5 Ways Teachers Are Saving Hours Every Week with AI

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a familiar presence in our daily lives, and the world of education is no exception. While the idea of AI in the classroom might seem futuristic or intimidating, many educators are already using it as a practical tool to work smarter, not harder. 

From streamlining administrative duties to personalizing student learning, AI is proving to be a valuable partner in the classroom, allowing teachers to spend more time focusing on connecting with and inspiring their students. Continue reading to explore 5 ways teachers are using AI to save time each week. 

Streamlining Administrative Tasks 

One of the most obvious benefits of using AI in education is its ability to handle time-consuming administrative work. Tasks like tracking attendance, managing grades, and communicating with families can quickly fill up a teacher’s schedule. AI-powered tools can automate many of these processes, freeing up valuable time. 

As school social worker and former teacher Zee Ngwenya notes AI can be a powerful ally in enhancing education by taking over repetitive tasks. From her perspective, it represents an opportunity rather than a threat to jobs in the teaching world since AI’s speed and efficiency allows educators to dedicate more energy to creating meaningful learning experiences rather than getting caught up in paperwork. 

“AI is just there to enhance [education], not to eradicate the teachers,” Ngwenya said. 

Enhancing Lesson Planning 

Every teacher knows the feeling of hitting a creative wall when it comes to lesson planning. AI can serve as an excellent thought partner, helping generate fresh ideas and structure engaging lessons. Tools like ChatGPT and Magic School are becoming popular among educators exactly for this reason. 

Amanda Heilman took an AI course in 2024 to explore how she might be able to use it in her teaching practice. After having a dedicated student teacher for three years, she found that AI tools could be useful in addressing some of the work coming back onto her task list without a student teacher this year, including writing lesson plans for her elementary math students. 

“I just said [to ChatGPT], ‘Write a lesson plan for fourth grade students where they map equivalent fractions on a number line,’ and it gave me a lot of ideas,” Heilman shared on the Front of the Class podcast, noting she was excited to mine the tool for more ideas to save time and enrich her curriculum next semester.

Providing Instant Feedback 

Providing timely and constructive feedback is crucial for student growth, but it can be incredibly time intensive. AI tools can help streamline the process by offering real-time feedback to accelerate learning. 

“Class Companion is a huge tool in my classroom,” Jake Knapp told Front of the Class. “That’s instant feedback for the kids, and I use it in a productive way.” 

Similarly, Calvin Lewis uses ChatGPT to analyze student essays for his International English Language Testing System (IELTS) students. The AI generates reports on common grammatical and punctuation errors, allowing him to quickly identify areas where his students may need additional support and provide more meaningful feedback. 

“If I was to do [that report], it would take me three times as long,” Lewis noted.

Personalizing Learning Through Saved Time 

One of the most exciting applications of AI in education is its potential to create more personalized learning experiences. Every student learns differently, and AI can help teachers tailor their instruction to meet individual needs with time reclaimed from administrative tasks. 

Jenny Mitchell recently shared that educators at her school in Taiwan are exploring how AI can increase and improve this differentiation. Their goal is to use AI to handle routine instruction and assessment so that teachers can spend more one-on-one time with students. 

“We can take our classes and say, ‘Let’s use our knowledge of fractions that you just practiced with your personalized tutor, and let’s go do a cooking lesson and build your skills on how to cook,’” Mitchell said. “What I’m hoping that [AI] will move toward is giving us more time, allowing us to differentiate for the students even more than we are now so that we can dive into the projects and get back into art and PE and music, [so] it gives us more time in that sense rather than having to teach all the kids the same thing at the same time.” 

Using AI in this facilitation role also allows educators to put a greater focus on helping students develop soft skills that students will use throughout their life, like collaboration and empathy. 

Kickstarting Learning 

Dominic Helmstetter puts intentionality at the center of his teaching approach, and as AI becomes more and more integrated into the world, he has incorporated it into his classroom so that he can model proper use of these new tools with his students. 

Speaking to the Front of the Class podcast, Helmstetter noted that brainstorming is “sometimes the hardest part” for students and that AI tools can be useful tools to help them get kickstarted on assignments and stay engaged in learning. 

As an example, Helmstetter outlined a stations activity where students interact with AI in a structured way, beginning with using AI to give them five facts about a research topic, which they can then write original sentences about and find high-quality sources on their own to build out paragraphs before inputting their writing sample into an AI tool and asking for instant analysis. This allows them to make any necessary changes before moving onto the final station: a one-on-one check-in with the teacher to discuss what the student has learned and what changes they made at each step. 

“With a lot of these tools, you can put the rubric in there…[and] set the parameters,” Helmstetter said. “When the kids get their feedback, it’s not going to be perfect. It will never be perfect — you still have to put a little into it — but the idea is they’re going to get some trusted feedback, something that they can actually use to take back and reflect on.” 

In addition to helping students build practical skills and learn the subject in class, this kind of activity gives them valuable hands-on experience with technology that they’re likely to encounter elsewhere in their lives. 

“I want my kids to be able to create new, amazing, cool things with AI… I want them to be able to defend their analysis and the analysis that’s been given to them. I want them to have a level of AI literacy that requires me to put a little [feedback] in, so it’s an intentional, constant, daily thing,” Helmstetter explained. 

Save Hours Every Week by Using AI 

AI is a powerful assistant that can help teachers be more efficient, creative, and responsive to their students’ needs. By handling administrative tasks, sparking lesson ideas, and providing instant feedback, AI is already saving educators countless hours every day and every week, allowing them to invest more attention into improving student learning outcomes. 

Ready to start saving time with AI, or save even more time than you already are? Download Moreland University’s complimentary resource, Empowering Educators with AI: 100+ Prompts to Save Teachers Time, to get practical examples, ready-to-use prompts, and guidelines for responsible, ethical use of AI in your teaching practice.