Brickfield Education Labs Teaching with AI
Pathway 2 — Setting up

Teach AI your voice and materials

Upload your slides, plans and writing. Get outputs that sound like you — not a generic AI.

Data protection: Never upload documents containing real student names, staff names, parent contact details, medical information, SEND assessments, or any other personally identifiable information. Remove or anonymise all personal data before uploading any file.

Upload your world

When Claude or Gemini only knows what it was trained on, it gives generic answers. When you upload your materials, it learns your curriculum — and everything it produces is grounded in what you actually teach.

What to upload, and why each thing matters

Different file types teach the AI different things. The following describes what each contributes to its understanding of your teaching.

Slide decks (PDF or PPTX)
Your explanations, worked examples, diagrams and pacing
Lesson plans (DOCX)
Objectives, timing, differentiation strategies
Worksheets (DOC or PDF)
The questions you ask, how you structure tasks
Rubrics (DOC)
What quality looks like in your classroom
Parent emails (TXT or DOC)
Your tone with families — warm, formal, direct
Teaching notes (TXT)
The informal stuff — what you say out loud
Start small. Five to ten documents is enough to begin. Quality matters more than quantity — one clear lesson plan teaches the AI more than 30 loosely formatted files. Always check every document for personal data before uploading.

How to create a Project in Claude and upload your files

The following steps get your content into a Claude Project so it is available in every conversation you start inside it.

  1. Open claude.ai (opens in new tab) and sign in to your account.
  2. In the left sidebar, find Projects and select New project.
  3. Give it a meaningful name — for example Year 9 Science or GCSE English Teaching.
  4. Select Add content and upload your files. Start with your most-used slides and two or three lesson plans.
  5. Add a project instruction — this is covered in full in phase three of this guide.
  6. Every new chat you start inside this project will automatically have access to all your uploaded files.

Teach your voice

Your teaching voice is the combination of how you explain things, how warm or formal you are, which analogies you reach for, and what you care about. Without it, the AI defaults to a generic tone that sounds like no particular teacher at all.

Upload examples of your own writing

The most powerful thing you can do is show, not just tell. Upload real examples of your writing from different contexts — the AI will read the patterns and learn them.

Formal writing
Past reports, assessment feedback, parent letters, department documents
Informal writing
Emails to colleagues, handwritten notes typed up, verbal explanations you have drafted
Student-facing writing
Instructions on worksheets, comments on marked work, classroom slides in your words
Your go-to phrases
The specific language you reach for — "let's unpack this", "connect this back to…", "what's the bigger picture?"
Before uploading any of these: remove all names and identifying information. Replace student names with "Student A" or "a Year 10 student". Redact parent names, email addresses, and contact details. Do not upload any document containing SEND details, safeguarding information, or medical notes — even in passing.

Ask the AI to identify your voice from your documents

Once you have uploaded some of your writing, paste the following prompt inside your project. The AI will read your documents and describe the patterns it notices, then give you a voice description paragraph you can reuse.

Prompt to paste into Claude or Gemini
Read through the documents I have uploaded, particularly any emails, lesson plans, or written feedback. Then describe my teaching voice in terms of: tone (formal versus warm), vocabulary level, sentence length, how I address students, any phrases or sentence starters I use often, and what I seem to care most about as a teacher. Give me a short paragraph I could use in future prompts to describe my voice to you.

Or build your voice description here

Fill in the four questions below. When you select the generate button, this tool creates a voice description paragraph you can copy straight into your project instructions.

Your voice description — paste this into your project instructions

Build your project instruction

A project instruction is a set of standing rules the AI reads before every conversation. Think of it as the briefing you would give a very capable teaching assistant on their first day — covering your subject, your students, your style, and your non-negotiables.

The five parts of a strong teaching instruction

A well-built project instruction covers the following five areas. One to three sentences per area is enough.

  1. Who you are and what you teach. Subject, year group, exam board if relevant.
  2. Your students. Age range, typical prior knowledge, any key context about the group.
  3. Your voice. The paragraph you built or asked the AI to write for you in phase two.
  4. Your content. Tell the AI to use your uploaded materials as its primary source — not generic knowledge.
  5. Your rules. Format preferences, things to avoid, how formal outputs should be.

A ready-made template to edit

Copy the template below into your project's instruction box. Replace every section in square brackets with your own details. Delete any parts that do not apply to you.

Project instruction template — copy and personalise
Who I am: I am a [subject] teacher at [school type], teaching [year groups / age range]. I have been teaching for [X] years. My students: My classes are typically [ability range or context]. [Add anything important: mixed ability, EAL students, high prior attainment, etc.] My voice and style: [Paste the voice description you built in phase two here.] Use my content: I have uploaded my lesson plans, slides, worksheets, and other teaching materials. Always draw on these as your primary source when helping me. If something in my materials differs from general practice, follow my materials. Only go beyond them when I specifically ask. Data protection — important: Never include real student names, staff names, parent names, contact details, addresses, or any other personally identifiable information in anything you produce. If I accidentally share a name, do not repeat it back — use a generic label such as "the student" instead. My preferences: — Match the reading age of whatever I am writing for (students, parents, colleagues). — Keep explanations concrete before abstract. Always give an example first. — Do not use bullet points unless I ask — write in sentences and paragraphs. — If I ask you to draft something, give me one version I can edit, not multiple options unless I ask. — Flag if you are unsure whether something fits my curriculum.

A content-anchor phrase for individual messages

For any conversation where you want the AI to stay especially close to your materials, add this short phrase at the start of your message. It tells the AI your uploaded documents are the boundary, not just the starting point.

Add to the start of individual messages
Using only the content from my uploaded materials — not general knowledge — please [your request here].
Why this works: AI tools are eager to be helpful, which can mean they fill gaps with plausible-sounding general content. This phrase tells it your materials are the ceiling, not the floor.

Use it daily

The following example prompts show how to phrase requests so the AI uses your materials and your voice. Each uses a pattern you can adapt for your own subject and context.

Creating new materials from your existing content

Example prompt
Using my Year 9 photosynthesis slides and the worksheet I uploaded, write a new starter activity for a class that has already covered the light-dependent reactions but has not yet started the Calvin cycle. Match the style of my existing starters.

Writing a parent communication in your voice

Example prompt
Write a parent email about the upcoming assessment. Use the tone of my previous parent emails in the project. Keep it under 180 words, and mention the revision resources I have uploaded without listing all of them.
Personal data reminder: Do not include any real student names, parent names, or contact details in your prompt. Use "the student", "their parent or carer", or "a family in my class" as placeholders. Fill in any real names only after copying the draft out of the AI and into your own email client.

Differentiating your own content

Example prompt
Take the explanation of fractions on slide 12 of my uploaded deck and rewrite it at two levels: one for students working at the expected standard and one for students who need more scaffolding. Keep my examples and my sentence style.

Generating feedback comments from your rubric

Example prompt
Based on my uploaded rubric for the persuasive writing task, write five different feedback comments for work that meets the standard but does not yet exceed it. Sound like my written feedback, not like a generic comment bank.
Personal data reminder: Never paste in a student's actual work, name, or any identifying details. Describe the work in general terms. Fill in names only after copying the comment into your own marking system.

Building retrieval questions directly from your slides

Example prompt
Create ten retrieval practice questions based only on slides three to eight of my uploaded deck. Use the same wording and examples from the slides — do not introduce new vocabulary I have not used.

Your setup checklist

Work through each item and tick it off as you complete it. By the time you reach the end, your project is fully set up and ready to use every day.

Setup checklist

  • Created a project with a clear name for your subject or year group
  • Uploaded your slides and lesson plans — at least five documents, with all personal data removed
  • Uploaded examples of your writing — anonymised, with all student names, parent names, and contact details removed
  • Built your voice description using the builder in phase two, or asked the AI to write one from your documents
  • Added your project instruction including the data protection rule
  • Checked every uploaded file for personally identifiable information and removed or anonymised it
  • Tested with a real task — asked the AI to write something using your materials and checked the result
  • Refined at least one output and noted what to add to your project instruction
  • Planned what to upload next — next unit, more writing examples, your current assessment rubrics

What to do next

Once you are comfortable with one project, the following ideas help you get more from this setup.

Separate projects by purpose
One project for teaching content, one for admin and communications, one for a specific exam class
Share with colleagues
Export your project instruction and share the template — it saves them the setup time
Add student exemplars
Upload anonymised examples of top-grade work — with all names removed — so the AI knows what excellent looks like in your marking
Review each term
Add new units, remove outdated files, and refine your project instruction based on what you have learned
Go to the Prompt Lab →