers receive a slide deck that’s 80% ready for teaching,” Rachel explains, “and from there, they can easily tailor each deck to make sure it’s ready for different lessons and students.”

With the heavy-lifting done for them, the slide engine saves teachers at least an hour a week each – a massive cumulative saving of time across the organisation. It also enforces quality control, automatically integrating school and government requirements without creating extra work.

“At the minute, it’s the teacher’s department using the tool, but the plan is to roll it out to the wider organisation, and ultimately the wider federation of academies, based on how successful she and the team have found it.” A huge achievement for her and her fellow teachers.