How I Use Starlight Every Day as a History Teacher, Assistant Head, and Founder of STAR21

By Adam Sturdee

As someone who lives and breathes teaching and learning—both as a classroom teacher and as one of the founders of STAR21—Starlight has become an essential companion in my daily practice.

I don’t just use it; I rely on it.

I record almost every lesson I teach.

Why? Because it helps me plan smarter, teach more reflectively, and stay grounded in the rhythm of the learning. Now that the Teacher Toolkit is live, I find myself returning to my own lessons more than ever—as a planning tool. I’ll play back a key moment to remind myself where I got to in a sequence or reflect on how I delivered an explanation. The toolkit's automatically generated resources—like retrieval questions and next-step suggestions—make lesson planning that much easier, faster, and more connected to what I actually said.

But Starlight is more than a planning tool—it’s a coaching engine. I use the feedback report every time. The Deep Dive function has been particularly helpful for exploring how I prompt metacognitive thinking or how I model vocabulary. This is something I’ve actively developed over time. I also try to log one short reflection after each lesson. It’s a small habit that pays off—Starlight learns from these reflections and tailors its feedback more precisely over time.

I use Starlight autonomously to develop my teaching—this is my space to reflect, experiment, and grow without judgment or performance pressure. I’ve built a growing library of templates, experimenting constantly to explore how different prompts shape the feedback. Some of my favourites include:

• Laugh & Learn – Helps identify and reflect on humorous moments to enhance classroom rapport and student engagement.

• Mic’d Up – Transforms your lesson into a polished podcast-style experience, ideal for reflection or sharing.

• Who Are You in the Classroom? – Decodes your teaching style and personality traits to support deeper self-awareness and growth.

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I also love trying out templates made by my colleagues and our users—some of them are brilliant and wildly creative. Please keep sending them my way.

Since using Starlight, I’ve become far more conscious of my speech. I slow down, articulate more clearly, and narrate transitions deliberately. That’s good for students—and it also makes sure StarDrive captures my words accurately. I'm more mindful of the feedback categories on the default report—such as questioning, curriculum links, or sentiment and tone—so I’ll often reference these aspects explicitly during a lesson. The gamification side of Starlight is fun—I find myself squeezing in cross-curricular links or breaking down a complex word, just to see if it gets picked up in the feedback.

I also watch my word count. An average lesson transcript on the platform is around 5,000 words per hour, which gives me a rough sense of how much I’m talking versus how much independent work is going on. It’s not perfect, but it’s another useful metric I keep in mind.

Sometimes I’ll follow up on one of the recommended resources in the report—although I’ll admit I haven’t done this much yet. We should probably hyperlink these to make it easier for everyone to follow through on wider reading or CPD.

Finally—and this matters—I always give Starlight a bit of love when it gets it right. If I’ve found the feedback helpful, I use the star rating. It’s not just a thank you to the system—it’s a nod to the brilliant work of our dev team behind the scenes, and it helps them fine-tune the model based on real user experience.

Starlight isn’t just a product I helped build. It’s something I use every day to improve, reflect, and stay sharp. It's become my second brain, my coach, and sometimes even my cheerleader. If you're not using it yet, give it a try. And if you are—keep the reflections, ratings, and templates coming.

We're building this together.

The Insight Engine is written by Adam Sturdee, co-founder of Starlight—the UK’s first AI-powered coaching platform—and Assistant Headteacher at St Augustine’s Catholic College. This blog is part of a wider mission to support educators through meaningful reflection, not performance metrics. It documents the journey of building Starlight from the ground up, and explores how AI, when shaped with care, can reduce workload, surface insight, and help teachers think more deeply about their practice. Rooted in the belief that growth should be private, professional, and purposeful, The Insight Engine offers ideas and stories that put insight—not judgment—at the centre of development.