AI School Leadership Minute: Auto-build evaluations from your phone

AI School Leadership Minute: Auto-build evaluations from your phone
If you feel like you are running year-end evaluations from half-remembered hallway conversations, below is the system that will change the way you do it forever:

a 30-second Google Form on your phone after every walkthrough, and one auto-generated Doc per teacher in May with every observation in chronological order.

How to do it today:
1. Open Google Forms and create a new form titled "Walkthrough Log." Add four questions: Teacher Name (set this question type to Dropdown and paste in every teacher's name), Focus Area, Glow (what went well), Grow (what to work on).
2. Inside the form, click Responses, then the green Sheets icon that says “Link to Sheets”. This creates a connected Google Sheet that logs every time you fill out the form.
3. Open that Sheet. From the Sheet, click Extensions > Apps Script. A code editor opens in a new tab. Delete any starter code you see in the editor.
4. Open ChatGPT or Gemini and paste this prompt in:
"Act as a Google Apps Script developer who works exclusively with K-12 principals who have zero coding experience. Build Apps Script code that reads from a Google Sheet of walkthrough observations and, when I run it, generates one Google Doc per teacher containing every observation for that teacher in chronological order. Teacher names come from a fixed dropdown, so spelling is consistent. Each Doc should use the teacher's name as the title, a header on each entry showing the date and focus area, and the Glow and Grow comments cleanly formatted underneath. All Docs are saved into one Google Drive folder named ‘2025-26 Walkthrough Reports’. Format your response in this exact order:
1) The complete Apps Script code in one copy-paste block.
2) Numbered setup instructions starting from "paste the code into the Apps Script editor." Tell me exactly where to click, what menu to use, what to do when the authorization screen appears, and how to run the script the first time.
3) A final test step so I know it worked.
My Google Sheet has these columns in this order: Timestamp, Teacher Name, Focus Area, Glow, Grow. Teacher names come from a fixed dropdown, so spelling is consistent. The Sheet is named Form Responses 1.”
5. Copy the code it gives you and paste it into the Apps Script editor. Click the Save disk icon, then click Run.
6. Google will ask for permission the first time. Click Advanced, then Go to (your project name), then Allow. This is normal and only happens once.
7. Do a walkthrough today. Fill out the form on your phone. Open the Sheet and confirm the entry shows up. The system is live.
8. At the end of the year, open Apps Script and click Run one time. A Drive folder will be created with a complete Doc for every teacher you observed, every entry in order.

AI makes writing code accessible to everyone. Use this to start taking advantage of it.

If you like these tips for streamlining your day-to-day, you'll love our free monthly AI lab for school leaders. This is a 60-minute monthly session in which we review how school leaders from across the country are using AI. Register here (free).

To calmer evaluation seasons,
William Grube
Founder, Gruvy Education

PS - If ChatGPT's code throws an error the first time you run it, paste the exact error message back into the same chat and ask it to fix it. The model will give you the fixed code.

PPS - Save the form as a bookmark on your phone's home screen so logging a visit takes 30 seconds.