Harvest Kernel · SeedStacking Activity Kit

The AI Skills Jam Starter Kit

Run the practice session OpenAI charges nothing for, right in your own building.

Why this kit exists: OpenAI and the Walton Family Foundation are putting 1,600 teachers through in person AI Skills Jams this summer because access alone never built a skill. Teachers who practice weekly reclaim 5.9 hours every week, about six weeks a year. The structure of those sessions is not proprietary: one real task, one person slightly ahead of you, one finished win, repeated. This kit walks you through all four SeedStacking phases so you can run the same play without waiting for a tour stop.

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Seed

Pick Your One Real Task

10 to 15 min

The single biggest failure mode in AI training is the demo prompt. You will not practice on anything fake today.

List the three tasks that ate your evenings this week. Grading feedback, a parent newsletter, a unit plan, a rubric, an IEP draft, a staff email. Real deadlines only.

Circle the one with the nearest deadline. Nearest deadline wins because you will finish it today, and a finished win is the whole point.

Write one sentence describing what done looks like. Example: a one page newsletter ready to send to families by Friday.

Seed tip If you cannot pick, choose the task you have rewritten from scratch most often. Repetition is where AI pays back fastest.

Sprout

The Solo Rep

15 to 20 min

Before you bring anyone else in, do one honest rep yourself so you know where the friction lives.

Feed the AI your real context. Paste the assignment, the standards, last month's newsletter, whatever the task actually needs. Context in, quality out.

Ask for a first draft, then push back twice. First pass is never the keeper. Tell it what is wrong the way you would tell a student teacher.

Check every fact and name before anything leaves your desk. You are the editor of record. The tool drafts, you decide.

Sprout tip Time yourself. The before and after number is what convinces your colleagues in the Grow phase.

Grow

Run a Mini Skills Jam

20 to 30 min

Now bring one or two colleagues in. The mentor does not need to be an expert, just twenty hours ahead of the room.

Everyone brings one real task. Same rule as your Seed phase. No demos, no hypotheticals, actual work due this week.

Work side by side for 20 minutes. The strongest AI user narrates their screen for the first five, then everyone builds. Questions out loud, answers in real time.

Finish before you leave the room. Every person walks out with shipped work: a sent email, a finished plan, a graded stack. Momentum comes from completion, never from exposure.

Grow tip A planning period is enough. Borrow the format of the OpenAI jams: real task, live mentor, immediate feedback.

Harvest

Make It a Cadence, Measure the Return

30 to 45 min + shareable

One session builds a memory. A monthly cadence builds a skill. This phase turns your jam into a system.

Put the next jam on the calendar before this one ends. Same room, same format, four weeks out. Recurring invite, not a someday plan.

Track your hours for one month. The Gallup benchmark is 5.9 hours a week for weekly users. Log your actual number below and compare at the next jam.

Share one win with your community. Post your best before and after in the Harvest Kernel community so the next teacher can borrow your rep.

Harvest tip Print this page at the end of the month. Four filled lines and twelve checked boxes is a professional development artifact your principal can actually read.

Run your jams alongside people doing the same work.

The free Harvest Kernel community shares prompts, wins, and monthly practice rhythms built on SeedStacking.

Join the Free Community