Part 2: When the AI Reflection Tool Both Worked and Failed (And What That Taught Us)

(Continuing from Part 1, where I introduced an AI reflection tool to help teachers experience the same metacognitive practice we ask of students)

I handed my staff an AI reflection protocol. Simple premise: use it to think through a lesson, a student interaction, a classroom challenge. The AI would ask thoughtful questions, probe for specifics, help surface insights.

Here's a snippet of the prompt structure I used:

"You are a supportive instructional coach helping a teacher reflect on their practice. Ask 3-4 focused questions that encourage deep thinking about teaching decisions. After each response, briefly summarize what you're hearing before asking the next question. End by offering the teacher a choice: 'Would you like to explore any of these areas further, or would a summary of your reflections be more helpful?'"

What happened next revealed everything about both the promise and the challenges of AI in education.

The Successes

Several teachers found genuine value:

• One said the questions were more probing than she'd ask herself—it pushed her thinking in productive ways

• A PE teacher identified new connection opportunities with students he hadn't considered

• Even a teacher who strongly prefers paper-based reflection admitted: "I got a new perspective I hadn't thought about before."

The AI was doing something right. It was asking substantive questions that required actual thought. It was helping teachers see their practice from new angles.

This is AI's strength: It can be endlessly patient, non-judgmental, and curious in ways that create psychological safety.

The Failures

But there were significant problems:

• Multiple teachers described a repetitive questioning loop—the AI kept asking more questions even when they'd run out of mental energy

• One counselor felt interrogated and had to explicitly tell the AI to stop

• A  teacher lost their train of thought due to excessive prompting and felt frustrated

This is AI's weakness: It has no social awareness, no sense of when enough is enough, no ability to read the room.

Even with my attempt to structure stopping points in the prompt, the tool sometimes missed the cues that a human conversation partner would naturally pick up on.

What This Revealed

Here's what became clear through this experience:

1. AI can be a valuable reflective partner—but only with the right design constraints.

The difference between "helpful" and "frustrating" came down to how well the prompt managed conversation flow, gave users control, and created natural exit points.

2. Understanding AI means experiencing both its capacity and its limitations firsthand.

My teachers didn't just learn that AI can ask good questions. They learned that it can also miss social cues, be repetitive, and require explicit direction. That's valuable knowledge as they think about student use.

3. People are in radically different places with this technology.

Remember—only 4 out of 20 had used AI this way before. For most of my staff, this was their first experience with AI as anything other than a search engine or content generator.

Some found it immediately useful. Some were uncomfortable. Some were curious but cautious. All of those responses are valid.

We Ask Students to Reflect. But Who Helps Teachers Do the Same?

 

Part 1:

As educators, we're constantly asking students to be metacognitive.

"What strategies did you use?" "Why did you make that choice?" "What would you do differently next time?"

We know that reflection deepens learning. We build it into our lessons, our assessments, our feedback cycles.

But here's what I've been thinking about: Who's asking teachers those same questions?

And more importantly—in a way that's truly personal, non-evaluative, and focused on growth rather than judgment?

The Challenge We Don't Talk About Enough

Teacher reflection is hard. Not because we don't value it, but because it requires time, space, and the right conditions.

Reflecting with a colleague can feel vulnerable—especially about lessons that didn't go well. Reflecting alone can feel isolating—we don't always know what questions to ask ourselves. Formal evaluation cycles are valuable but inherently high-stakes.

What if there was a middle ground? A way to process our teaching that felt safe, personal, and genuinely helpful?

That question led me to experiment with AI as a reflective thought partner for my staff.

The Setup

Out of 20 teachers in my building, only four had previously used AI as anything more than a content generator. Most had never experienced AI as a conversational partner—something that could ask follow-up questions, probe for specifics, help them think through complexity.

As we work to build teacher understanding and capacity around AI, I'm acutely aware that everyone is starting from a different place. Different comfort levels. Different prior experiences. Different levels of skepticism or curiosity.

So I designed a simple activity: an AI-powered reflection tool that would guide teachers through thinking about their practice.

The goal wasn't to evaluate them. It was to give them the same metacognitive experience we're constantly asking students to have.

Why This Matters Now

AI is becoming increasingly pervasive in education. Our students are using it. Parents are asking about it. Districts are developing policies around it.

But before we can help students use AI responsibly and effectively, we need to understand it ourselves. Not just what it can do, but what it does well, what it struggles with, and how it actually feels to interact with it as a learning tool.

This wasn't just about reflection. It was about experiential learning with a technology that's rapidly changing our profession.

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Coming in Part 2: What happened when teachers actually used it—the successes, the failures, and what it revealed about AI as an educational tool.

Unleashed - AIDA in Use

Using the AIDA Framework to Deepen My Learning from Unleashed

This past summer, our Administrative Team was asked to read Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You as part of our shared professional learning. Like many assigned readings, there’s a temptation to approach it as a task—get through the chapters, check the box, and be ready to nod along in the group discussion.

But I wanted more than that. If I was going to invest my time in this book, I wanted to walk away with clear, practical applications I could bring into my leadership practice. I didn’t just want to read it; I wanted to use it.

That decision reminded me of how our students often experience assigned books or class texts. They, too, are given material with the expectation that they’ll get through it, but the real goal is for them to engage, think, and apply what they’ve learned. We want them to go beyond surface-level reading and turn ideas into something meaningful.

To make sure I was practicing what I preach, I used my AIDA Framework—Assist, Investigate, Dialogue, Apply—not just as a reading guide, but as a metacognitive structure to deepen my thinking and ensure the book would leave a lasting impact.

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Putting AIDA into Practice

Assist
I began by deliberately connecting new concepts to what I already knew—past leadership experiences, district initiatives, and professional development I’ve been part of. For example, when the authors described “empowering others through trust,” I immediately thought of our own culture-building efforts. These connections grounded my reading and made me more aware of what I was bringing to the table before taking in new information.

Investigate
From there, I sought out supporting and contrasting information—research studies, survey data from my school, and examples from other districts. When I read about distributed leadership models, I went looking for case studies, teacher-leadership frameworks, and Hattie’s work on collective efficacy. This expanded my perspective beyond the book’s examples.

Dialogue
Here’s where the lines started to blur. Investigate had me gathering facts, but my mind quickly jumped into evaluating them: Would our school culture support distributed leadership? How might these ideas look in a middle school setting? I noticed that Dialogue—the reflective and analytical stage—often arrived before Investigate was “complete.” While the blending felt natural, I realized that separating them more clearly could lead to richer insights, because I’d have a fuller set of information before I began interpreting it.

Apply
Finally, I considered how these insights could be put into action. For example, after reflecting on empowerment and trust, I sketched out how I could revise our Collaborative Action Team’s meeting norms to ensure every voice has influence. That was an immediate takeaway I could implement, not just an idea I admired in the abstract.

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Why This is More Than a Reading Strategy

Using AIDA with Unleashed reminded me that it’s not a tool for getting faster answers—it’s a metacognitive framework for slowing down and thinking better. Each phase forces a different mental posture:

• Assist makes me conscious of what I already know and how it shapes my perspective.

• Investigate ensures I have real evidence before forming judgments.

• Dialogue pushes me to wrestle with meaning, implications, and context.

• Apply moves reflection into action.

By working through these phases, I uncovered insights I might have missed if I had skimmed the book and gone straight to “what does this mean for me?” I saw patterns in my own leadership approach, noticed gaps between our school’s current practices and the ideals in Unleashed, and identified concrete changes worth testing.

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Sample Moments Where AIDA Helped Me See More Clearly

• While reading about empowerment, Assist surfaced memories of past initiatives where trust either accelerated or stalled progress.

• In Investigate, looking at our 360 survey data gave me a factual baseline for how empowered staff currently feel—something I might have skipped without this phase.

• In Dialogue, I compared that data to the book’s leadership levers, which highlighted a gap between intent and perception in our building.

• In Apply, I drafted a plan to increase teacher input in decision-making for the upcoming school year.

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Lessons for Next Time
The Assist phase felt strong and distinct, but Investigate and Dialogue overlapped more than I’d like. To keep them separate in future projects, I’ll:

1. Fully document findings in Investigate before starting any interpretation.

2. Use separate note pages for “what I found” and “what I think.”

3. Time-box the phases so I’m not tempted to blend them midstream.

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AIDA doesn’t replace thinking—it organizes it. Using it with Unleashed proved that it can slow down the learning process just enough to deepen understanding, surface new insights, and make application more intentional. It’s a framework I’ll continue to use for professional reading, team learning, and even personal projects where deep thinking matters.

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