Team-Teaching in the AI Age: How PLCs Can Use AI to Collaborate Smarter (Not Harder)
Your PLC (Professional Learning Community) is great. You swap ideas, share resources, laugh about the week’s chaos, and try to lift each other up. But let’s face it: time is short, and sometimes the sharing becomes again rewriting the same infographic or again deciding on success-criteria from scratch. What if I told you that AI can be your collaboration amplifier—so your PLC stops just talking and starts doing, faster and more consistently? And yes, we’ll keep the human-teacher at the centre (because automation karate-chops without purpose are no fun).
Where AI helps PLCs right now
When you think of AI as a “co-worker” that handles the grunt-work (not the pedagogy) you open up real possibilities:
Shared document summarization: feed your meeting notes into an AI prompt and get “3 action items, owners, deadlines, next check-in” — less time copying from notes to tracker.
Rapid resource adaptation: A grade-team shares one strong lesson. AI turns it into 3 levels of scaffolding; everyone tweaks; you’ve differentiated and shared.
Common assessment blueprints: Instead of each teacher reinventing the rubric, the team uses one prompt: “Generate a rubric for Grade 9 English, persuasive essay, criteria: argument, evidence, style, conventions.” Then the team refines together.
In Ontario K-12 settings, the shift toward AI-supported collaboration is already underway.
Playbook for collaborative AI use
Here’s how your team can test this next week:
Create a shared “Prompt Bank”
Reserve a Google Doc or padlet and paste prompts that worked (e.g., “Summarize PLC minutes into 3 action items”). Over time you build your own shared bank that reduces “What prompt should we use?” from scratch.
Assign roles
In each AI-task, one person prompts, one person verifies, one person edits/contextualizes. That way the work is distributed—and aligned.
Keep version control
Have one “master doc” in your team’s folder. Use AI-drafts for ideas, then the human-edited version becomes your shared resource.
Run micro-PD together
Book 20 minutes of your next PLC meeting: “Let’s try an AI prompt now” — pick a live task (e.g., “adapt this unit for ESL learners”) and complete it. Reflect. Then decide: continue/don’t.
Check alignment & ethics
Make sure the AI-generated resource aligns with your board’s curriculum expectations and policies. The Ontario Elementary Teachers’ Federation (ETFO) guidance reminds us: teachers must be consulted, tools must align with curriculum and privacy must be respected.
Quick PLC activity you can try
Title: “Five-Minute Curriculum Alignment Sprint”
Before your PLC meeting: each teacher brings their draft of their upcoming unit goals.
Use an AI prompt: “Given these unit goals, generate suggested student success criteria (3-5) aligned to Ontario Curriculum expectations.”
In the meeting: review the AI’s suggestions together. Modify, accept, reject.
Take the final criteria and save in your shared team folder — your next year’s team uses them as baseline.
Result: less drafting from scratch, more focus on refinement and pedagogy.
Common pitfalls & how to avoid them
Over-reliance on AI = drift from shared vision. Make sure you discuss what you want before asking the AI to draft.
Digital divide / voice lost. Team members less confident with tech may feel sidelined. Rotate who handles prompting.
Data/privacy blindness. Don’t input student names or confidential data into public AI tools.
Recommended: keep your ‘why’ in sight. The why = better instruction, less duplication, more consistency. If the AI isn’t helping that, stop, pivot.
