30%
improvement in class preparation time, measured by HOPE’s teachers over six months after the workshops
2 months
to daily AI use in teaching practice
3
workshops: teachers, university students, community students
Situation
HOPE for Cambodian Children runs a school and community programmes in Cambodia. Before the workshops, there was zero AI exposure at the school, work ran through manual processes, and there was no digital workflow for teachers to build on.
Constraint
The school has one computer class, and it is booked for set times, so there was little room for teachers to practise on their own. Access to tools was also narrow: Copilot was the only resource available to the team.
A single demonstration of one tool would not have changed daily practice in those conditions. The work had to cover which education-specific resources exist, and what to consider on data privacy and access before using any of them.
Intervention
I ran three workshops, each for a different group:
- HOPE’s teachers
- University students
- Community students
Participants were 10+ teachers and university student volunteers, who were once recipients of HOPE’s programme donations and now give back to the school.
The tools covered were ChatGPT, Copilot, MathGPT and Minecraft for Education, alongside ethical AI use. I also took the team through education-specific resources beyond Copilot, and the guardrails on data privacy and access they should consider.
What happened after the workshops
Training was not the end of it. I kept sharing new tools and new research with the team afterwards, and a new tutor-led programme is in progress.
Result
Teachers reported a 30% improvement in class preparation time, measured by HOPE’s teachers over the six months after the workshops, and AI became a daily practice within two months. A check-in at six months confirmed the picture.
What changed in the day-to-day: lesson planning became smoother, quizzes and activities were easier to create, and teachers brought fresh ideas into their classrooms.
“AI is not an enemy; it can help augment human life and work. Using AI helped us improve the time spent on the teaching process: delegating the mundane, repetitive research to AI, keeping human judgement and creativity where it belongs.”
“Since attending the AI workshop, my fellow HOPE teachers and I have started incorporating the tools we learnt about into our daily teaching practice. They have made lesson planning smoother, enabled us to create quizzes and activities more easily, and even brought some fresh ideas into our classrooms. I have noticed that both we as teachers and our students are both more engaged and excited about learning. These tools have really sparked our creativity, saved us precious time, and made the whole learning experience more enjoyable and meaningful for everyone.”
Why it worked
The tools were applied to work teachers already do every day (lesson planning, quizzes, classroom activities) rather than taught as a separate subject. That is the principle behind every engagement: start from the work, then choose the tool.
Industry context
This is separate from HOPE’s own results. The Walton Family Foundation and Gallup 2025 survey of US teachers found that teachers who use AI weekly save an average of 5.9 hours a week, about six weeks a school year, and that teachers in schools with a clear AI policy gained a 26% larger time dividend. It is US data, offered only as context for why this kind of adoption matters.
Facing a similar workflow?
In an AI opportunity call we identify the highest-friction workflow in your team and decide whether it is ready to improve.
Book an AI opportunity call →