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Welcome to the Exceptional Educators Podcast by FrenalyticsEDU — where innovation meets inclusion in education!
Each episode features candid conversations with district leaders, school leaders, classroom changemakers, EdTech founders, and executives — all dedicated to transforming learning for each student, especially our learners with unique abilities.
With a focus on extraordinary educators and the exceptional students they serve, we explore the latest in special education, accessible technology, and inclusive leadership. Whether you’re shaping special education policy, pioneering new EdTech tools, or looking to grow your impact in the classroom, this podcast is your front-row seat to the future of inclusive education.
Listen. Learn. Lead. Be Exceptional. 🎙️
Welcome to the Exceptional Educators Podcast by FrenalyticsEDU, where innovation meets inclusion in education. I'm your co host, Matt Giovanello, the CEO and co founder of Frenalytics. At Frenalytics, we put special education and English language learners front and center. Our award winning FrenalyticsEDU platform helps streamline progress monitoring, improve communication and compliance, and offers truly personalized learning to your students of all abilities. Each episode of our podcast features candid conversations with district and school leaders, classroom changemakers, EdTech founders, and industry executives, all dedicated to transforming learning for each student, especially our learners with unique abilities.
Matt Giovanniello:With a focus on extraordinary educators and the exceptional students they serve, we explore the latest in special education, accessible technology, and inclusive leadership. In this episode, Exceptional Educators is exceptionally thrilled to welcome the tech team at Richmond Community Schools in Indiana, featuring high school students Soapy, JJ, Annabella, and Matt. Led by their teacher Jeremy Hill, an elearning specialist at Richmond High School, the tech team leverages technology to support students, teachers, and schools in meaningful, practical ways. Known for his head's on approach to AI integration, Jeremy works across elementary, middle, and high schools to ensure both educators and students are left confident, responsible, and empowered users of these emerging tools. Together, Jeremy's tech team students aren't just learning about AI.
Matt Giovanniello:They're helping lead its implementation and responsible use across their district. Welcome, everyone. It is so fun and so exciting to have you all here with us. Thank you for joining the podcast.
Jeremy Hill:Thank Thanks for having us.
Matt Giovanniello:We are together from afar today. I know I'd met you all in person just a couple months ago, which is seeming to fly, and I know that we talked about getting together here. So thank you for making the time work, and thank you for scooting out of your classes. Thank you to your teachers for giving us some time this morning on the podcast. Jeremy, I think I'll start with you.
Matt Giovanniello:I'd love to ask you a question that we explore each with each of our guests. That question for you is, what is your why? What brought you into education? What's keeping you here? And what is getting you especially excited to leading this tech team with your students?
Jeremy Hill:I knew I wanted to be a teacher probably my junior or senior year in high school. I just thought it was a great way. I looked at my teachers and thought, man, they're at work right now. Like, this is their job. They get to have a good time, teach people, hang out, do fun things.
Jeremy Hill:So that's why I wanted to be a teacher. And I was an English teacher for eighteen years, and I chose English because to me that was the most important subject. Because if you were weak in English, then that would make it more difficult than every other subject. And so I love teaching English. And then, we had this opportunity at school that came open for an e learning specialist.
Jeremy Hill:And I'd always enjoyed using technology. And I've been teaching English for eighteen years and you can only teach Greg Gatsby so many times. And I was like, man, this will be a really cool thing. But at first it was just a central office position. And so I wasn't interested.
Jeremy Hill:But then when we came up with the idea of having a student tech team and I would still get to work directly with students, I'm at my office in the high school, then I was definitely in. And so I've been doing that for the last ten years, and it's been awesome.
Matt Giovanniello:Jeremy, thank you for sharing your why and your background. For each of our students here, in whatever word you like, I'd love to hear a little bit about your why as students and what brought you into this tech team and what gets you especially excited to be evangelists for AI at Richmond and beyond. Who wants to start us off?
JJ:I can go first. Hi. I'm JJ. I'm a senior at Richmond High School. And first, I joined the tech team because mister Hill's a family friend of mine, but I also wanna be a teacher as my career pathway, specifically an elementary school teacher.
JJ:So coming into the tech team and figuring out, you know, how to use AI for our younger kids, because, you know, they're gonna grow up in a bigger generation of AI that we have, I thought was really important. So I'm starting to use like magic school in this first grade classroom that I help cadet teach in. And so that's really cool to see them kind of navigate it and understand it. So that's why I'm in tech teams. I'm Sophie.
Sophie:I'm a sophomore at Richmond. I got into tech team. Mr. Hill's my dad. So I think it's really important since most of our tech team members are juniors and seniors.
Sophie:I think it's important that we have at least one underclassmen so that I can like help out the kids in my grade and then make their transition to our harder ACT classes next year easier and help them kind of wean them off that negative AI use early.
Annabella:Hi, I'm Annabella. I wasn't originally even supposed to be in tech team. I actually followed my best friend JJ here and I never thought that I would have anything to do with technology in general. I plan on majoring in chem and going to med school. So there is technology, but I just never really thought about it.
Annabella:And then once I got to know mister Hill and, like, the origin of the tech team and what we actually do, I just became more involved over time.
Matt:Hello. My name is Matt. I'm also a senior. I joined tech team kinda on a whim. It was one of my options.
Matt:I wanted to switch out of a criminal justice class I didn't wanna take, and tech team was right there. And so I talked to Hill, and I was in. I've stuck with it because especially with, like, the emergence of AI and what we're doing here, I think is really important because AI is something that's, like, so new, and we don't understand it yet. And kind of being at the forefront, at least at RCS, of AI integration into our schools is really important to me. I wanna be in control of it.
Matt:I have underclassmen that I care about. I want them to understand how to use AI. I want my peers to understand how to use AI. It's also a great leadership tool that I'm going to take with me to college and when I get to grad school. So, yeah.
Matt Giovanniello:Those are all fantastic reasons, especially yours, Matt, because it segues into our next topic really nicely. This is a question initially for JJ, although I would love to hear all of your perspectives as well. One of the biggest areas of intrigue, but also areas of, okay, we're just going to ban this outright, is the potential way that AI could be misconstrued as a shortcut to critical thinking versus a really helpful conduit or a way that it could promote critical thinking. JJ, I'd love to get your perspective first on whether you think AI promotes or is a shortcut to the critical thinking. Why?
Matt Giovanniello:And if anybody else has strong opinions on this, I'd love to hear your take as well.
JJ:Yeah. So I think it depends on how you're using AI. In texting, we like to say, you know, use it as a thought partner and not an answer machine. So if you are using, let's just say, sources like ChatGPT and you're just putting in, hey, can you give me an answer to this? That's obviously not learning.
JJ:You're just getting the answer that way. It's like grade grabbing. But with like things like Magic School, if you're using as a thought partner, you know, you're using it more of like a tutor, not just giving you answers. So I think it's really important. That's why I really like that we're using Magic School at our school because it's very helpful.
JJ:It's like tutoring. I've used it so many times to tutor before. But, yeah, I think and honestly, that's what we're trying to teach all the kids here is to use it more of a thought partner and not just the answer machine.
Matt Giovanniello:Very good points. And also shout out to mister Hill. I saw very recently that he was named a finalist for Magic School's AI ambassador of the year. Congratulations. That's huge.
Matt Giovanniello:I think I think you're all very lucky because you're getting the front row seat of how to implement purpose built tools like Magic School responsibly, and you're just seeing their sheer power. So I think that's another topic I'd love to get into a little bit, how you're perceiving the difference between general Gen AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, you know, insert name here of those tools, and more what we call purpose built tools for education, such as Magic School, School AI, brisk teaching. There are a lot of these different tools that are out there. They all serve different purposes, but help us draw some more comparisons between the generic AI tools and why you think that these tools like Magic School could be a little bit more meeting your needs while also perhaps giving comfort to your teachers and knowing that there are those guardrails there that it's actually meant to promote and enhance student learning instead of being perceived as a lazy measure of not actually pushing you to thinking to your limits.
JJ:I'll just use like an example. Last year, I took a ACP precalculus math class, and math is my worst subject. I've always been completely awful at it. And, you know, with those things like ChatGPT, if you just put in your equation, you're like, hey, can you help me solve it? It gives you all the work, but then it gives you the answer.
JJ:Knowing students at school and even knowing myself, it's easy to just look at the answer, write it down and just get the points. But with Magic School, they have a really good and helpful program for math where like, if I put in this equation, I'm like, can you help me solve it? It'll walk me through the steps and I can't move on into the next step until I completely understand and walked myself through the first step. So I think that was really important. I kind of used it as a tutor and that definitely really helped me in class because I was actually learning things.
JJ:So like when it gets to test, you know, I actually know what I'm doing. So I think that's kind of the difference between the two is, you know, one is actually helping you learn and the other is kind of just giving you that answer for like grade grabbing and things like that.
Matt:I'd love to build off of what JJ just said, especially with the math example, because we were both in the same, pre calc class. But, like like JJ, math is not, my super, super strong suit, especially with, like, pre calculus. It's weird. It's hard. It's super different than anything you ever do, like, prior.
Matt:And the great thing about these purpose built tools is that, like, even in the way that magic school converses with you, like the, generation, like it is a tutor with ChatGPT, it will just give you four sentences, here's the work, and here's your answer, and it won't give you anything else. It won't provoke you to think anymore. But the way Magic School's set up, it provokes you to think. It says, what do you think comes next? What might come next?
Matt:What might the answer be to this? Which direction could we go? And kinda giving the power back to yourself a little bit with the direction that you can choose to go. And you can like, I full on stopped it in the middle of equations and be like, okay, I don't understand this. Explain this concept to me first.
Matt:And it changes directions and it moves very fluidly. With Magic School, because it's laid out and because it's forcing you to go through that process with it, it's a lot easier to catch mistakes even on your own part or even on the AI's part because, I mean, the complex math is just as hard for magic school as it is for me. It's capable of making mistakes. And so in a way, it allows you to help yourself, but also help the program think and correct for future use.
Matt Giovanniello:I think those are both really good points, and that gets into another topic I'd love to explore with you all and hear each of your perspectives on being an AI detective because AI is not a 100% accurate. There are a variety of reasons in which why it's not. But, you know, headlines that I'm sure you've seen over the past couple of years, especially in the news that AI and chatty PT can pass the bar exam for getting into law school. And yet you're realizing that relatively simple math questions, it's still getting wrong. So the need to be an A detective is ever more necessary and apparent, but as you know growing up with some of these AI tools, especially in your high school days, they weren't always around.
Matt Giovanniello:They weren't around for me, unfortunately. Would have loved them if they were, but there have been many generations, whether it's Quora, whether it's Chegg, whether it's old school passing around a homework assignment, that requires you to still employ critical thinking to make sure that the work you're seeing or the suggestions you're getting are in fact correct and accurate. Otherwise, you're just copying somebody's homework assignment, you're not learning anything on the way, and the next thing you know, you get a zero. So that's been around for decades. I don't think that AI is causing a new problem necessarily.
Matt Giovanniello:It is repurposing and exposing a decades old problem to which being an AI detective now is a new skill is one that you all need to build up. I'm sure you're learning some of that in your classes, but tell us a little bit more about how, through tech team and otherwise, you've learned to become an AI detective, what suggestions you have on how to better be one, and what advice you have for students who are just picking up on AI for the first time or even teachers who are skeptical because of this potential for AI to be wrong, hallucinations or otherwise.
Matt:It's always important to fact check wherever you are, whatever you're doing, whether it's math, whether you're writing a history paper, whether you're doing something for English, whether you're just looking at the Gemini AI overview after you Google a simple question, you have to fact check yourself. Like, the really awesome thing is is that, like, specifically with, like, Google's AI overview, it you can click on the paragraph and it has a little link button and it'll pull up all of the links it's using on the side. Like a lot of my friends are really against just reading the AI overview and just going off of what that says, which is totally fine. I get that. And they instead go to the sources and they see, I believe it highlights like where it's getting stuff from if it uses specific quotes.
Matt:And you can see where it's pulling that from and you get the greater context of what it's telling you to verify that with yourself. And I can verify that it did it is pulling in from these sites, and I can use it myself and I can repurpose those.
Annabella:I was really skeptical of AI, in general until Mr. Hill actually made me sit down and use it. And thank God he did, honestly, because the thing is, is that it's not going to go away. Right. With that in mind, I think it's really important for students to realize that it's not going away and you need to have an understanding of it, whether or not actually want to use it.
Annabella:And then the right way to use it. We talked about thought partner and answer machine, very big difference that not every single student knows. And that's with any AI program truthfully, because with magic school, even though like it does have those steps and it will give you like the stuff. The thing is, is that I still find myself just skipping to the end, just out of habit. And that's something that we need to break truthfully, like at four students specifically.
Annabella:But I do like truthfully AI can be used as a very, very helpful tool tool, just because it allows you to go back and review your own thinking. I think it's really important for students just to be aware of it even if they choose to not use it.
Matt Giovanniello:I wholeheartedly agree. Let's take a step back a little bit. We've been speaking a lot about Magic School. For those in schools or districts or even outside of that, but still in the tech world that aren't as familiar with how Magic School functions just step by step in a school district like Richmond, tell us a little bit about that. I know there's a Magic School component for teachers, but there's more recently been introduced a Magic Student component that you're all logging into.
Matt Giovanniello:So tell us a bit about those two distinct pieces, given that you're part of a tech team that sees both. You're interacting as a student with Magic Student, but you know a lot about the Magic School side through Mr. Hill and others as well. Walk us through what that looks like from your perspective and why you love it so much. I mean, there's so much Magic School has to offer.
Matt Giovanniello:Tell us about what some of these things are.
Sophie:It definitely makes us more open minded to using Magic Student, and it makes it a lot easier for if a teacher's introducing Magic School in class and one of us are in there, then we can help them work with other students to kind of ease that transition into Magic School. And yeah, I just think it gives us a deeper appreciation of the software, seeing both the administrative and the student side.
Annabella:We also, as tech teamers, we have like an exclusive link to Magic School so we can use all the fancy buttons and all that kind of stuff. But typically for the use of Magic School, it is highly monitored by teachers. So for that chemistry assignment, for example, we were only allowed into it, like, at that one time, and it was, like, for a time frame. So typically, students can't just get into magic school and go haywire, which is really great because it allows teachers to, like, specifically set up their own, like, safety rails and all that kind of stuff just for their and that assignment.
Matt Giovanniello:That's important to keep in mind because I think those who are skeptical of AI most likely don't fully understand it enough to want to embrace it, and that could be a source of a lot of people's anxieties, teachers, students, and otherwise. I think that is a comment, in my opinion, that's applicable to the general population, but dissimilar to how you can just get into ChildGBT and run wild, there are a lot of guardrails around these more purpose built tools, including Magic School's, School AI, Brisk, and otherwise. Tell us about maybe your hot takes on other schools banning these tools, trying to restrict these tools. What do you make of those bans, and what do you think might be better alternatives?
Matt:It's definitely a great disservice to their students and their faculty because I I don't remember. It was either Annabelle or JJ that said earlier that AI is not going to go away because it's not. And to what JJ said at the very beginning about like the next generation of kids, the kids she's working with that are in grade or elementary school right now, when they get to their senior year, their sophomore year of high school, AI is going to look so much more different than it does for us right now. So cutting those kids off at whatever point it is and your faculty off at whatever point that is, it's gonna hurt them in the long run, you know, because they're going to get into it so late and everyone else around them as educators, they're going to have experience and they're going to kind of know what to do intuitively while these educators that have the bands in place for their admin, they're going to be shorthanded. They're going to look at it with a little a little more wide eyed and be like, okay.
Matt:What's going on? I don't know I don't know what to do here. I don't know how to set this up. In my opinion, it's a net negative.
Sophie:And I think it's also important to remember that AI is helping students outside of school. Like any of us, if any of these two were working on their AP calculus homework, I mean, I can't imagine your parents were ready to help you with that. No.
JJ:I know. I'm so And
Sophie:I think that by taking it away, you're doing another disservice to your kids by almost intentionally setting them back academically, not just with those AI soft skills.
JJ:Yeah. Coming off of that, like if you go home and you have parents and they have no idea like what they're doing, you know, especially in Richmond in our school district, there's a lot of kids, even elementary kids that go home and they not don't necessarily have their parents there. I think it really helps, especially kids in our district, be able to have that tutor. And even if they do, you don't really have necessarily the money to afford an actual tutor, a human tutor, because they cost money. And I think with Magic School, you know, being able to have that free application to help you in any way is a great service to our kids.
Matt Giovanniello:Well, that's a really good point because this may not be so obvious to some communities. Maybe it is to others. But for your community and countless others, this is an equity issue. To your point, JJ, and also Sophie, some families can't afford $102,100 dollar an hour plus tutors if they're struggling in calculus. Those parents are not gonna be able to reenroll at school overnight and all of a sudden know what AP Calculus represents, similar to you just learning it for the first time now.
Matt Giovanniello:If it's applicable to your career occupation going forward, awesome, maybe they still know it, but chances are they don't, and those students are going to struggle if they don't have access to these tools now powered by AI that can help them close those achievement gaps. So I'm curious, what are some of the less conventional ways that either you found yourselves using AI after hours or that you know of students at Richmond and similar communities using AI? I know that on before this recording, talked about help with college applications and writing college essays to get drafts and to get some input on the way that you're structuring that paper. Tell us a bit more about some of these interesting ways, like, outside of straight academics during the school day that you're making use of tools like that at school.
Annabella:So I used two AI platforms in my whole life. This is what I use. I use Microsoft Copilot because it's automatically on my computer, which is basically like Microsoft's chat box. And then I use magic school. For magic school, I typically use it just when the teacher assigned it or if he'll wants us to play with it.
Annabella:So what I'll do is recently I had to read a book for a college class and I had no idea what I was reading. I was reading it to be fair, but I was so confused and so lost. So I had a different tab open and I was just asking questions. It was literally just to better my understanding. And I used that as well through the college application as well, because I have to say college applications, they vary.
Annabella:Some are more difficult than others. The University of Chicago, for example, had one of the weirdest prompts I think I've ever seen in my entire life. I wrote about the correlation between ice cream production and shark attacks. And so it was so interesting. It was two pages of my life, but it was interesting.
Annabella:And luckily I didn't have a tutor. Right. Because so expensive to have, but I did have both of these tools and I was able to use them to my benefit in order to better my understanding, whether that be for writing an essay, whether that be for an assignment, but just overall bettering my understanding.
Matt Giovanniello:I want to change the conversation a little bit and get into academic integrity. We started talking a little bit about this, but to quote a good friend of mine who is a practitioner, meaning she is an educational technology director for a school district here in New York and a partner of ours for our FrenalyticsEDU work, She famously or infamously said in a keynote recently that I attended, If AI is generating a teacher's assignment and then you as students are completing said assignment with AI and then the teacher goes back and uses AI to grade the assignment, what's the point of the assignment? I'm curious what you make of that statement and that kind of grim outlook on AI tools and maybe thinking about some suggestions, whether it's for your teachers or your leaders or for you as students, to make things a little bit more AI proof per se, and make sure those assignments are in fact meaningful, even if AI does have a play or as a role in the overall assignment. Do you make of that sentiment, and what can we do about it?
Matt:So that issue to me sounds like an issue not of necessarily AI use, but of transparency between the teacher and the student. Here at, RHS, we encourage our teachers to be extremely transparent about the way that they're using AI and how they're using it and what platforms they're using with their students as a way of building trust and maintaining that integrity. Because if I understand how my how my, teachers are using AI and I under and I understand, like, their motives and how they want me to use it, I feel a lot more comfortable completing their assignments. And just like us, I completely understand the teacher perspective where their lives are just as busy as ours.
Sophie:I think it's important that students use discernment even when realizing that their teachers are using AI to create assignments. As long as those assignments are still geared toward aiding student understanding and helping students learn, I see no problem in a teacher using that. I would do the assignment happily if it were still meant to help me learn whatever subject it is they were teaching.
JJ:Yeah. And even like going off of that, like I'll give an example. Last semester I took a speech class here at IHS the way I didn't have to take it in college. And my speech teacher was completely transparent with us on what we could do and what we couldn't use with AI. So obviously you can't use AI to write your whole speech.
JJ:You can't use magic school to give you those sources, but if you do the research and you write your speech and you're like, Hey, how can I reword this to make it sound more professional? How can I, That's completely allowed? So I think even just that communication between teacher and student, I know, Okay, it's not gonna get in trouble for doing this, but I'm gonna get in trouble if I do this.
Matt Giovanniello:You all make very good points. Yes. I think the transparency piece is the underlying theme that I'm hearing from each of your responses to that. And I think that while easier said than done, it's still necessary. And I think you're giving a couple of really good examples of how your teachers can start from a position, like a default of transparency, instead of trying to catch up or fearing that if they are too transparent that their students, you're living, breathing examples of that, that their students are going to think less of them or that they're going to usually merely outsource their work to AI, and I think that you're saying that that's not the case, and that's refreshing to hear.
Matt Giovanniello:I think if all students were as on top of AI use and as smart as you all were, we'd be in a much better position. But I think knowing that, like, your various perspectives, I think it's I think it's a good one to keep in mind that, like, we shouldn't expect the worst and only hope for the best of students. We should expect the best. So I'm grateful for all of your perspectives there. I know that through tech team, you all have important voices into how Richmond has developed AI guidelines and AI policies.
Matt Giovanniello:So your involvement in helping influence and shape the voice of AI policy at Richmond, what does that look like, and where do you think, like, the next school year or two is gonna be going with your help?
Sophie:We don't have a student AI policy yet. That pretty much varies teacher by teacher in the classroom, but we did run a project where each of us presented a teacher with a different Magic School tool that we wanted to teach them about and have them be open to using in their classrooms. So through that, we were able to really help out a lot of our teachers and admin in understanding that AI can be good in the classroom.
Matt Giovanniello:If you were to take the perspective of each of you as students in tech team and thinking like, Hey, we're going go present on AI and its merits and also the things you need be worried about to other schools in the area, let's say in Indiana or even beyond, what advice do you have for schools that are just getting started on their AI journey, as crazy as that sounds? If they need to be putting advice together for their students or for their teachers, what have you seen at Richmond that you like, and what maybe would you take as, like, constructive feedback to give to another district to say, hey. We tried this. I didn't like it. I would recommend this instead.
Annabella:If we're presenting to other schools, it would be the realization that no matter what we say, students are always going to be using AI. Whether that be their little thing on Snapchat AI or be ChatGPT, it is likely not going to be magic school because that is typically done through the classroom. Now I would say that they definitely need to introduce that tool because it's monitored and guided and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, if they're just starting out, I would highly focus on making sure that the students are educated, how to use their current AI tools that they are using. Because at the end of the day, they're gonna do what they wanna do.
Annabella:But if we try to help them and say, you can actually learn if you use this AI this way, instead of just using ChatGPT to get this math answer, I think that's really important.
Matt:The first step is definitely coming to AI very optimistic, but also still skeptical. Like we talked about earlier, it's extremely important to fact check AI, especially when you don't have access to something that has guardrails and guidelines like magic school, if you're just relying off of Gemini or Copilot or ChatGPT or whatever it may be at that district, it's extremely important to hammer in to students and faculty, hey, use this, but fact check yourself, Fact check it. And I think that's kind of the first step that also plays into academic integrity as well and making sure that, you know, students understand how to use it appropriately.
JJ:I agree with that completely. And I think that if school systems were trying to ease into a magic school, they need to first understand what they're dealing with and then they need to go in slowly. And I think they need to introduce it classroom by classroom. Cause if you kind of are just like, okay, we have magic school. Here's all the tools.
JJ:Nobody's going to know what they're doing.
Sophie:They're not going to want to
JJ:use it. Cause they're like, why would I use this? I don't understand it.
Sophie:I think that more on the logistics side of things too, it would be really helpful for those students to develop a student led tech team like the one we have here at Richmond, because you can get more boots on the ground inside of those classrooms to really help integrate AI.
Matt:To the left of what Sophie just said, students are way more likely to listen to their peers than they are
Matt Giovanniello:to So their
Matt:that boots on the ground effect that we've got here at RHS is super important in building a tech team, even if it is small in other districts, to kind of give a controlled playground for students to experiment and try. And we create little AI ambassadors to kind of sprinkle throughout the school. That's really important because, I mean, we're gonna listen to each other before we listen to our teachers. That's just the truth.
Matt Giovanniello:That's a really important thing that I think us adults need to remind ourselves, and it's true of adults as well who are in education. Teachers will listen to other teachers before they listen to somebody from the outside. Students are going to listen to other students before they listen to their parents or their teachers or whoever it might be. And I think all of you made really important points about the implementation component of a new software or a new solution that we bring up all the time, but I think what was most eye opening for me in this particular part of the conversation was you're feeling that impact too. If you just show up one day to a school at Magic School and say, Here you go, and nobody gets trained or nobody gets the understanding of the why or the potential for impact, no one's going to use it.
Matt Giovanniello:I think in this 2026 version, it's ever more apparent that there's this training and there's this implementation component that really needs to accompany a new, especially software solution, that makes it especially efficacious in your schools. It's just really interesting to hear all of you say, we need that in order for it to work classroom by classroom and to take it slow. Otherwise, if you try and do too much at once, you're gonna go from one extreme to another, and it's going to flop. I'm glad to hear that, like, from from you directly because we talk about it all the time as adults, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. We just say the same thing to each other, but it means a lot when it when it comes all the way down to you as students.
Matt Giovanniello:I have one more question I wanted to ask you about tech team because we just brought it up. I'm curious how participating in tech team for the few months or even the few years, as some of you have, has built up your confidence and your leadership skills, because these skills that you built during your time at RHS are going to carry you well through into college and beyond. So I'm curious about how your participation in this club has made you a better person, made you a stronger leader, made you more curious and confident.
JJ:So when I first joined tech team, I kinda did just join because I'm a very social person. So I kinda did just join to make new friends. I'm not really big on technology ever. I hate coding and stuff like that. But after joining tech team, I realized that, you know, technology is not just coding and fixing softwares and fixing computers, even though I do know the magic buttons to restart a computer, but I'm not the nitty gritty stuff, but I do really appreciate learning about AI because I never thought I would be in this position that I am.
JJ:I've always been kind of a good public speaker, I think, in my opinion. Being able to go to these conferences and being on this podcast and stuff has definitely helped boost my leadership, and I've been able to meet amazing people even though
Annabella:I was kind of already friends
JJ:with most of them when I started. But I've met some amazing people. I've gotten closer with Mr. Hill. I've gotten closer with technology using AI, and now I'm in a better position as a student to be able to succeed even here and in college now that I have had the opportunity to be aware to AI.
JJ:For me, Tech
Sophie:Team has definitely shaped my high school experience in like introducing me to so many people that I love so much now, but I never would have met like through school because I mean, they're all seniors. I'm a sophomore. Like there would have been no natural reason for me to be any of these people. I just got to meet so many important people that have shaped how I'm viewing high school now and are definitely shaping my future. Yeah.
Sophie:It's brought me a lot of opportunity. And like JJ said, with the conferences, I would never have any reason to be doing any of that on the Altec team.
Annabella:So I followed my best friend into here and with like no background into what this was at all, was all of these new people, Mr. Hill. I was able to kind of broaden my horizons with what technology truly is and how it can be applied to basically every single field. And I think that's really interesting, especially in our growing world as it is specifically with AI as well. It has exposed me to so many new things.
Annabella:Like I would never be on this podcast right now if I was my indexing. And I also would not really understand magic school or truly how to use any AI platform at all. And I'm really, really grateful for that and being able to meet so many new people through the conferences as well that we've done.
Matt:I hated Hour of Code. Hated it with passion. It was worst thing ever. But to, like, little kid me, hated it, hated laptops after that. And but Tech Team has really given me this opportunity to explore as a public speaker because, I mean, I'm I'm a choir kid, so I've done performances in front of large audiences before, but I've always been in a group setting.
Matt:And there's kind of that comfort in that even here, standing alone and speaking in front of hun like, hundreds of people in a big room into a microphone with a clicker. Like, that's so that was so foreign to me, like, two years ago. But tech team has kinda given me this way into public speaking and building and building my skills as a public speaker and improving my leadership ability and also my experience with AI like I would not be nearly as literate as I am right now without tech team and without the opportunity to mess around with magic tool get kind of a little bit of free rein. And when we first got it, we tried breaking tools, and we did whatever we did, whatever we could, we wanted to see the limits of this new thing. And that has given us all like a way to better understand it better than anyone else in school currently.
Matt:So TechTeam has kind of given me insight to that and making all of us more literate is super important.
Sophie:I think to follow-up with what Matt said about being the first of our school to work with Magic School and work that closely with AI, it's given us all an amazing leadership opportunity just in our classrooms to teach our teachers and our peers about AI. So it's given us, yeah, a lot of leadership opportunities within the school.
JJ:Yeah. And you know, it's bigger than just us for sitting here. Us being able to be on these podcasts, us being able to present helps the future generation of students or other schools that wanna start a tech team do the same thing that we do. So I think it's it's bigger than just us. It's about the future.
Matt Giovanniello:Absolutely. And I think that you're building yourselves up as credible resources and experts to be presenting and opining and guiding students by a group of students. You're showing the students have become the teachers, and you should all be so proud of that and to show that it's possible both at RHS, and if you could do it at your school, that means other schools elsewhere can do it too. So I'm glad that you are showing that it's possible, and you're giving us some of the the kind of guiding steps to build out a program like this and just showing how incredibly important it is and how much you get out of your participation in tech clubs in tech team. So thank you for all of your perspectives today.
Matt Giovanniello:As a student, what does being an exceptional educator mean to you? We'll start with you, JJ.
JJ:Being an exceptional educator means going into my classrooms, helping other students even though we're not the teacher. So it's not all the stress on the teacher. You know, they have that assistant, that person that can also help them use things like AI to help benefit every student in the classroom because every student learns differently.
Sophie:So to me being an exceptional educator definitely means going into class and being willing to help anybody with any technology related issues they may have and just trying to be a guiding light for my peers and just, yeah, being ready
Annabella:to help anyone in class with any technology struggles. That would be applied to both student and teacher for me. Going into class, giving a 100% even I know we have bad days, everybody does, but just trying to push through no matter what, and then always being there for one another, helping each other with problems. And then if we don't know what we're doing, then try to ask
Sophie:for help and like try
Annabella:to find a solution regardless of what's going on.
Matt:To me, like being an example and leading by example is something I think about a lot. And the idea of being like an ambassador or a pillar among your peers, someone that they can come to and even your teachers or faculty can come to you and be like, Hey, you're reliable, I trust you. Can you help me? And being able to help them with whatever it is, whether it's with AI or whether it's with Canvas or PowerSchool or whatever. And just being that resource is really empowering personally.
Matt:And it's also it takes a weight off of teachers' shoulders, you know, not having to climb a ladder to get to someone who can't help them.
Matt Giovanniello:Absolutely. Oh, I love your answers. Jeremy, you should be so proud of your kids. It this was just such an enlightening conversation. I wish I didn't have to end, but, unfortunately, you guys do have to get back to class at some point.
Matt Giovanniello:Jeremy, as we wrap up today's episode with your students joining us for this very special conversation, I'd love to know from your perspective, what does being an exceptional educator or being an exceptional leader mean to you?
Jeremy Hill:I think what you're doing is you're trying to maximize the experience for each individual student. And so, that looks differently for all different kinds of students. Like, some like, when you look at our team, so today they're meeting four of the people on the team. We have 30 plus kids on the tech team. Some of them never want to do the public appearances.
Jeremy Hill:They never want to do webinars. We have some students that teachers would not believe because they're so quiet in class, but they have a huge voice that, like, helps us develop our presentations. Finding out where those students are and where they want to go and helping them get there, that's massively important. We were trying to wrap up the Every School Needs a Tech Team presentation. We thought that it was going to be our last one this summer and we'd moved on to other presentations.
Jeremy Hill:But now, for some reason, like that's catching on everywhere with different schools. And so, being exceptional is figuring out where you are and where you wanna go and finding creative ways to get there, and that looks different for every kind of kid.
Matt Giovanniello:It sure does, but I think the fact that you're not only recognizing that, but also building out flexible, in your case, tech team, paths into this as a resource for students is incredibly important. It helped you all access it in your very different journeys and exposure and interest in technology, and I think that it really challenged your thinking and be like, I can do this. I not only like this, but I'm now going to be that voice and that evangelist to recruit others to tech team, even if I thought tech wasn't in my future. For some of you, now it is, and for some of you, it won't be, and that's totally fine, but you get this really critical exposure at this very important juncture point of like, AI is here to stay, to all of your points. How do I embrace it, how do I now teach my other fellow students?
Matt Giovanniello:The fact that you're all part of this tech team is just so cool for me to hear. I wish I had something like this when I was a student. The fact that you lead this makes you exceptional in and of itself, and I know that the work that you do outside of tech team in your e learning capacity makes you an exceptional educator through and through. You students are exceptional as students, but you've also become the teachers as you've proven to me and all of us listening today, so you're exceptional as well. Thank you all for joining us.
Matt Giovanniello:It was so, so fun to be able to do this. Hope you had a good time. This is so different than when we saw each other in person, but I got so much out of this, and I know all of our listeners will as well.
Jeremy Hill:Thanks. We've super enjoyed it, and it's a great time. So the way it is just a conversation is exactly how we love to do So it was perfect. It was a great time.
Matt Giovanniello:That got you. Well, for all of us listening to the Exceptional Educators Podcast today with us, thank you for joining us for this special student led episode, and we look forward to seeing
Matt:you at
Matt Giovanniello:our next one.