In this episode of Education in the AI Era, Vice Principal Emma Potter and Teacher Lexi Steward from LEO Academy Trust open up about a year of using Gemini for Education. Their verdict? AI tools help them in getting a second pair of hands in a job that usually requires four.
If you’ve ever found yourself staring blankly at a screen at 8:00 PM trying to draft a sensitive parent email, this one is for you.
The Real-World Classroom (and VP Office) Hacks
- The Vice Principal’s Sanity Saver: Emma uses Gemini as her executive wing-man. Instead of wrestling with monster spreadsheets or agonising over the tone of tricky parent communications, she feeds the raw context into AI. It churns out complex formulas and initial drafts in seconds, saving her brain power for the actual human side of running a school.
- Instant, Tailored Classroom Magic: Lexi uses Gemini to whip up custom learning materials on the fly—whether that’s a bespoke poem about the Amazon rainforest or a tailored "social story" with targeted visuals to soothe school-transition anxiety for new students.
- Differentiation Without the Midnight Oil: Writing three different versions of the exact same reading passage used to consume entire evenings. With AI, shifting reading levels, tweaking vocabulary, or creating stretch-goals for high-flyers happens in the time it takes to sip your coffee while it's still warm.
Tackling teacher fatigue:
On the dread of starting from scratch: "It stops you facing that blank page. Having AI give you that initial draft or structure gives you a jumping-off point, which saves so much mental energy at the end of a long teaching day."
On what AI is actually for: "It isn't about replacing the teacher or automating teaching—it’s like having a personal assistant sitting next to you to handle the heavy lifting of admin so you can actually focus on the children."
On how AI actually spread through the school: "The best results happened when teachers started swapping prompts naturally in the staff-room—saying, 'Look at what this just built for my lesson in 30 seconds.'"
The bigger picture:
- Destroying the "Zero-to-One" Struggle: The heaviest mental lift in teaching isn't refining a lesson—it's building the scaffold out of thin air. AI takes care of the initial grunt work so teachers can jump straight to the fine-tuning.
- Staff-room Sharing > Top-Down Mandates: Nobody likes a mandatory 50-slide PowerPoint presentation on new tech. LEO Academy won by letting staff play with the tools, building a culture where teachers casually traded game-changing prompts over lunch.
- Differentiation for Everyone (Without the Burnout): Adapting lessons for varied learning needs is essential, but it used to be a recipe for sleep deprivation. Turning hours of formatting into two minutes of prompt tweaking gives educators their weekends back while keeping learning accessible for every student.
Join the conversation with Emma & Lexi for a grounded look at how real teachers are using AI to reclaim their time and sanity.
Education in the AI Era: How LEO Academy uses Gemini to save time & personalize learning
