How A Rhode Island Educator Champions Google AI To Help Principals Prioritize People Over Paperwork

I started out as a special education teacher, but I had a mentor who saw something in me and guided me toward school leadership early in my career. I spent 20 years as an assistant principal and a principal in Rhode Island, running schools and working through the multitude of things you do to try to improve quality for teachers and students.

Three years ago, I realized I needed to do something different. I accepted a role at the University of Rhode Island to build a master’s program for aspiring principals from the ground up. It’s been a lot of fun because I get both ends of the spectrum; I’m teaching undergrads in courses like classroom management while also running this graduate program for principals. We are officially up and running in our first year, with our first group of candidates working through the courses. At the same time, I’ve been finishing my doctorate, researching how secondary school principals are making sense of AI in their leadership work.

After interviewing 19 principals across New England, I’ve uncovered a handful of themes, including questions around transparency. A number of principals expressed a fear of looking weak or like they don’t know how to do their job if they use these tools. But I believe we’ve got to get past that. We have to be modeling responsible use as much as possible for our teachers and students.

In my own research, I very much practice the transparency I preach by sharing my approach. Analyzing 19 hours of interview transcripts is a monumental task. I go through and code everything—if I see a quote about "fear" or "human-in-the-loop," I highlight it.

The most profound takeaway from my research is that AI has the potential to make schools more thoughtful and human, not less. Principals are buried in the relentless demands of the job. We talk about building instructional leaders, but most principals spend the least amount of time on that. It’s all operations and management. I brought a guest speaker into my grad class who showed us how he was utilizing Gems in Gemini to help build a master schedule for his elementary school . It’s a very complex puzzle where you’re balancing what students want with the teachers you have. He uploaded all of these documents with details about the various classrooms and teachers and then set up his Gem to help him organize the schedule based on the constraints and priorities he provided. The process offered a major time saving and strategic thought partnership.

That kind of solution is how we reclaim the real work: the people. It’s the human side of things—getting into classrooms, supporting teachers, and being visible in the lunchroom.

Leading responsibly with AI is about finding the right balance between efficiency and the relationship side of things. We can’t put our heads in the sand and say "no AI use." It’s already embedded in everything we’re doing. Whether I’m using AI to help make my teaching slides more engaging or demonstrating NotebookLM to my graduate students to help them in their future roles, I’m trying to show that this is about change management. It’s not just about the tool; it’s about how we use it to help the work we’re doing. If we can find that balance, AI will help us be more present for the people who matter most.