The Google for Education Community Platform

This spring, North Carolina's 2026 Teacher Working Conditions Survey drew responses from more than 102,000 educators. Teachers reported working an average of 9.3 hours a week outside the school day, and many said they lose planning time because they're asked to cover other classes. A pilot survey of principals in 11 districts found more than three-quarters working at least 51 hours a week. (NC Newsline, May 6, 2026: https://ncnewsline.com/2026/05/06/nc-teachers-loyal-to-schools-but-warn-of-unsustainable-workloads-i...)

Not all of that time is ours to give back. But some of it traces to how we communicate: the scattered emails, the “quick ask,” the deadline buried in paragraph four. That part sits fully inside a principal’s control. 

➡️ What's one recurring task, yours or your teachers', that you've managed to shrink or eliminate this year? What made it stick?

This Week's Resource: Skills in the Gemini app

https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/17094296?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

Google began rolling out skills in the Gemini app on October 13 (https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/10/an-update-on-launch-of-skills-in-gemini-app-and-work...). A skill is a saved set of instructions you write once, then call up in any chat by typing "/". You can stack several in one prompt. Skills are replacing Gems; for education accounts, Gems stop working no sooner than June 1, 2027.

How to build one:

1. Go to gemini.google.com, signed in with your school account.
2. In the sidebar, click Customize (look under More if you don't see it), then Skills.
3. Click Create, then either Create with Gemini to build it conversationally, or Create manually to type a name, description, and instructions.
4. Click Create to save.
5. In any new chat, type "/", choose your skill, and paste in your notes.

A practical example: a "staff-week-ahead" skill. The instructions might read: "Turn my rough notes into one weekly staff memo under 250 words. Open with one specific thank-you drawn from my notes. Sort everything into Must Do (with deadline), Good to Know, and Optional. Flag any item that would eat into teacher planning time and ask me whether it can move or go. Never add dates, names, or events that aren't in my notes." Teachers get one predictable message instead of six, and you get a nudge to cut an ask before it lands.

Before you start: rollout is gradual through mid-November, so Skills may not appear yet. Your district must have the Gemini app turned on, and Google lists Keep Activity on as a requirement (your district may control it). Skills inside Docs and Gmail are a separate, delayed rollout requiring the Google AI Pro for Education add-on.

A privacy note: A skill is saved and reused, so keep its instructions free of names or details about any student or staff member. Build it in your school account, never a personal one; Google notes that data a personal account shares with consumer Gemini Apps may be used for model training (https://support.google.com/docs/answer/14615114). Under the Workspace for Education terms (https://workspace.google.com/terms/education_terms/), Google acts as a School Official under FERPA and school chats aren't human-reviewed or used for training, but your district's AI policy still governs. And if you're eyeing a walkthrough-feedback skill: observation notes are personnel records. FERPA doesn't reach them; state personnel law, bargaining agreements, and public-records rules may.

Try building one skill this week and tell us in the comments what it saved you, or where it tripped you up

S. Kambar Khoshaba, a high school principal in Lorton, Virginia, wrote about this in Education Week back in January. He'd launched a student feedback forum, and about 25 students submitted long, thoughtful survey responses as part of the application. Reading, comparing, and evaluating them by hand would have eaten several hours of his week. AI did the first pass in under 30 seconds.

I was impressed with his account of what he did with the time he got back. An extra half hour observing a classroom. Another half hour in the cafeteria with students at lunch. Time dropping in on a teacher planning session. As he put it, AI can't create the human moments of connection — but it can clear the runway to them. (Education Week, "Four Ways I Use AI as a Principal (and One Way I Never Will)," Jan. 13, 2026: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-four-ways-i-use-ai-as-a-principal-and-one-way-i-never-will...)

We can't protect our teachers' time if we've lost control of ours.

➡️ When you've clawed back an hour in your week, where does it actually go? And what keeps pulling it back?

THIS WEEK'S RESOURCE: Gemini Notebook as a source inside Google Docs

Announced September 23: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/09/ground-ai-prompts-in-google-docs-on-existing-sources...

In plain language: you can now point Gemini in Google Docs at a Gemini Notebook you've already built, and it will draft from those specific documents with inline citations so you can check every claim. No tab-switching, no copy-pasting your own materials into a prompt.

How to use it:

1. Open Gemini Notebook and create a notebook for the work at hand — say, "Q1 Instructional Support."
2. Add your real sources: walkthrough notes, your district's PD calendar, staff survey exports, the teacher evaluation rubric, last year's induction plan.**
3. Open a new Google Doc.
4. Open the Gemini side panel (or use the bottom bar).
5. Type "@" and select your notebook by name.
6. Write your prompt. Gemini drafts from those sources and footnotes where each point came from.
7. Click through a few citations before you send anything. This is a first draft, not a finished one.

A concrete use: build a notebook holding your last twelve walkthrough notes, your staff climate survey results, and your district's PD offerings for the semester. Then ask it to draft a one-page growth plan for a second-year teacher, grounded only in what you actually observed. You get a plan tied to evidence rather than impression and the citations mean you can show the teacher exactly what you're responding to.

One prerequisite worth checking before you get excited: this requires Education Plus, or the Google AI Pro for Education or Teaching and Learning add-on. Your district admin also needs Gemini for Workspace in Drive turned on, and you need Workspace smart features enabled on your account. If "@" doesn't surface your notebooks, that's the first place to look.

Give it a try this week and tell us what happened in the comments — including if it flopped. Those are usually the more useful posts.

**Ensure that you are not uploading any Personally Identifiable Information into any AI tool and as always, follow your school and/or district guidelines for AI tool use. 

It's one thing to think about using AI-drafted staff communication while evaluating its tone and authenticity, it's another thing altogether to ponder if anyone reads our emails at all. The documents we are required to push out to staff have gotten longer at exactly the moment teachers have the least time to read them.

There is data underneath that. RAND’s survey panels found that only 45% of principals reported having any school or district policy or guidance on AI use, and just 35% of district leaders said they provide students with training on AI. So many of us are being handed a policy document and told to make it land, without a professional learning structure to land it in.

Here’s a hypothetical, though I suspect it will feel familiar: your district sends a 14-page AI acceptable-use policy in August with a note that all staff must review it. You forward it. You mention it at a faculty meeting. In October a teacher asks you a question that the policy answers on page 6.

Source:

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4180-1.html

➡️ When you need staff to actually absorb something - a policy, a new protocol, a curriculum change - what format has worked best for you? And have you found a way to tell whether it landed, short of waiting for the question in October?

THIS WEEK’S RESOURCE: Turn Google Docs, PDFs, and Word files into video summaries in Google Vids

Announcement (Sept 2, 2026): https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2026/09/turn-google-docs-pdfs-and-word-files-into-video-summ...

Step-by-step help doc: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/17302692

Google Vids will now take a document - a Doc, a PDF, or a Word file - and generate a narrated video summary of it. AI writes the script, generates the narration, and pulls in visuals. You are not filming anything and you are not editing a timeline. You point it at the file and it hands you a draft video that you then edit like a slide deck.

To try it:

Step 1 - Go to vids.new, or open Google Vids from the Google apps menu.

Step 2 - Choose the option to create a video from a file, and select your Doc, PDF, or Word file from Drive.

Step 3 - Let Vids generate the script and narration. This takes a minute or two for a long document.

Step 4 - Read the generated script before you do anything else. This is the step not to skip - check that it did not flatten a nuance that matters or drop a compliance detail.

Step 5 - Edit any scene: rewrite narration lines, swap visuals, cut sections that do not apply to your building.

Step 6 - Share the video link with staff the same way you would share a Doc.

The use I would start with: that AI acceptable-use policy, or whatever your equivalent long compliance document is this fall. Generate a three-minute version, re-record the intro in your own voice with why it matters in your building specifically, and send the video with the full document linked underneath for anyone who wants the source. You have now given people a way in, without pretending the document does not exist.

One prerequisite worth checking before you plan around it, because this one does have an availability limit: it is on Education Plus, or through the Teaching and Learning Upgrade or Google AI Pro for Education add-ons. There is no admin setting to flip and no user setting, but if your district is on a lower Education tier you may not see it at all. Rapid Release domains have it now; Scheduled Release started rolling out September 5 and can take up to 15 days.

And the caveat I keep repeating because I believe it: a video summary is a way to deliver information, not a substitute for the conversation. If a policy is going to change how someone teaches, the video buys you the time to have that conversation - it does not replace it.

Give it a try and tell us what you pointed it at. I would also like to know whether your staff actually watched it, which is the only measure that really matters.

Dr. Michael Gaskell, a principal in East Brunswick, New Jersey, wrote a piece for Tech & Learning that I found insightful. He described turning a dry district memo (chuckling at the callout of an antidote to insomnia) into a faculty presentation in under ten minutes . I was appreciative of his approach at saving time while insisting on making sure his own voice is central in what his staff actually reads. 

This came up in my post last week in a comment. Someone called out that while acknowledging concerns with a response is important, an entirely automated one (with AI) still runs the risk of making the audience feel unheard. I believe teachers can tell when a message came from their principal and when it came from a copy/paste automation alone. 

RAND's 2026 State of the American Teacher Survey puts the share of teachers who intend to leave their jobs at 18% — lower than in recent years — while RAND separately reports that teachers' stress and burnout continue to outpace those of other working adults. Read those together: more people are staying, and they are still worn down. Worn-down people are unusually sensitive to being communicated at rather than communicated with.

Sources:

https://www.techlearning.com/technology/ai/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-principal-using-ai

https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4404-2.html

https://www.rand.org/news/press/2026/06/teachers-stress-burnout-continue-to-outpace-those-of.html

➡️ When you use AI to draft something for staff, how do you know it still sounds like you? Is there something you always look for and change?

THIS WEEK'S RESOURCE: Custom instructions for Gemini in Google Workspace, now in more apps   

Announcement (Sept 2, 2026)

Click here for Step-by-step help doc

Custom instructions let you tell Gemini once how you want it to write — your tone, your length, your formatting habits — and it applies that every time, instead of you re-explaining yourself in every prompt. This used to be Docs-only. As of the September 2 rollout it also works in the Gemini side panel in Gmail, Sheets, and Slides, plus Ask Gemini in Drive and Ask Gemini in Chat. Instructions are shared across those apps, so one you add in Gmail carries into Slides automatically.

To set it up:

1. On a computer, open a Workspace app — Gmail, Docs, Sheets, or Slides.
2. At the top right, select Ask Gemini to open the side panel.
3. At the top left of the panel, select Menu, then Settings, then Personalization.
4. Select Add, type your instruction in plain English, and select Save.
5. In Ask Gemini in Chat only, this lives elsewhere: type /settings in the message box to add an instruction.
6. Repeat step 4 for each rule you want. You can save many separate instructions and toggle them off anytime.

A concrete one to steal, aimed at staff communication:

"When drafting communication to teachers, lead with the ask in the first sentence, keep it under 200 words, and never use the phrases 'just a reminder' or 'as previously communicated.'"

Then draft your next Friday staff memo in Gmail with the side panel and notice how much less you rewrite (to be clear I still advocate for rewrite/edit and adding your own personal voice that AI simply cannot). The same instruction will quietly improve your mentor check-in agendas and your survey summaries too, because it follows you into Docs and Sheets.

One prerequisite: you need a Workspace plan that includes Gemini, and your district admin may need to have Gemini or Ask Gemini turned on for staff accounts. The rollout started September 2, so if you don't see Personalization in your Settings menu yet, it may still be reaching your domain.

Give it a try this week and post the instructions you wrote in the comments. I'd really like to borrow a few, and I suspect the rest of us would too.

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