Last fall, Hollie Sisk, Assistant Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Effingham County School District, attended the Chicago Google Leadership Summit with education heads from all over the U.S. While she found it enlightening to learn where other districts were in their AI journey and how they were using Google tools, one piece of the experience struck her as something to bring back to her own Southeast Georgia district of 14,500 students.
“They took us into a room of three or four stations, with Chromebooks ready to go,” says Sisk. “We rotated through, learning the basics. I just sat there and thought our teachers really need this. ‘How can we implement this in our district?’ I marinated on that and when I came back, I pitched it to our tech director. From there, it blossomed into the ECSD Gemini School.”
In ECSD’s Gemini School, attendees rotate across four sessions through focused 20-minute labs on Gemini, NotebookLM, Gems, and Gemini in the Classroom, allowing them to quickly experience real classroom value without overload.
“It’s not just a traditional ‘sit and get,’” says Sisk. “It’s more about creating an environment where it clicks for every educator because they have just enough exposure to spark their curiosity, but not overwhelm them with a lengthy PD session.”
Sisk tries to keep the PD engaging and moving. Instead of having the presenters going from room to room, attendees have to boogie to each round of learning, literally.
“We play disco music in between transitions. It helps them reset and refocus,” says Sisk. “They are going from absorbing a lot of information in 20 minutes from Notebook LM to custom Gems. They really need to turn their brain off and then get it ready for the next session.”
The impact has been immediate and measurable. Forty-five participant comments included consistent themes such as, “I didn’t want to go to another PLC, but this was amazing!” and “This is the first time AI makes sense to me.”
Most notably, a 31-year veteran teacher — who self-identifies as not tech-savvy — was so energized by the experience that she recorded a ten-minute video expressing gratitude and shared that it was the most excited she had felt about teaching in years. This kind of shift doesn’t come from tools, it comes from intentional, learner-centered leadership.
“I knew these tools could help them, but I didn’t want to pull them into a drawn out traditional PD to learn how,” says Sisk, who was recently recognized for this and other efforts with an Innovative Leader Award. “We really wanted to make it an immersive experience — a hands-on experience like I took away from the Chicago summit. Ultimately, my impact when building this was to give teachers back the gift of time.”
3 Tips for Creating An AI Gemini School in Your District
Sisk offers advice for others who are interested in creating such a PD program in their district:
- Create a relationship with the curriculum to ensure buy-in from the top down. “I needed our curriculum department’s trust that we could make this work,” Sisk says. “Don’t just try to push it out, really build those relationships and get them on board to support you.”
- Be consistent in the marketing. “I’m partial to branding–I try to focus on that not only for our social media account, but anything we’re pushing out,” she says. “I stay very consistent which helps with recognition and so teachers feel they are part of something special.”
- Make PD fun and engaging. Training doesn’t have to be a traditional “sit and get,” says Sisk. “You can have movement. You can have 25-minute round table discussions and then get up and move to a different table and a different topic.”
Fuel FOMO With a Marketing Moment
“I knew if we did a really good job marketing this, we’d have bought their trust,” says Sisk. “The next time we roll out a program, they will say, ‘Hey, the last thing they did was really fun. I want to come.”
Sisk embraces that marketing mindset for instructional technology—one that reframes tech not as “another initiative,” but as a value-adding experience educators want to engage with.
“My mindset wasn’t, ‘Let’s promote another professional development,’ it was more like a product launch,” she says. “One special ed teacher shared how much time she saved writing IEPs as well as writing success criteria and learning targets. Excited teachers are calling a few days later, ‘Look at this song we created with the students after the session!’ Even our athletic coaches loved the training, which speaks volumes because they often hate having to come to PD.”
Sisk consistently highlights instructional technology successes through social media, reinforcing a culture that celebrates innovation and progress.
“One of the most powerful pieces of this is learning from other teachers,” she says. “It’s not technology or curriculum presenting the material, it’s teachers and media specialists. April Platt, Crystal Mealor, Jack Sinopoli, and Nick Exely are a few of our rockstar presenters.To me, face-to-face instruction is always more effective.”
One of the goals was to elevate the position of her media specialists and the value they bring to schools. Sisk asked each to earn their Google Gemini-certified educator designation to become the on-site expert at their school post-Gemini School.
Her leadership is shifting perception across ECSD. Instructional technology is no longer seen as optional or burdensome, but as practical, exciting, and directly connected to improved teaching and learning results for their students.
“One of the biggest rewards this year was the blossoming of that relationship between curriculum and tech departments, because they helped us reach out to leadership,” Sisk says. “They allowed us to interrupt their principal’s PLC meeting and do a version of Gemini School just for principals. That sparked buy-in. Principals saw the value in their world as a principal and wanted their teachers to have that same experience.”
This PD experience has earned a 4.72 rating out of 5, based strictly on teacher feedback. The demand generated by Gemini School has exploded, prompting plans for expansion—clear evidence that Sisk’s work is not only effective but scalable.
“We are presenting at our board retreat in a few weeks because our board members are asking, ‘What is this Gemini School and why do we have it?’” Sisk says. “Everyone wants a little piece of it. That’s exactly what we wanted to create.”
- Gemini
- Creating custom Gems
- NotebookLM
- Gemini in Google Classroom