Before AI becomes a school policy, a toolset, or a delegation - it must become a thinking partner for the leader.
Winter 2026 Cohort Options:
Beginning January 20th or February 24
7 Week Learning Community:
self-paced learning 30 minutes/week + weekly live application sessions with the community
Helping School Leaders Become AI Ready
Schools everywhere are asking about AI. But many educational leaders don’t yet feel confident leading workshops, building strategy, or helping schools put AI to work responsibly.
At the same time, leaders are being asked to make high-stakes decisions quickly — often without the time or space to fully think them through.
This is the moment to build personal clarity before delegating decisions, tools, or policies to others.
Many school leaders are also being pulled into conversations about tools — Brisk, Magic School, SchoolAI, and dozens more — each promising to “solve” a different problem.
The challenge isn’t choosing the right tool. It’s being asked to choose before understanding the system underneath them. Without that foundation, AI becomes just another initiative — adding noise instead of reducing it.
For example ...
Instead of reacting in real time — or defaulting to a quick fix — you learn how to use AI as a thinking partner.
A week before a long weekend, upper school attendance starts sliding and parent emails spike. In one lab session, you’ll use AI to analyze the pattern, generate 3 plausible root causes, and build a two-week response plan - including staff talking points, a parent-facing message, and a simple tracking template you can reuse every break.
This program scaffolds your learning. We start by grounding AI in your leadership reality — then introduce prompts and ready-made workflows you can trust. From there, you move step by step toward building your own workflows and personalized AI tools that support sound judgment and consistent decision-making.
As part of this growing learning community, you’ll not only integrate AI into your own leadership practice, you’ll also walk away ready to:
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Solve a real school leadership challenge end-to-end (e.g., faculty meeting redesign or attendance pattern response) using a repeatable, privacy-safe workflow you can confidently rely on and share.
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Develop plug-and-play workflows that support consistent decision-making across your school.
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Build and adapt personalized AI tools that align with your school’s culture, constraints, and priorities.
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Earn a certificate that signals you are prepared to lead responsible, thoughtful AI integration in education.
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Join a community of peers who are navigating this transition with care, clarity, and shared standards.
What You'll Get
Learn to use AI to reverse engineer tools, systems, and leadership materials — so you can reduce friction in your day-to-day work, reclaim thinking time, and lead change in education with clarity and confidence.
📚 7 Pre-Recorded Modules
20–30 minute weekly video demos.
Do the learning when it’s most convenient for you. Each recording is a progression in understanding the difference between a prompt and a workflow, developing repeatable workflows, building leadership materials, and thinking through real problems using AI.
💡 Resource Library
A ready-to-use library.
The library includes prompts, workflows, strategic frameworks, planning tools, and sample materials you can adapt directly to your school context — saving time while maintaining consistency and trust.
🤝 Weekly Live Application Lab
45 minute Tuesday sessions.
Bring a real leadership pressure point - like attendance dips near breaks, cell phone policies, workload overload, or enrollment messaging - and work through a solution in real time. Replay included.
🎓 Certificate of Completion
Celebrate your success!
Complete the assignments and graduate as an AI-Ready Educational Leader — equipped with practical tools, workflows, and judgment to lead thoughtful, responsible AI integration in schools.
💸 Your Investment:
$749
This reflects a guided, small-group leadership experience — designed to create clarity, not add another initiative to your plate.
(future cohorts will increase)
How It Works
The BlackBelt system uses a layered approach. Each level builds on the last, helping you gain confidence and skill step by step.
Week 1: Includes All 3 FOUNDATIONAL Belts
🩶 Grey Belt – Role & Workflow Map
Start by mapping where AI fits in your leadership reality. We’ll use pre-made workflows to clarify your core responsibilities (culture, people, programs, enrollment, budget), the indicators you’re accountable for, and the recurring deliverables that drain time. You’ll leave with a clear picture of where AI can simplify, systematize, and strengthen your day-to-day leadership - without compromising trust or privacy.
⚪ White Belt: Input-to-Output Fluency Lab
Bring what you already have - notes, rough drafts, priorities, constraints - and learn how to turn it into usable leadership outputs with AI. You’ll practice multiple input styles (from quick bullets to structured templates) and learn how to shape the output (tone, format, audience) so it’s actually helpful in a school context.
🟡 Yellow Belt: From Priority to Plan
Move from curiosity to decisions. Use AI to clarify priorities, map next steps, and build action plans aligned to school objectives - whether that’s reducing faculty overload, strengthening enrollment, improving communication systems, or making program decisions with more clarity and less reactivity.
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Weeks 2-4: APPLICATION Belts
🟠 Orange Belt: Adaptive Learning for Leaders
Make AI your growth partner. You’ll build a personal learning system that adapts to what you actually need right now—communication, strategy, budgeting, enrollment messaging, instructional leadership—so you can upskill efficiently without adding another “initiative” to your plate.
🟢 Green Belt: AI for Critical Thinking
Go beyond convenience and efficiency. Learn to use AI to challenge assumptions, surface tradeoffs, and strengthen decision-making—especially in high-pressure moments (school-wide patterns like phones/attendance, parent expectations, faculty tension, program shifts). This belt builds structured reflection that improves clarity, communication, and leadership confidence.
🔵 Blue Belt: From Task to Process Ownership
Shift from doing everything yourself to designing systems that hold. You’ll learn to map your recurring workflows (faculty meetings, newsletters, admissions marketing/PR, board updates, tuition/budget cycles), identify where AI fits, and create repeatable processes that reduce friction and strengthen your leadership capacity across the year.
Weeks 5-7: MASTERY Belts
🟣 Purple Belt: Workflow Design Studio
Turn regular tasks into repeatable systems. You’ll learn how to structure prompts, build workflow sequences, and create simple automation patterns that save time while improving quality—always using privacy-safe inputs and placeholders so trust stays intact.
🟤 Brown Belt: MultiRole Processes + Team Hand-offs
Build shared systems. You’ll design multi-role processes where AI supports communication, project flow, and handoffs across leadership, admin staff, and teams—so faculty meetings aren’t pointless, newsletters aren’t a burden, and initiatives don’t die in execution.
⚫ Black Belt: Reverse Engineering Tools and Materials
This is mastery for real leadership outputs. Learn how to deconstruct what makes strong materials work (a board memo, tuition/budget narrative, or an annual report), then rebuild it with AI - faster, smarter, and with higher precision - while keeping inputs privacy-safe and de-identified.
Your AI Guide
Mary Ostrowski
I’ve spent 25+ years in education — as a teacher, school leader, preschool owner, and consultant.
I created The PATH from EI to AI™ to guide AI adoption in schools with intention and integrity: Pause, Align, Trust, Hone.
At the core of my work is a simple belief: emotional intelligence is how leaders maintain clarity during rapid change. AI only works in schools when judgment, trust, and culture come first.
I’m also a certified AI BlackBelt instructor, trained through Simple Academy — a practitioner-based learning community focused on real-world, responsible AI use — so you don’t have to navigate this alone.
Trusted by schools across the country.
Ready to step into the future of educational leadership?
Ready to step into the future of educational consulting?
Our next cohort starts live Tuesday, January 20th, but enrollment is rolling. Start at your own pace, but remember - the Founders’ Rate won't last long.
This is your chance to level up from prompting skills to strategic credibility - and claim your spot as a consultant schools trust with AI.
©2025 Mary Ostrowski. All rights reserved.
The Path from EI to AI™