Your voice, not the tool's

AI report tools have a default voice: warm, formal, faintly American, and identical across every school using them. Parents who have received reports from you before will hear the difference.

The fix is a short voice file: half a page describing how you write reports. Whether you use the child's name or "your son." Whether you open with a strength or with the year's headline. Phrases you use and phrases you would never. Two or three of your own past comments pasted in as examples. Every report the AI drafts starts with this file, and the drafts sound like you.

If you want the full method for building a voice file, the Sound Like Yourself workbook covers it. For reports, the short version here is enough.

In practice. A Year 6 teacher's voice file had one line that changed everything: "I always end with what I am looking forward to seeing next year." The AI followed it. Parents who had had her for older siblings said the reports sounded exactly like her, and she had written a quarter of the words.

Here are three report comments I wrote last year, with names removed: [ paste ]. Describe how I write reports as a set of instructions: how I open, whether I address the parent or describe the child, sentence length, phrases I use, and anything I clearly avoid. Then list five phrases that AI-written reports typically use that do not appear in mine. Keep it to half a page. I will use this as a standing instruction.

At your desk. Find three report comments you wrote in the past that you were pleased with. Remove names. Build your voice file with the prompt. Read it and correct anything that is not true of you.

Write it down.

• How I always open a report:
• A phrase I would never use:
• Where my voice file is saved: