We Went Back to Teach Our Own Teachers AI

This is the short version. The long version is on the blog at /blog/ai-workshop-st-pauls-vaniyambadi.

March 18, 2026, a Saturday. 14 teachers at St. Paul's Matric Hr Sec School, Vaniyambadi — the school Nav and Sujal did their 12th standard in 2021. Mrs. Josephine, the principal, had emailed us. We came.

The maths teacher.

Mrs. Valli. 18 years of service. She makes 4 sets of differentiated worksheets per week for 4 sections of 9th standard — that's 64 problems/week, 6 hours of work. We showed her how to do it with Claude in 9 minutes. She said "I could have used this for the last 18 years." Then she cried for 30 seconds, wiped her eyes, and said thank you.

The 5 tools they learned.

Claude for lesson plans and worksheets. NotebookLM for textbook Q&A. Gemini for Tamil and Hindi content. Khanmigo for tutoring demos. MagicSchool AI for rubric building. All free. 6 hours. 14 teachers. Zero budget.

What we learned.

Teachers don't need a new platform. They need 5 tools that work, that they're allowed to use, and that don't cost anything. Once they have that, they'll teach themselves the rest. The 2BFT /for-schools program is built around this exact insight.

We're going back in August 2026 for a 3-day follow-up. The plan: those 14 teachers each teach 3 more. 42 in August, 126 by December, 378 by March 2027.