Your School Is Already Using AI. Is Anyone Leading It?

FIELD NOTE #001 · 📍 Destination: AI Leadership · Get Clear

Ashley Springs, Ed.S. — Founder, Defining My Way Academy

Somewhere in your building right now, someone is using AI.

A teacher is drafting a parent email with it. A coach is prepping for a hard conversation with it. Someone on your data team just ran a report through it in a fraction of the time it used to take.

Nobody asked permission. Nobody needed to. The tools are free, they're fast, and they're already in everyone's pocket.

I know an assistant principal — sharp, well-liked, the kind of person who never misses a beat — who used AI to draft a letter home about a discipline incident. She didn't mention it to anyone. Why would she? It read fine. It went out. Three days later, a parent called asking why the letter cited a policy number that didn't exist. AI had filled a gap in her memory with something that sounded exactly right. Nobody had told her not to trust it that far, because nobody had told her anything about it at all.

Here's the question that actually matters: did anyone in leadership decide what that should look like — or is it just happening? Most advice written for AI in schools targets classrooms and curriculum. Not much of it is actually written for principals, directors, and the people making the calls above the classroom door.

The Problem Isn't AI. It's the Silence Around It.

Most school leaders I talk to aren't worried about AI itself. They're worried about what they don't know is happening with it.

Nobody set expectations for what AI should be used for, and what it shouldn't touch. There's no AI policy — written or unwritten — that staff can actually point to. Nobody built a decision system for when a new tool shows up asking to be adopted. And when something does go wrong — a flawed data summary, a fabricated policy number, a recommendation nobody double-checked — there's no one already positioned to catch it, because nobody was ever assigned that job.

That's not a technology gap. That's a leadership gap. And it doesn't stay contained. Some staff dive in and use AI constantly, with no shared standard for how. Others avoid it entirely, unsure if it's even allowed. Trust erodes quietly in the space between them — and by the time a leader finds out, it's usually because something already went out the door.

This isn't a handful of outlier schools, and it isn't a staff failure. Capable, thoughtful educators are already using these tools in genuinely smart ways, without any shared framework, because nobody's built one yet. What's missing isn't caution. It's a structure to point that instinct somewhere intentional.

I spent 18 years inside North Carolina schools — special ed classroom, dean's office, state-level consulting — and I heard some version of this exact gap in session after session, long before AI was the specific topic. Leaders weren't short on capability. They were short on someone building the system before the problem arrived instead of after.

Where to Actually Start: Readiness Before Rollout

Most AI advice for schools starts with tools — which app to buy, which platform to pilot. That's backwards. Before you roll out anything, you need to know where your school actually stands.

That's what the AI Leadership Checklist is built for. It's a structured AI readiness assessment across six real leadership capabilities:

• Vision & Expectations — Does your team know what AI is for in your building, and what it isn't?
• Leadership Decision Systems — Who decides when a new AI tool gets adopted, and how?
• Adult Capacity — Does your staff have what they need to use these tools well, not just access to them?
• Responsible Implementation — What happens when something goes wrong, and who catches it?
• Communication & Trust — What are you telling staff, families, and students — and how do you know it's landing?
• Continuous Improvement — How will you know if this is actually working six months from now?

It's not a tech audit. It's a leadership audit — because that's where the real gap is.

Then: Prompts Built Around Your Actual Work

Once you know where you stand, the next barrier is usually simpler than people expect: staff don't know what to ask AI to do.

Most prompt guides are organized by feature — "how to use ChatGPT," "how to use Copilot." That's not how school leaders think, and it's not how the work actually happens.

The AI Prompt Library is organized by leadership problem instead. You don't search for a feature. You search for what you're actually trying to get done — analyzing attendance data, prepping for a difficult conversation, drafting a parent letter that doesn't need correcting three days later.

You open it already knowing what you need. That's the whole point.

The Real Shift

Good AI implementation doesn't start with better prompts. It starts with better leadership — clear expectations, real systems, and a plan for what happens when things don't go perfectly.

Your staff isn't waiting for permission. They're already using these tools. The only open question is whether your leadership is shaping how — or finding out after the fact, the way that assistant principal's did.

Start with the AI Leadership Quick Start Bundle — the Checklist and Prompt Library together. Get clear on where you actually stand, then put practical tools to work building what's next.

(If you'd rather go deeper live first, the September Power Session — AI Leadership Quick Wins — covers this same ground in real time.)

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Defining My Way Academy works with charter and non-traditional school leaders on the systems that hold — not another initiative added to the pile. Learn more at definingmyway.com.