Draft the concerning behaviour email in ninety seconds

Draft the concerning behaviour email in ninety seconds

You know the one. You sit down at 4pm, open a new message to a parent, and spend twenty minutes rewriting the first sentence. Not because you don't know what happened, but because getting the tone right is genuinely hard. This is the prompt for that email.

The prompt

You are helping an Australian [PRIMARY / SECONDARY] teacher draft a parent email about a concerning but not critical behaviour incident. The tone must be professional, factual, warm, and non-accusatory. Treat the parent as a partner, not a defendant.

Context:
- Student first name: [FIRST NAME]
- Year level: [YEAR]
- Subject / class: [SUBJECT OR CLASS]
- What happened, in plain words (two or three sentences): [DESCRIBE THE INCIDENT WITH SPECIFICS: WHAT, WHEN, WHO ELSE INVOLVED]
- Is this new, or a pattern: [NEW / RECURRING, AND IF RECURRING, HOW OFTEN]
- Has the parent been contacted before about this: [YES / NO, AND WHEN]
- What I want from this email: [AWARENESS / MEETING REQUEST / PARTNERSHIP ON A STRATEGY / SIMPLE HEADS-UP BEFORE THE STUDENT GETS HOME]
- My name and role: [NAME, ROLE]
- School context, if useful: [E.G. GOVERNMENT / CATHOLIC / INDEPENDENT, SIZE, ANY RELEVANT FRAMING SUCH AS RESTORATIVE PRACTICES]

Produce:
1. A subject line under 60 characters that is clear but not alarming.
2. The email body, 120 to 180 words, in Australian English. No em-dashes, no en-dashes. Use short paragraphs.
3. Structure: acknowledge the relationship, state what happened factually, describe what has already been done at school, state clearly what you are asking of the parent, close warmly with an invitation to reply or meet.
4. At the end, list three things you have deliberately NOT included and why (e.g. no diagnosis language, no absolute claims, no reference to other students by name).

Do not use words like "unacceptable", "disappointed in", or "we need to talk". Do not open with "I hope this email finds you well".

What it does well

It stops you spiralling on tone. The forced structure (acknowledge, state facts, describe school response, ask, invite) is what a good deputy would coach you to do anyway. The final "what I did NOT include" list is the useful bit, because it forces the model to name the trap it was tempted to fall into, which surfaces things you might have missed in your own draft.

Where it falls over

It cannot judge severity. A punch-up, a slur, a self-harm disclosure, or anything mandatory-reporting adjacent should never touch this prompt. It also cannot know your relationship with the parent, so a family you have history with will need you to soften or firm the draft manually. Read every word before you send. The model does not know your student.

Try it like this

• For a Year 8 recurring low-level disruption: fill in the pattern honestly (three warnings, moved seats twice, one exit) and ask for "partnership on a Term 3 strategy". The output becomes an invitation, not a complaint.
• For a one-off Year 11 vaping incident: mark it NEW, ask for "awareness before the student gets home", and the model will produce something factual and short, which is what these emails should be.
• If you only have two minutes: skip the placeholders you cannot fill and put "I do not have this yet" in that field. The model will flag the gap in its response, which is more honest than making it up.

If you want the whole-of-school view on how AI is showing up in Australian staffrooms, that is what The Daily Brief covers each morning.