AI as Your Teaching Assistant: Reducing Stress in the Busy Fall Months
| by Alex Skov
New students, updated curricula, and the pressure of ambitious goals.
Those are three familiar things every fall semester brings for teachers. You’re juggling lesson planning, grading, parent communication, and countless administrative tasks. When your to-do list seems endless and your planning period feels more like a sprint than a break, what can you do to avoid burnout?
Use artificial intelligence as your personal teaching assistant.
AI tools are becoming more common in classrooms and schools because they help teachers reclaim time without compromising the quality of education that students receive. In fact, a recent study by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation found that teachers using AI save an average of 5.9 hours per week, which adds up to nearly six weeks of saved time throughout the school year.
Continue reading to discover how you can save time in your own busy schedule by leveraging AI to handle repetitive, time-consuming tasks so you can focus on what matters most: your students.
AI for Lesson Planning and Content Creation
Lesson planning typically consumes a huge chunk of a teacher’s week. AI tools can change that reality by generating comprehensive first drafts of lesson plans in minutes rather than hours.
Education-specific artificial intelligence platforms like SchoolAI (which is free for teachers) can tailor detailed lesson plans to your grade level and subject area while aligning with educational standards and allowing you to incorporate your own teaching style and preferences.
Similarly, tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and MagicSchool offer fresh ideas and structured templates that you can customize. Need a worksheet for tomorrow’s science class? Just paste your lesson information into an AI tool and request formatted materials.
AI for Differentiated Instruction
Because every classroom contains students with varying abilities, learning styles, and language backgrounds, it’s very convenient that AI tools can also be used to create personalized learning experiences that would otherwise require hours of manual preparation.
With the right prompting, AI can transform your requests into grade- and learning level-appropriate material in seconds. Adaptive learning platforms driven by AI like Diffit can also analyze student performance data and suggest activities to help teachers improve learning outcomes.
AI can also help teachers overcome common barriers by creating visual aids for different learning styles, generating multiple versions of the same assignment to match individual needs, and translating content into students’ home languages (although translations should always be double-checked by humans to verify their accuracy).
AI for Grading and Feedback
Every teacher knows that grading is time-consuming. AI can help save you valuable minutes that add up over time by providing grading support for multiple-choice questions, short-answer responses, and basic writing assignments.
While AI shouldn’t replace your professional judgment in evaluating student work, it can provide initial reviews and flag patterns for you to consider. This allows you to focus your energy on providing students with meaningful, personalized feedback rather than routine corrections.
Plus, you certainly wouldn’t be alone in using AI for assessments. In another Gallup survey, 61% of teachers using AI reported that it improves their insights about student performance, and 57% said that AI helps enhance the quality of their feedback and grading.
AI for Teacher Communication
Parent communication, administrative emails, and classroom newsletters require careful crafting but often feel repetitive. Luckily, AI can streamline these tasks by drafting professional templates that match your desired tone, helping organize your thoughts, and creating engaging content to keep families informed. (This is another instance where AI’s translation capabilities can be particularly valuable as long as you make sure to verify its accuracy.)
Concerns, Myths, and the Future of AI in Education
There is a growing worry among educators that AI will make their jobs obsolete. While this concern is understandable, it is far from the truth since AI is designed to support the irreplaceable human elements of teaching. By using AI to save time on administrative tasks, teachers can concentrate on building relationships, inspiring creativity, and providing the emotional support that students need.
Of course, It’s important to fact-check AI-generated content since current tools sometimes produce inaccurate results. Think of AI as a starting point for your work (not the final product) and a way to transform how you spend your professional time.
The goal isn’t to automate teaching, but to decrease the manual burden that prevents teachers from doing what they do best: helping students.
Reduce Stress by Embracing AI as Your Teaching Assistant
The fall semester doesn’t have to overwhelm you. AI offers practical solutions to time-consuming tasks that drain your energy and creativity. From lesson planning to parent communication, these tools can help you work more efficiently without compromising your impact on students.
Remember: AI is just a tool. It is powerful, but it relies on teachers’ professional expertise and classroom wisdom. It can’t replace your ability to inspire, motivate, and connect with students, but it can give you more time to focus on the things that drew you to teaching in the first place.
Ready to reclaim your time and reduce stress this fall? Download the free guide, Empowering Educators with AI: 100+ Prompts to Save Teachers Time, to get ready-to-use prompts, implementation tips, and ethical guidelines to help you integrate AI responsibly and effectively into your teaching practice.
