SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education. Your child's school probably has more data on them than ever before, grades, tests, scores, attendance, behavior. But there's a problem. The data lives in a dozen different systems that don't talk to each other. So when your kid needs help, the people who should be catching that early are stuck digging through spreadsheets instead of teaching. Christopher Hall spent a decade of living that exact problem as a classroom teacher. And then he built the platform that's changing it for over 2 million students. And that's what we're unpacking today. Welcome back to the Supported Learning Podcast. I'm Dr. Joe Sebestion. Families often ask me how to navigate K-12 education, the maze of college prep without wasting thousands of dollars or hours of time. And that usually involves finding out the people who figured out the rules of the game. So I'm thrilled to talk to Christopher Hall today. He is the co-founder and president of Otis, a K-12 platform that's been used to support over two and a half million students nationwide. He is a former social studies teacher at the middle school level and a 2025 EdTech Digest Visionary Leadership Award winner. And he's on a mission to give teachers the one thing they never have enough of time. So we're going to dive into why schools are drowning in data but still missing the signals, how AI is changing that or can change that for teachers and families, and what parents should actually be paying attention to. Chris, welcome to the show. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Doing really well. Appreciate the ability to the opportunity to join this uh show. And I'm really excited for the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 1:57

Yeah, no, I mean, I hope I gave your highlight real background a little bit of justice, but kind of give us like where did it all start from? How do you go from a middle school social studies teacher, um, fellow social studies teacher, I might add as well, to developing an ed tech platform and fascinated with data because usually when we think data, we don't think social studies, we think math and science. So, how do we get from where where you started to where you are today?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yeah, so my journey started when I was a seventh grade social studies teacher, as you mentioned, and I was also the team lead. So we would get together as a seventh grade uh group of teachers, and we had a meeting called uh PST or Problem Solving Teams, and we would identify students who were struggling or who might need extra support. Maybe it could be extension for some of our gifted kids, but this is where we kind of brought kids up. And a couple while I was the team lead, we also were adopting iPads in the classroom for the social studies department. And what ended up happening was I thought these iPads would make the understanding of who a kid is easier, but instead, we would be in this room and each teacher would have a different screen up. Somebody would have the student information system up, someone would have their NWA scores, which was our you know common measurement. Then somebody else would have their behavior up, and all of a sudden we were talking about students, but it would take us 15, 20 minutes just to kind of overview who they are. And this seemed very inefficient. We only had 40 minutes to meet after everybody had their you know conversation to start the period, we'd be left with 30, 35 minutes. And if you're taking 20 of them just to triangulate where a kid is at, you're not really getting into the action steps of what you need to do. So that's really where the idea of Otis came together, where we wanted to bring together all of that data, all of that information, so that you'd have their academic, their attendance, their behavior, even their cognitive past information. And then you could also talk about the their interests, their skills, and these other things. And that profile really needs to exist so that you can articulate who a kid is. And with that, when we had the ability to have all that information, we were having much more meaningful conversations. We weren't taking 25 minutes around this building of who a kid is. We were getting to hey, what do we need to do to support this kid better to help them achieve better outcomes? And in middle school, I know you mentioned your social studies teacher as well. It's you have a you have a large casel. I had 150 kids. So how do we really make it meaningful for more? And that's what OTA started, and then we've added AI to kind of extend our ability to bring insights and make a more deliverable and discoverable.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

So it is basically systems talking to systems to be able to present the most real-time data of students to teachers and administrators.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

So I think it's in part systems talking to systems, but I also think it's providing educators the tools that they're using in their normal local uh workflow, uh, putting them into your Otis workflow. So that would be your ability to give assessments. You could give an exit ticket, you could do observational rubrics, you could do common assessments. And so with the ability to add your classroom data, which is often missed, right? A key minion piece, as well as having the longitudinal history of their past performance. So you know, hey, if as a seventh grade teacher, I can see the standards they worked on in sixth grade, I can see the skills they've been building short, I can see their NWA scores or their ACT scores, SAT, Dibbles, you name it, Dreambox, you name it. It's really just this ability to have that understanding, and you then have the ability to assign lessons. You have the ability to kind of take that next step. So it's not just something isolated, it really becomes the workflow that we are gathering the information kind of frictionless, so that you're just compiling it. So as a teacher, you're just doing your normal thing, like, oh, I'm giving this paper, I'm giving this project, I'm giving this test. Well, all of a sudden, that's all of a sudden in the system alongside everything else, so that it's now adding to what has been there, and it just naturally builds, and then we do all the organization for you.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Got it. So is it also plugged into like the school information system and like the statewide data that the difference is pool too? So you're getting snapshot both in classroom and district level as well.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yeah, so we are gonna connect to the systems you use, right? So we're gonna connect to your student information system, we'll get your rostering information, your demographic information, we'll be getting your attendance and your behavior, which is often in your student information system. We then will be your system to give your classroom assessments. We can then send that, you know, those scores back to your student information system, but then we also are connecting to you know your local assessments, be it the Cambium assessment or Lexia, or we connect to 90 different assessments. So it's really about having the connections to the systems, as you mentioned, but then also that workflow that you're doing. And then the cool part is once we have this information in this profile, data is powerful. Now we can aggregate that data. How are my third graders with an IEP doing? Or how are my seventh graders in this tier two intervention doing? So now at the administrator level, you're just looking at groups of kids. Um and then that information is now shown to I have four kids. Uh, my four kids use Otis. So I as a family member can see how they're doing. Um, if you're a tutor, you can now see how they're doing in the classroom. And it really just brings more transparency to all of the information that's happening so that you're not taking all that time to communicate, right? The communication is kind of taking a little bit of care of for you.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

So it sounds like we've sat in similar meetings and probably experienced similar frustrations by one, just the amount of time it takes to just pull any type of meaningful data. And two, the data that we get, there are biases in data and how we look at it because you're right, it doesn't paint the full picture, especially when it's segmented and nothing talks to each other. You know, we have a system that at my current place that that provides at risk scores, but it's not, we always question if it's accurate, we don't always use it, and there's ways to kind of like fudge the system in a way that no one does intentionally. Um, but I hear it a lot of times on calls from for the tutoring program is that you know they're doing good in the class. So, like we we advertise a lot towards um, you know, your kids A and the AP exam. There's there's a lot of A students that end up not passing their AP exam. Um, and so for parents out there that I mean don't live the day-to-day like we do in schools with data, kind of explain to them why the grade isn't really an indicator of anything in the classroom other than what the teacher makes of it and what should they be looking for instead.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Oh, that's a that's a difficult question, a complex one, because I think it really depends on which classroom you're talking about. So some of these traditional scores, like an A or a B, I think that's sometimes uh difficult to really understand what that means. I you know, a lot of our districts will go standards-based grading. I prefer the standards informed instruction term, just because we want those breakdown of skills to really um articulate what is happening. And imagine I always tell folks I talk to, imagine if on your job resume, if you're like applying for a job, you could just say, Oh, I got an A at my last job. No one would, no one would, everyone would chuckle and kind of say, What do you mean? What does an A mean in your gig? You kind of need these skills, and I think oftentimes that's the biggest um breakdown between, okay, I got an A and calculus. Well, did you really master every single skill? Where are you? Um, are you able to do certain formulas or certain concepts where are you like beginning to apply it? And I think when you get into some of this tutoring, we're actually working with John Hopkins University around tutoring and around data. And it's been really fascinating to learn that there is the biggest gap that they've identified is coherence. And I didn't know what that term meant until just a week ago, but the the connection between the classroom and the tutoring, how do we bring them so that they're more aligned? Because unfortunately, some AP class equals the classroom is not really aligned to what's going to be on that test, right? And that's right. Your tutoring comes in and kind of fill those in. But it can also lead to some frustration. If I am a student, you've gotten an A in class, I am going to believe I'm prepared for that test. Um, so how do we really bring that alignment to say, what are you ready for? Where are your skills at? Um, I think sometimes as a former teacher, I would do it as like, are you really grading this person's skill level or are you grading their compliance to what you've asked? Right? If I had an ability for a student to turn something in six times, what is that showing? Now I think I I never was for late. I mean, I always let my kids retake stuff, but it was about building the skills, and I I think that's where you break it down. And if I'm a parent to get to your question, I really would want to understand what skills are my kids getting better at, what are they working at, and you know what's coming next. And and that's really where you can help them.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, I mean, that 100% true that I've now this is my fourth year doing it as a company. Talking to, I probably have taken pretty probably about 1500 different calls from parents, um, across across various subjects, and it and this the inconsistency on how like AP is the closest thing we have to a standardized curriculum at the high school, and there's so many inconsistencies. Start with the pacing, but going up to like just what is being taught, why it's being taught. Um, you have a mix of veteran teachers who don't change when the standards change, you have new teachers that have no idea what they're doing, you have timing issues, people run out of cloud run out of class time. I'm sure you can relate that the when it comes to social studies, that's your the first unimportant core subject that's interrupted by an assembly or whatever. So losing instructional time, but that skill-based uh, you know, it is I I think we are slow in education, at least at the high school level, secondary level, to move towards that because that is actually where the data exists, and we're not always measuring that.

SPEAKER_01 13:15

And I think it gets into the, you know, there's always like the chicken and egg scenario where colleges are wanting GPAs to understand where kids sort in, and it becomes harder. We were, you know, some of our districts um that use Otis, like they are at the high school level standards-based grading, and they face certain struggles, which is kind of why this uh standards informed instruction is kind of nice because trading is you share to the parent, oh, your instructional practices should be broken down into these skills that you can talk about. Um, again, I think I mean it really is about understanding what happens from year to year. One of the things that I think a lot of parents need to understand, and it's hard, and I think educators need to understand it too, is that it was always explained to me that if you look at a spiral staircase, that's how standards work. They're really building upon each other. So your seventh grade standard and your ninth grade standard, they're actually very connected for the same subject. They're just going to a different level of application or a different level of maybe connecting multiple things. So if you're struggling something and you don't master something in fourth grade, that weak skill could come into play again in sixth grade or seventh grade when you kind of cycle back to building upon it. And that's where I think this longitudinal understanding of where a kid's at, it'll actually help you with precision understand how to best support that kid. Um, but that's really where I think we're going as we get better and better at understanding this information and understanding the progression kid takes, that we're going to be able to really pinpoint with precision how to help them. And I think we can soon transform homework instead of generic practice into targeted um tune-ups around, hey, this skill would benefit from a little additional practice, or this skill would really unlock your advancement to the the next progression skills.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

So you in the early days of Otis, when you started it, you were still in the classroom teaching, so you did both at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

I did. For five years, I did both. Uh, for five years I used Otis in my classroom, and then I candidly had twins. Uh, my wife and I had twins. She did um almost probably all the hard work with that. Um, but that gave us four kids under four, and I no longer could do Otis and teach and be uh there for my family. So it was a it was kind of like the right opportunity. It was in 2018. Okay. All my colleagues, my former teaching colleagues joked I missed the the hardest part, which was COVID.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

COVID, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

You got that right before I'm a former teacher that is out of touch, as I like to tell him.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

I don't know about that, but okay. What was that like juggling both?

SPEAKER_01 16:15

It was hard because when you think about it, it was hard in some ways because there's a lot of time, right? I think teaching takes a lot of time, trying to understand and and work on a company takes a lot of time, but there are also some really cool um just moments where I realized that what is happening in the business world is often seemed so disconnected from the classroom, and people tell you like, oh, it's so different. And it's like really, it's it's really not like the building the culture of a classroom for your students is just like building the culture of a company. Um, getting to know your students so that you can really facilitate their work is just like getting to know your your employees. And so I actually was really cool for me to have both just to see that I wasn't over my skis. Because when I first started, I'm like, what do I know? I don't know anything about managing adults, I don't know anything about a lot of this stuff, and it quickly became apparent that no, teachers really are amazingly talented and skilled, you know, being able to run a classroom of 25 plus, you know, young adults and being able to help them and mentor them, being able to have a culture, being able to do a schedule. There's just so much, there's so many parallels there that it was really cool. It also gave me firsthand insight into how does this really work? How do we make something as easy as possible? Um, how do we really ensure that we're addressing the needs uh that are coming up in the class?

SPEAKER_00 17:49

Yeah, it's um it is it is interesting the parallels. I I do I'm I'm sure you've encountered it while you were still in the classroom. Is that like I'm well, I don't know, we'll see because uh how I asked this question because of COVID definitely disrupted a lot. But do you ever run into teachers that are like struggling, like they might they want to let they want to leave, they want to do something else, but they have no idea what they'll do. And I'm just like, you're a teacher, you teach like kids how to learn, you'd be able to learn, you should be able to learn anything.

SPEAKER_01 18:19

So, yeah, that's one of the moments or moment plural multiple opportunities I've had is I've gotten to speak to a lot of people. I've talked to a lot of my former colleagues who've considered moving out, and then actually, the the ones that are crazy are if I I've actually talked to a couple of my former students who I've now been teaching. I started teaching in 2007. I've actually spoken to five of my former students who had gotten into teaching, and then after two or three years, they're kind of like, I don't know what to do. And so, in in having these conversations with current educators, I think you you nailed it. They really do not understand that they can do a whole bunch of things. Okay, do you want to get into professional development? Yeah, you'd be amazing at professional development. You teach people all the time how to use something, learn something. Professional development is a huge piece, or customer success. Oh, do you need to help onboard and implement somebody to a new skill and get them to use it? Like 100%, you'd be great at that. Oh, sales. Do you want to be able to? I one of the underrated things people don't understand as a teacher is you are selling every single day to get your kids engaged in what's happening, right? You're constantly trying to position something for value. I'm like, yeah, you can sell. Oh, can you do presentations? Can you get up and speak in front of people? Yeah, can you communicate and create direction so people can follow what to do? I'm like, your skills are actually way more than you think, but it is hard because it's like they don't always realize that their skills have matches all across the way. And figuring out what those oh, this what do you enjoy doing? What do you want to get away from? Don't you like doing? Um, that's been that's where the interesting part comes, but definitely is amazing, especially as teachers feel very um underappreciated or feel burnt out, or they feel like what are we going to do next? And it really comes down to the there is no greater moment than when you can help a kid learn. I've never met a teacher who doesn't like that moment and can have this aha moment. It's just do you have enough of those to sustain yourself through the frustration? Everything else? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

This episode is brought to you by supported tutoring, where we don't just help students get better grades, we help them become critical thinkers. Whether it's mastering AP exams, maximizing college applications, or building lifelong learning habits, our expert tutors focus on critical thinking, confidence, and real growth. Head to supported tutoring.com to find the support your student deserves. So you've been in ed tech now, which were you always calling it well, we're I mean, you you've been at it longer than I have, but were you was it always called ed tech or was because I've seen that name now pop on LinkedIn like so much more.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

But so personally, I struggle with that term. I like education technology. Yeah, I don't want to shortchange either either of them, right? Like it's but yeah, it's been called ed tech since I've been for the last decade. I think people just don't want to say the full, but it really is hard. It's education, which is a full-time thing, and it's technology, which is a you know a bear itself, you know, there's a whole bunch of things here.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

So you've been in the industry now for over a decade, right? And um, you've seen probably a lot. It's interesting because you actually were able to use it in your own classroom before you got out. But now that you get out, like you said, you're an outsider, right? You're now trying to get into schools, and there's a lot of companies out there trying to get into schools, but just your honest assessment. What do so many companies get wrong when they build tools for schools?

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Well, I think there are two camps, I would put things that people get wrong. Um, the first camp is they are looking at things very singularly and they're not looking at things in the full context in the picture. And it's one of the struggles that I think exists in K-12 because if you are going to market to teachers, teachers will buy a very niche single solution thing. I need to have a randomizer so I can call on kids randomly, right? Like, okay, like that's very specific thing that you would need. Um, but it doesn't necessarily connect to your entire workflow. So, like, how did that right? Um, so the first bit is this like very singular focus stuff. I don't think look is a big picture of what we really are solving. And I actually think for a long time that contributed to this siloed disconnected information because people approached it in like a very small tidbit single solutions. Um, the other mistake I think a lot of people make is they don't understand change walled education as different. Um, it's the same, but it's also different. You know, people try to take higher ed. They ask, I get asked all the time, like, oh, will Otis go to the higher ed? I'm like, we could possibly, it's not like a crazy leap, but we were designed for K-12, where your kids are in the classroom four or five days a week. You're there. Now you can do remote learning, but there's still a different expectation between a 13-year-old doing remote learning and a 19-year-old in college. And that entire mindset is something that I think people try to apply too much. And I think you have to be connected to the classroom. I think you have to in order to really understand is something working? Is it going to get used? In my favorite pieces of feedback were from my students, you know, and from my kids. My kids give great feedback, you know, they're just very honest, but they're also talking about their workflow and what makes sense to them. And it's important that you're always listening and learning.

SPEAKER_00 24:29

So I guess for parents listening, help them understand like this the kids, their kids have there's a lot of data in schools, so they have a lot of different data's in a lot of different systems. But the key question is acting, is it actually being used? And what's the gap between data collection and data action?

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Yeah, I think that really varies a lot by school. And there's some schools, like one of our schools, um, JCPS outside, it's in rulable, they do an amazing job of capturing, they call it the journey to success, and they're capturing these milestones that are happening throughout every grade. And it's the narrative, it is the you know, the qualitative way of their journey from kindergarten through 12th grade. At the same time, it's parallel but combined, they're also keep keeping track of the quantitative, like these very specific measurements, you know. Um, and you want to marry that. So, as a parent, it's really important that you're constantly aware of the kind of context, and each parent's school or each kid's school is going to be slightly different. So, my kids go to a dual language school, their path is slightly different, and it's important that you kind of have that understanding. I think this is one of the areas I wish schools could do a better job of is providing that context. I think sometimes we don't do that, and I think as a parent, it's really important to know what are the skills my kid is currently learning. How are they doing on that? Knowing what had they learned in the past and what are we doing next? I don't think they need to know what they're doing. So my kids are sixth grade, fourth grade, and second grade. Like, I don't think my second graders I really need to know what they're gonna do in sixth grade. Like, I don't think I need to hold that time horizon. But it is important to know hey, what are they gonna do while they're in their elementary school? Hey, when they're in their middle school, what's our kind of goal? What is because that will just help you know if you're on the right track, because any teacher teaching and learning is not linear, it's not like every day you're getting like straight up. It's like, no, some days they came in and they just had a bad, they they had the wrong serial, or something didn't happen, or they're really upset when they get to your class after one because they ran out of chocolate milk, and it's like sometimes it's just about building good days, you know, listening, learning, getting better over time because learning is hard. And I think if we could just have more of those conversations and more transparency and said this is what's happening, this is the progression, I think it would give a lot more people um feel good about what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 27:14

So if a parent walks into the school for a parent-teacher conference and just wanting to understand the full picture of their kid, and they're the school's not using OTIS, um, you know, what should they be asking? What should they be looking for?

SPEAKER_01 27:29

Yeah, I would ask them, I think it's I always think it's important that you figure out if that teacher knows your kid. Um, I'm a very I'm a simpleton in that way. But if your teacher knows your if your teacher knows your child and has a good pulse on your kid, then you're in good shape. Um if they know they can articulate how are they doing in the you know the key, and then every subject's important, but you know, their ability to read, their ability to solve problems, their ability to communicate. If you're able to hear your teacher and know that they have a pulse on it, um, I think you're in a really good spot. And if you just continue to understand what's happening in the classroom, what skills are you working on, and if you see those progress updates coming, I I think that's that those are the key steps.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

So after working with thousands of schools, what patterns are you seeing in terms of what are schools getting right and what are schools or what's I guess what's the separator for schools that are getting things right as opposed to ones that are not?

SPEAKER_01 28:37

I think it's the understanding that uh perfection is the enemy of done. And I think sometimes there is a concern that we have to have everything perfect, um, or we're looking for this magic bullet that's just gonna solve everything. And education is complex, education has some murfiness to it. Kids, it's like it's really important that you just seize that things aren't going to be perfect, but you if you strive to get better every day, um, if you look at the data and don't try to hide from it and say this is where we're currently at, and you then take that as that launching point, I think those are the districts that do it best where they understand that you kind of have to dive in. It's not gonna necessarily be you know perfect because you're gonna be trudging up some stuff where in the past what happened in the classroom was a lot more secluded, right? You didn't really know it was very much like this closed off thing. That's hard for teachers. Like, I missed it, it happened while I was there. Like originally, like no one came into my classroom, like it was like unless I was being evaluated, my was like, Oh, more and more people are gonna come in, we're gonna have people trying. It was nerve-wracking at first, but it was also really good to say, like, oh, this is how I can get better, and oh, this is a gap I have. Oh, this is and I think that when schools have that honesty and that transparency with themselves, and then they believe in positive intent, and then they work on stuff, and it's not gonna be overnight, so it's not gonna be this magic bullet, it's not gonna be something where we're gonna wait for perfection. No, it's like we're in this, and you're just gonna begin to see that improvement, and that improvement just builds. And I think that's those are the biggest differences I see.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Where do you think we're heading in the next three to five years with AI?

SPEAKER_01 30:42

I think AI is gonna be the bridge that so there were three problems that I identified when I went one-to-one and the came about Otis. So the first one we talked about is this understanding of who a kid is, this complete information. And I think we're getting to the point where that complete information is into a singular profile, which is really nice. But the other two problems that were really important for us to understand were one, the tech literacy of educators varies wildly. Some know tech, some don't. That can make a lot of um inequity in terms of like how much is it used, how is it used, and then there's also this huge um discrepancy between data literacy. How well do people know data? And the question becomes how important is that? Like, do I need a kindergarten teacher to be able to do pivot tables and to do all these complex formulations, or do I need them to be able to connect and engage and have my kindergartners love to be at school? I happen to be the latter, I think engagement is key. I think AI is gonna bridge that gap, it's gonna make technology easier to use, it's going to make the data more deliverable and uh discoverable. And because of all that, we should, and with something like Otis, we use AI a lot. It then gives you more time to really interact, engage, and actually do the teaching and learning with students. Like, it's not like you're gonna get to go home early, it's not like you know, you're at your experiment from eight to three, it's not like you're done. It's like, no, but instead of spending six hours grading something and prepping and then trying to do your group, I remember trying to do these different groups I would do for my projects. Like I've tested it, you know, like Otis can help. They would have cut that in, you know, a fifth. Instead of spending, you know, an hour on it, I could do it in 10, 15 minutes. Like those are the moments where, like, yeah, now I have more time for when I was in the classroom doing one-on-ones with my kids, having these project group breakdowns. So it's like we should now have more time for that interact and endorsement. And I think that's the power of AI, it's gonna allow us to be more efficient because luckily for everybody in education, I don't think you're gonna have AI replace teachers. I just don't anybody who's ever interacted with t 12 students just realize that's not gonna happen. It could not, um and that's the power. So, how do we really our teachers really have the information to make them be as powerful as they can be?

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Andrew Young said that on a podcast too. So I think one of the last things to replace is can you believe robots trying to behavioral manage kids?

SPEAKER_01 33:28

Right. And again, like could I see can I see an AI practice session for 20 to 30? Sure, but that's not why we want kids going to school, right? We want kids going to school to be able to interact with their friends, to be able to engage, to be able to collaborate, to be able to communicate, to be able to enjoy learning. If they don't enjoy learning, then we don't have lifelong learners. And you need it, the world has changed. Like you imagine if you have somebody who is just stuck in their ways and all of a sudden AI is coming. Well, we need people to be highly flexible thinkers, highly engaged learners, and that happens through the connections between having real good educators with students and having those students feel like they are known because that's our favorite teachers are always the teachers who we feel like, oh, they knew me, they got me, they understood me. And it's like I look back at the teachers who I look who changed my life, and that's what it was. They knew me, they got me, they understood what I needed at the right moment. And I think AI can make that a little bit easier, so we don't have to rely on these that we've been had the more teachers to have that capability.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

Um, so we're gonna wrap up with lightning round. You do not have to explain your answers. We're just gonna do like five, six rapid fire questions. First thing that comes to mind, unless you want to explain. Does that sound good?

SPEAKER_01 34:49

Yeah, you're in trouble. History teachers, I love to explain myself, but I'll go round the fire. I'll follow the rules.

SPEAKER_00 34:55

I break my rules too, so that's okay. So, all right, most overrated you overrated thing in educational technology right now.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Self-grade uh auto-graded tools that take grading away from teachers. I heard okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:15

One thing parents overthink about school technology.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

One thing parents overthink about education technology. I don't I guess I'm around people who don't I haven't heard all that much. I would say that grading policies would be the peep, the the things that people that's not really a technology, but this whole getting away from traditional grades, I think parents are really overthinking. I think they're overthinking that.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

What about something they underthink?

SPEAKER_01 35:54

I think they underthink the skills that a teacher uh that's being taught. I think if they just worried about the skills and worried less about the community, like the overall grade, they would be it'd be better.

SPEAKER_00 36:09

One tool resource you can't live without.

SPEAKER_01 36:15

I cannot live without. Um right now I'm using uh I use a lot of clawed, I use a lot of Gemini, but I also I I couldn't live without Slack. I I it's how I communicate with too many people, yeah. Um or my phone, just because you know you're in trouble when you can do most of your job from your phone. That's true. I really just try to empower people, so that'd be the ones I think about.

SPEAKER_00 36:40

So uh if you can go back and tell first year teacher Chris Hall one thing, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

I was uh my uh mentor told me this in October, and I wish I could have told myself on day one. Uh, control what you can control. Um, it's okay to there's so much randomness and all that stuff. Control what you can control, and if you you do today well, or if you do today better, it's okay. It's you know, it's not gonna do perfect.

SPEAKER_00 37:11

Sorry, control what you can control. One sentence you wish every parent heard about how schools use data.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

Schools are trying to do best by kids.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Love it, love it. Well, Chris, this has been incredibly valuable. Uh, for people, for for schools, for educators, for parents who um and school leaders who want to want to go deeper with Otis, learn more about what you do and with what Otis does. Where's the best place for them to find you?

SPEAKER_01 37:46

Yeah, the best place to learn about Otis is uh Otis.com, O T-U-S.com. So organizing technology for us. Um, it's the best place to learn about Otis, our use cases, and then the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. Uh Chris Hall always open to talking. That's how I talk to some of these educators about what's next. It's really a great conversation I love to have. Um, but those are the two best ways to know about Otis and know about myself.

SPEAKER_00 38:14

Awesome. And before we wrap, what's uh what's one question you wish I asked you, but I didn't?

SPEAKER_01 38:20

I thought you did a great job. I I got nothing else. I I always worry that I am how insightful am I really? So I always like to go based on questions you're asked versus anything I have.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

No, this has been great. I really do appreciate uh getting the connect. Uh it's awesome to have a fellow former social studies teacher, also entrepreneur on the podcast. Uh great to learn about Otis. Definitely uh want to do more research into it because I've seen more companies reach out to us talking about data connections in school and just definitely interested to support everything you guys are all about because it's nice to it's someone inside that actually wants to help kids and and understands how the process works by linking all these systems together. So um, again, really, really appreciate your time. Uh Chris, thanks for being a part of the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Appreciate it, Joe. It was a great conversation.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

Awesome. All right. Well, thank you. We put everything uh that we discussed in the show notes, and we'll have the links uh to Chris and uh Otis in the YouTube descriptions as well. So for everyone listening, thank you again for tuning in to the Supported Learning Podcast, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us on the Supported Learning Podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.