At this point, I have delivered AI training to thousands of teachers across Ireland and, increasingly, to students. Through seminars, workshops, conferences, and school visits, I’ve seen every level of engagement with these tools, from complete scepticism to uncritical enthusiasm. Both extremes miss the point.
There are many frameworks for using AI effectively. The Department of Education’s guidance offers the 4P approach. Oide provides the RASE framework. Various consultants and organisations have developed their own models. But the framework I recommend, and the one I return to in every training session, is what I call the 5 P’s.
It works because it keeps professional expertise at the centre of every interaction with AI. And once teachers grasp this approach, the sky genuinely is the limit in terms of creating effective teaching and learning resources.
The Core Insight
Here is what I tell every teacher: once you know what you want, you can ask AI to draft it for you. That sounds simple, but it represents a fundamental shift in how we work. Differentiated worksheets, exam-style questions, feedback templates, lesson hooks, revision materials. All of these become possible in minutes rather than hours. But only if you approach AI correctly.
The 5 P’s provide that approach.
1. Professional Expertise
Your subject knowledge comes first. You are the expert. AI is powerful but imperfect.
Your professional expertise is what unlocks AI’s potential and allows you to verify, refine, and contextualise its output. Without your expertise, AI output is unverified and unreliable.
I am well positioned to use AI because I have worked for thirty years as a teacher and as an examiner. But it is not just formal qualifications that matter here. It is situational experience. I know what works for certain classes and certain students. I know what doesn’t. I have tried ideas, tested ideas, and failed with ideas. All of which I have learnt from. All of which I can now bring to bear.
When I ask AI to generate a source analysis exercise, I’m not starting from zero. I know which types of questions stretch my higher-ability students. I know which scaffolds help my weaker students access the same material. I know which topics provoke genuine discussion and which fall flat. I know which approaches that looked good on paper, but died in the classroom. That accumulated wisdom shapes every prompt I write and every output I evaluate.
AI does not have this. AI has patterns from training data. It does not know your Class 4B last class on a Friday evening. It does not know which student needs a confidence boost and which needs a challenge. You know these things. That is your expertise, and it is irreplaceable.
2. Prompting
The quality of what you get out of AI depends entirely on the quality of what you put in.
Anyone who has sat in on my demonstrations knows that I voice type. I find typing restrictive. Instead, I talk through what I want with the AI, explaining the task conversationally. I give it a sense of the class I have in mind, the type of student I’m pitching the material at, the level of challenge I’m aiming for. No personal details, of course, but enough context for the AI to understand who this is for and what it needs to achieve.
Tell the AI what role to adopt, what task to perform, and what format you need. The 5 P’s sequence ensures your professional expertise shapes every prompt from the outset.
3. Priming
Give the AI context before asking it to work.
I have been teaching for thirty years. In that time, I have built up a treasure trove of lesson plans, worksheets, and PowerPoints that I have developed and adjusted as circumstances change to keep pace with the evolving needs of teaching and learning. This archive is gold when working with AI.
When I ask AI to produce notes on a topic, I upload notes on that topic that I made previously. When I want a new lesson plan, I provide one of mine as a model and tell it to go from there. The AI learns your style, your standards, your approach. It stops producing generic content and starts producing content that fits how you actually teach.
This dramatically improves the relevance and accuracy of its output. Without priming, AI operates in a vacuum. With priming, it operates within your professional context.
4. Prechecking Prompt
This is the real game changer.
Before I press enter, I add two questions at the end of every prompt:
Are you clear on what I’m asking you to do?
Do you need to ask any questions for clarification to succeed in your task?
I use this so often that I have a keyboard shortcut for it (Check out a wonderful Chrome Extension called TextBlaze to do this) . Here is why it matters: the AI comes back with questions I had not even considered. It asks for specifics I forgot to include. It identifies ambiguities in my instructions that would have produced mediocre output.
Let me give you two examples. Once, I asked AI for a lesson plan. Before producing anything, it asked me: how long is the class? 40 minutes, 60 minutes, or 120 minutes? I had not specified. Without that question, I would have received something that either ran out of steam halfway through or required twice as long as I actually had.
On another occasion, I was preparing a factsheet on AI and misinformation. The AI asked: is this for parents, teachers, students, or school leaders? Each audience needs completely different content, pitched at completely different levels, addressing completely different concerns. I knew that, of course. But I had not told the AI. Without that clarifying question, I would have received something that missed the mark entirely.
These 2 question catche the blind spots before they become problems. Instead of receiving something half-right and having to iterate, I provide the missing details upfront. The AI then delivers something much closer to what I actually need.
5. Professional Validation
The cycle returns to you. This step is not optional. It is essential.
Critically evaluate every piece of AI output using your professional knowledge. Check for hallucinations. Check for bias. Check for accuracy. Check for appropriateness. Does this actually align with the curriculum? Would this work with your specific students? Is the tone right? Is the level right? Are the examples suitable?
Edit, adapt, and improve. AI is your assistant, not your author. Your expertise is the beginning and the end of this process.
I cannot stress this enough: AI will produce content that looks polished and professional. That appearance means nothing if the substance is wrong. Only you can make that judgement. Only you have the subject knowledge, the classroom experience, and the understanding of your students that allows you to evaluate what AI produces. This is where my many years of professional practice earns its value.
Never skip this step. Never assume AI got it right. Always validate.
The Impossible Becomes the Possible
When AI first arrived in classrooms, the doomsday voices were loud. This is the end of teachers. We will teach without heart. The profession is finished; mere tools in the “hands” of the AI Edtechbots.
I think the opposite is true. I think AI is the making of teachers, not the end of them.
For the first time, we have a tool that can genuinely augment our expertise. The resources I create now are of a far higher quality than before. Materials that never saw the light of day because I simply could not produce them on my own. Genuine differentiation, not the watered-down version we managed when time allowed. Universal Design for Learning, Bloom’s Taxonomy, all the best practice we learnt about in college but struggled to implement consistently in the reality of a full timetable and overflowing marking pile and seemingly endless admin.
All of it is now within touching distance. Not a far-off pipe dream. Genuinely possible for every teacher who learns to work with these tools effectively. The 5 P’s provide that foundation.
Learn them.
Use them.
Make the impossible possible.
Patrick Hickey (@aiteachingguru on all major social media) is an AI CPD Provider, AI in Education Consultant, Media Contributer, Current Teacher and Assistant Principal in Boherbue Comprehensive School, Co. Cork.
If you have any queries you can email www.aiteachingguru@gmail.com