Get Them to Give a Fck
Doesn't it feel like no one gives a fck anymore? Well, good thing I have enough passion and lots of fcks to give.
Hear from Julie Wanzer, LEED AP, author of Get Them to Care, in her podcast series talking about business-to-business (B2B) corporate training topics such as: business development, marketing, personal branding, company branding, email newsletters and women's etiquette in business.
Hear from a range of guests including Julie's colleagues, peers, mentors, influencers and other people who give a fck.
Get Them to Give a Fck
Episode 106: Flying High with SOAR: Disrupting Public Education with AI
About the Episode
Julie Wanzer, LEED AP, hosts Porter Cutrell, EdD., principal of Goddard High School and owner of SOAR to discuss the integration of AI in public education.
Porter shares his journey from a basketball coach to an administrator, emphasizing the need to bridge the gap between education and career readiness.
He introduces SOAR, an AI-driven system designed to improve communication between schools, parents, and students, reducing failure rates from 30-35% to 15% and enhancing overall school behavior.
SOAR's features include a missing assignment database, multilingual support, and AI tutoring. Porter envisions SOAR's expansion nationwide to support all students.
About "Get Them to Give a Fck" Podcast
Doesn't it feel like no one gives a fck anymore? Well, good thing I have enough passion and lots of fcks to give.
Hear from Julie Wanzer, LEED AP, author of Get Them to Care, in her podcast series talking about business-to-business (B2B) corporate training topics such as: business development, marketing, personal branding, company branding, email newsletters and women's etiquette in business.
Hear from a range of guests including Julie's colleagues, peers, mentors, influencers and other people who give a fck.
About Julie Wanzer, LEED AP, Podcast Host
Julie Wanzer, LEED AP, is the author of Get Them to Care: How to Leverage LinkedIn to Build Your Online Presence and Become a Trusted Brand, and Owner of Business Rewritten, a marketing consultancy, with 22 years of experience. She also owns Get Them to Care, a training-based consulting firm.
Ms. Wanzer is a marketing strategist and trainer of various communication topics, including online personal and company branding, seller-doer business development best practices, and email newsletter workshops.
LinkedIn Connections
Host: Julie Wanzer, LEED AP
Guest: Porter Cutrell, EdD.
Company Links
My guest joining me here today is Dr Porter Cutrell, owner of store innovations, and principal of Goddard High School in Roswell, New Mexico. So gosh, but I actually we met back in like 2019, through construction careers now right, which was a training program in Colorado trying to target high school students right to get up and train for construction. And I was part of that marketing team, and one of our locations, our last location that we held the class of that was actually, it's your old school, right, and in Colorado. So we've since reconnected. Oh, sorry, have aligned, and now here we are, right. You're now a guest here on my podcast, Porter, so I now I'm going to shut up and let you introduce yourself, but I'm so glad you're here, and thanks. I'm excited about this
Porter Cutrell:conversation so mine. And thank you very much, and thanks for reconnecting. And absolutely it was funny. In Colorado, our lives did kind of come together, and it was over Career, Technical, education. How do you help students you know in public education, you know, create an opportunity. How can you help school create an opportunity for them to do what they want to do, or at least explore what they want to do out in the world? I mean, really, we need to stop separating, or at least at that point, we started thinking that we need to stop separating education from from what do you want to do for a living, and make it more like, hey, here we are as educators. You're coming to our business. You know, I think I enjoyed working with you guys because you it was business oriented. And now we're we need to look more as education as this is our business. You know, what do you want to do for a living? How can we help you get there exactly? And I think that's the gist, yeah,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:for sure. No, I was like, I'm going to cut you off multiple times here, Porter, don't worry. But what I was going to say is, I actually remember back in high school, back in the 90s, folks, when you had Home Economics, where you had trades, right? Actual classes, electives that you could take. But unfortunately, fast forward to 2025, a lot of those programs have either been eliminated or raced or whatever. So when I met you, Porter, like I said, You were very passionate about helping people, getting them B to be career oriented. And I think, honestly, we need more of that, right, like we need to set up, set our kids up for success.
Porter Cutrell:True. No, no question. And really it was refreshing for me. I've been back and forth between New Mexico and Colorado, and it was really refreshing for me to to get up there and see the amazing things Colorado was doing and and really learning from from the different the different schools and the different companies that are all working together. And, yeah, I think it kind of ignited what I wanted to do. And I ended up moving back to New Mexico to kind of help my parents out and start working with schools here. And you know, the New Mexico schools are traditionally, you know, unfortunately, some of the worst in the country. But the reality is, is, you know, we need to follow follow suit on what some of the other states have done, and now we're excited to be moving forwards? No,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:definitely. And, I mean, listen, facts are facts Porter, right? We can't hide it, right? That, unfortunately, some states are faring better in their education system than others, but to me, I think that's what problems create opportunities, right? So the challenges that you're facing in New Mexico. I think that what we're obviously going to get into it all the help that you're doing out there, but I think, again, challenges present opportunities, right? And I think you've kind of taken that full charge. And I know we just kind of jumped right into it. But I would love for you, Porter, to kind of give you a little bit of highlights. I know that you've had a great career, but I just want you to kind of, again, introduce yourself a little bit. Tell us where you started in your career, how you got here, and then we'll definitely jump into today's theme. So,
Porter Cutrell:you know, really, back in the day, when I got out of school and I was a little bit in, I was going school a little bit before you started doing school. But, yeah, I was a sports guy. I was a basketball guy, and I was going to be a millionaire and do all that other stuff. And, you know, I kind of dealt with school, because you had to be eligible and things like that. And so, yeah, my dad was in the military. We moved all over the world, both inside the United States and outside the United States. So I kind of have a unique growing up, moving every two years, and sports was kind of the thing that kept everything together. I began once I discovered, when I was about 30 years old that, you know, I wasn't going to
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:be on TV, all right,
Porter Cutrell:those guys, I was like, you know, I've got to do something. I had my education. I began being a teacher. I started, I actually taught at mull High School in Denver, and the Catholic school there, and I was the basketball coach for for about 15 years, and again. Then then begin to kind of branch out, and I became an administrator, or started working on my administration certificates. Went back to New Mexico. I worked, kind of on the the western side of New Mexico and Alamogordo, and then worked my way back over Roswell, is kind of in the eastern side of New Mexico. My parents chose to live I was a junior in high school, and yeah, I mean, and so I'd kind of been in and out, but came back, worked in some small towns, and then came back here to Roswell and began working here in schools. I was contacted by the schools you talked about, they were kind of in a, what kind of a rebuild thing, and they were, they were really pushing career technical education. I had gotten my doctorate from Texas Tech in kind of how to incorporate dual credit courses or college courses and CTE courses in in high school classes and so anyway, I went back up there for for about four years, and then,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:then, well, we will get to this part, but I will say I actually didn't know you were a military grad Porter after all this time, like we could have bonded over that. I mean, I didn't, definitely didn't move as much as you did, not every two years, but actually I got stationed or not. My dad, my parents, got stationed in Germany, right? It was the 80s before the Berlin Wall came down. Right? We were in the Bavaria area, and was there for about three and a half, four years, and then we would go back. We went back a couple times, but I guess one of the point of that, it was that, like you said, it's a very unique upbringing, but I think it also gives you a lot of perspective, right? Of not only how much I love the US, right, like, because coming from a family of military, right, I can have a lot of respect for that, but also just a different perspective of what it's like to live in other countries, right, and both the good and the bad, and how we can then kind of take those experiences and, you know, make where we live better, right?
Porter Cutrell:Yeah. I mean, I was born in Japan. So here on basketball player and and, and I was born in Japan and, yeah, you know, we lived in we lived in Iran. We lived in Tehran, Iran when the Shah was in power, prior to Maine, and all those things, you know, went through Europe and some different places, but you're exactly right and, and what's crazy is you get to see education in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it's American School, sometimes it's a the, you know, the European School and things like that. So things are a little bit different. But absolutely, I I'm happy for that and and I really think it set me on a good path to to become a school leader. And, you know, I never saw myself in this position, you know, again, I saw myself as a as a sports guy and a coach and all these different things. I even coached at University of New Mexico here. I was an assistant coach for Dave bliss in the mid 90s and things like that. So, so it was good fun, but it's funny how some of those, those experiences really kind of helped shape where I am and where I am right now.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:Oh yeah, no. And I love that Porter again. I think the whole point of honestly being a human is to have a story, right? We all have different experiences, different stories, and I love sharing them. Obviously, that's why you're here. So get it out. Title or basically our theme for today, which is disrupting public education with AI. Again, when I introduced you Porter, I mentioned that you're the owner of store innovations, tell me, you know, I really wanted a given your past, right? You've gone through several different types of education. You're now on the administrative side so that you can see what's actually going on in schools, what's kind of what's going on in schools right now. Why are students still slipping through the cracks?
Porter Cutrell:You know? I think there's a, you know, while we have cell phones, and we have computers and we have all those different things. There really is kind of a breakdown in communication between the home and the school teachers. I mean, parents are more busy. Students are living with their parents. So some are living with their grandparents. Some are some are living on their own. And whereas before, you know, we could call home. You know, when I started as an educator, they'd be like, hey, just call home and talk to the parents, you know, whatever. Fine, there was one there was one phone in the house, there was one phone on the wall, and that thing rang. Everybody got and really, well, while we have a lot of things there, I think there really is a disconnect between between the home and the school. I think also that, you know, I think, you know, you know, you can look at our assignments and our grading and different things like that. And kind of, some of the stuff that we discovered when I was in Colorado is, is we have a lot of well meaning teachers, I mean, and some people that have been in the bill, I mean, I've been in the business a long time. And some of the really cool stuff that that I that I guess, got involved in when I was up there, is, you know, started taking the teachers out in the in the, what you call the real world, and looking at, you know, what goes on in these businesses. So here you are. You're, you know, you're a science teacher, or you're a, you know, math. So what math is used in there, and, you know, the there's been that separation of, like, you know, you've got to score on the test, and you've got to do this and that and but the reality is, is you're stuck in our classrooms as as educators, and we don't get out. We don't know, we continue use the assignments that we had from a long time ago, because that makes us comfortable. And, you know, for some time, we didn't think the money was good or whatever. Now it's gotten significantly better. But really it's things, things have began to push forwards. And even, you know, I gotta say, even like this podcast, you know, here, I am a, you know, a little bit older guy that that, I mean, it's, yeah, it's definitely something that you've got to look into, and you've got to push yourself to be involved in and but, you know, I think we can all work together, and we can, we can begin to assist the teachers. You know, I think I look around at my school, I have five generations, you know, really? I mean, if you think about all those letters, the Z, all that, you know, I got Baby Boomers, the whole and in each one of them you have to deal with a little bit differently. But the reality is, they create an opportunity for for our students.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:Part of that, definitely. So then kind of thinking back on that. I mean, obviously you've talked a lot about the disconnect between technology and how unfortunately, like you said, what I'm hearing anyways, is that we do have access to all this technology, but it's still not driving home the message and connecting people, right, having that human, not so much human connection, but just any type of connection, right? To know what your kids are doing, what assignments are they missing? All of those things. So tell me, Porter, what was that kind of then, aha moment for you to create? SOAR, like, what? What happened? Tell me, come on, were you drinking beers and all of a sudden you're to do this? Tell me,
Porter Cutrell:Well, it's funny. You know, we were sitting around so, so when I moved into administration, administration, and whether it's business or whether it's in education, you know, it's kind of a lonely place when you're when you're one of the workers, when you're one of the teachers, you would like, you know, I have, what, some 90 employees that are teachers, you know, we have three admin you know. So you're sort of clustered by yourself. And so, yeah, that does happen. You start to hang out with your, your, you know, your, your guys that are in the same boat as you so and again, there's four or five people here. We're sitting around. We're always talking about the same things. All I do is meet the bad or the kids who are struggling, and you discover, like, you know, you immediately want to call them the bad kids. But the reality is, they're not bad. There may be disillusioned, they might be struggling. And then we begin to look back on your own life, and you start to say, like, I remember being that kid. My dad was in Vietnam. I'm at home, sitting in my in my my desk, my parents had a desk for me, and my mom's watching my little sister, because she's only she's young, and boy, I paid attention. I went to school. I was I remember being in class, and now I can't think of how to do this, and so, oh, gosh, I'm just working to do it or whatever. And there just becomes this, this stressful thing, and we're talking about that. And, you know, I with my friends here, and I was like, gosh, there's got to be something we can do, besides just to continually the cycle of, okay, you got up. Why did you act bad? Why did you, you know, why did you say that to this? The guy's just here trying to help you, the ladies just trying to help you. And like, let's read this. Let's do that. And, you know, so we were just at a point where we were like, you know, we say the that education kind of does, looks the same as it did in the 1930s Well, we were like, gosh, we look like the administrators, like you were in the 1930s like something different. As a coach, you want to do something different. And when I went back to look at my coaching, you know, background, I was like, You know what? Why can't I use some of that in in this to try to be an administrator again? I never thought I'd be that guy. I never thought much of whatever. But I'm like so, you know, just like any good team or any good coach, it has a team, we need to develop a system. We need to develop something to help the teach, you know, the the players, you know, our teachers, our kids, whatever, to get better. We can't always hope that we get a first round draft choice or get a better player. We're always going to get better players. The the players that you have, and, and so, yeah, you know, we all started talking that up, and, you know, kind of getting our heads up. But then we were like, where's, how are we going to do that, you know, right? Yeah, yeah, what do you do? So, yeah, so, you know, we looked around. And again, I leaned on, you know, my, my, my past experience. And I remember I was a coach at University of New Mexico, and there was an assistant coach who was, you know, who had all the tutoring stuff. He was the tutor. He had a whole herd of of college kids who helped our kids, you know. And here are girls, and some of them are going to be pros, I mean, and they're but they went every time they had a tutoring center, and right there, in the, in the in the practice facility, and we went out like, wow, I remember seeing that. Now, could I duplicate that? And I started looking around. I started talking to my friends. And everything in public education, there just isn't extra people. There's not you don't get to just have as many and pay as we just sort of took that time and started thinking, what can we do? And you know, we we noticed that there was always a stressor of when parent teacher conferences were coming, we're like, what's the stressor? The stressor is that it's a surprise. The parents didn't know that. The kids weren't doing well, of course, the kids weren't running home telling them, hey, yeah, struggling in this class. You know, you're a teenager. You don't want to, you know, you don't want to put your hand up and say, like, I'm struggling. Like, why don't they come to school? Why do they get angry? Why do they do whatever? Well, if you switched it over to swimming, if every time you came through the doors, I went and put my arm around you and said, Hey, come on. I know you can't swim, but I'm gonna throw you in the deep end over here, and I'm gonna paddle now, your friends who can swim are gonna watch and swim around you, and they're gonna make fun of you. We're gonna make fun of you so or whatever. You know, we're gonna come on, man, win and right, do it. Do it. And, and so, yeah, so instead of swim, they're gonna drown. Everybody's gonna laugh at I'd much rather be the guy, the girl that you know doesn't come to school or doesn't, you know, do whatever, and going to talk crazy to the to the teachers or the administrators or whatever, and but, but then, you know, as in the secondary world, in high school is what I'm doing. We're your last free chance. So you know what? You know, kind of on your 19th birthday, 20th birthday, whatever, free American public education goes away. You're on your own. And we start seeing those kids, you know, and out they are. And so now, you know, I go from there to what I learned in Colorado, and I'm like, wow, even the teachers, when we went out and looked at the new businesses, from auto mechanics, or, you know, you know, any of the different things, medical and, and all those things we're looking at, we're like, construction. Like, wow, it's, it's changed. They've got phenomenal thing. You know, they're in construction. I remember they're putting on helmets, and they're looking at, there's a wall, and our kids are looking at, and I'm thinking to myself, wow. Yeah,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:visualization, Porter, like you mentioned, it's incredible. And the goggles, the everything, the AI, it's, yeah, definitely eye opening, for sure. And so
Porter Cutrell:here we are, and we're like, okay, you know, first of all, we need to get up to speed with that. We need to not be afraid again, just like the podcast. I was like, I can't be scared. You know what? I am scared. You're like, we've got this, Dude, relax, whatever. I'm like, Okay, I am scared, but, but the reality is, is, is we're out there doing it, and so now we've got to create a system that helps our teachers in all five of our generations, our kids, our parents, our parents who are busy. We know our teachers are busy, and they want the best. And, you know, for the students, and they want the best for themselves, it's a job, and they want to create, you know, a life. And so they can't put 66 million hours in. And, you know, so anyway, so yeah, we started to see AI. We started here about GBT, and, yeah, some of my friends, and we just kind of banded together, and we're like, look, we can't be scared. We got to start looking at and the more at and the more we looked at it, the more we kind of came into our head that, man, this might be something and, and, you know, yeah, I mean, so this might be something, um, but tell
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:me what that something is like. I'm literally on the edge of my seat, like I am dying for you to be like, soar sore. Well, it is.
Porter Cutrell:It's a component of soar. It is a component of soar. But when chat first came out, everybody, like, not everybody, but a lot of my teachers are like, hey, we need to have a better system to block them using, like, chat, GBT and just getting the answers. I was like, Okay, I hear you, yeah, like, but getting the answers. But what we've got to do is change the mindset. Getting the answers isn't the isn't the end game. You know, for all this time in school, yeah, we just wanted the answers. We just want to write the stuff down and get it and turn our paper in and get a 90 and feel happy and and move forwards. But then, as we got out of school, we realized that there are no handouts in the real world. There are no anything you gotta you gotta really think your way through things. You gotta fix problems. You gotta think your way through it. So, so the reality is, is, yeah, with sore, we felt like sore Could, could be something. So I looked around, I talked to a few other companies. Oh, Yeah? Online, so, yeah, student online. Ai resource.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:There you go. We got, I told you, Porter, between the two of us, we're gonna
Porter Cutrell:make this kind of, yeah, we just kind of came up with within the name of it. But the but the reality is, is, is we wanted to create a system that kind of did a lot of things for teachers and students. And the lucky piece for it was that, you know, and the computer people, they put together, chat GBT, and it's phenomenal, and some of the other tools and things like that. But when we, when, when, when the computer guys and the educators, so myself and some other people came, together and said, Look, here's how. Let's, let's see if we could train it AI to really help people, as opposed to just give them the answer, like the idea skill acquisition. We want them to acquire the skill. So we want them to know how to do it. And we never want it to be like, you know, like your parents and not my parents. But, I mean, you ask enough questions, and finally they just are like, Come on, man, it's four. Okay, sweet, right? But that wasn't
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:you said that it's not about the answer, Porter, it's about the scientific method and teaching yourself how to think, right, think through things, right? Of Okay, yeah, four is the answer all day long. But how did you get there, right? Why is it that answer? You know, is there a different answer, right? Could there be multiple answers? That's the type of thing that the asking questions, right? I feel like, at least from my perspective, is what's missing, right? Well, that's not the focus anymore,
Porter Cutrell:so we had to. So we were like, Okay, how do we get a hold of how do we let let the parents and the teachers talk to each other? So if the missing assignments and not doing the work, and kids not at school and all that is a problem, everybody's got a cell phone, you know, everybody's really got an email address, to be honest. And so we're thinking, Okay, if we created a missing assignment database, we could call it like an early warning system. Yeah, okay, you were supposed to turn the stuff in. But really it's not the grading period, it's not the, you know, midterm or whatever. When we had parent teacher conferences and getting stress, everybody's stressed. Teachers are stressed. Parents are stressed. Kids are stressed. They've been telling the story. Parents don't know. They've been working hard. Right now. They're going to the school. They don't really like, like, going in the school, but here they go that teachers are like, oh my goodness, you know what's going on and and I actually really did notice that when I first started here, this is, this is the school where I actually graduated from high school. Wow. So for the people, yeah, I know crazy, right? I got the job, and some of the, some of the teachers were still there, and but, but I knew everybody, like everybody in the community, and I was just like, my, you know, I had a restaurant cater the the dinner for the teachers and everything. But nobody, but nobody ate. You know, nobody ate because everybody was so stressed out, stressed out but, and I was like, wow, we gotta really work on this. So
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:how are you gonna alleviate that stress? Porter, where? How do you alleviate that stress? With soar, where is that coming in? Talk to me. So
Porter Cutrell:first of all, we, we create, created a database for the missing assignment. So a teacher can just put in the missing assignment, whether it's the actual copy of the missing assignment, or whether it's in Learning Management System, or wherever it is, the location of it. And they okay. They, you know, we have all the we have the ability to upload all the students in their class and everything. They just select on the students that have missing assignment, whether they're absent, whether it's not, select Go and it texts and emails the parents, the kid, and anybody else, the grandparent, anybody that's in that kid's life,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:right? And this is, yeah, you can, you know, the parents
Porter Cutrell:can come in and say, well, his boss is really interested in helping him. Can you put him on there? Because it's not one of those FERPA violations and things like that, because it's not a grade, it's just an assignment that they that kid needs help on. We've also done it. I love that
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:loophole, by the way, that you were able to skirt around. Yeah, exactly,
Porter Cutrell:yeah. Because, yeah, we've had some Julie. There are some big companies, you know, McDonald's and some of the other ones like that, that, really, that give the kids time, they pay them to do the work and and right there. So having access to them, because we all know kids have backpacks and they put their stuff in there and that, you know, the parents are always like, hey, what? Where, where's this, or where the kid wants to do it. Can't find it. Boys are the worst. I was one of those. Yeah. So, yeah. So we, so we, first, we create a database for that, and we what
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:happens when I get that text now, let's say I'm a parent, right? I got three kids, and I get two different text messages from Johnny and Janie. What does it say? What is? What is? What am I alerted to?
Porter Cutrell:Um, you're alerted to your son or daughter, whatever you know, whatever it is, they'll, they'll say, and they'll, they'll put the first name in there has a missing assignment, okay? And it'll be that there'll be a like a link that you can select on and either with your phone or or on computer as well. So it'll be, if you've if you give us your email address as well. It can be either place, but the phone is really the great one. And and I tell you for sure, I got some funny stories about that, but select on it, and up it comes. So the assignment comes up. It shows what assignment is, and if it's there, like if it's a PDF or Word document. It goes right into our AI tutor, and the AI tutor reads the assignment and gives a summary of it, right so sitting right there, and I was at the DMV one time, and one of the one of the finally got up to the window, and one of the ladies was like, Hey, are you the principal at Goddard? And that's never a great thing. You know, when people start conversation, like, especially at the deal, and I was like, Yes, ma'am, she reaches in a purse, she pulls out the phone, and she says, You know what? She opens it up to an assignment. Clicks, it says, this the greatest thing in the history of the world. She goes, I come home from work five o'clock. You know, I'm a single mom. My I got a great kid, you know, but sometimes he's a boy, he wants to go do stuff, and I'm like, wait, hold up. How was the Have you finished the, you know, quadratic formulas for Mrs. Smith at whatever today? Well, Mom, I was, yeah, no, it's in my car. It's in my backpack, it's in my shoe. It's in my it's right here. And love it, and so but, but they're not left there on their own. She's like this the greatest thing ever, because guess what? We can open this. Every kid has a computer now after COVID. So they can open a computer given to him by the school. They can start working on it, and they can begin the process of of going through it, she said, so we can continue to talk our way out of it. It's not like I have to go over there and do whatever, but if he gets stuck or anything, I can go like, hey, ask it. Ask if it's number four, ask it if you use this, and it'll say, You know what, whatever, and continue to move forward. Uh, also has the ability to have a communication section where educators, whether it's administrator or the the the teacher, whatever, can simply write a message, whether it's a random act of kindness, they say immediately, like, hey, you know, I saw Janie do this. We appreciate, you know, her doing this or that. They can write back. They can say, hey, look, we found a wallet. I mean, any, any of those things communicate back and forth. And I
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:think that's huge Porter, because I one of the things I read about soar, as obviously, as I'm kind of delving into it, is that you built in multilingual translation, right? So how big of a game changer is that for non English speaking families?
Porter Cutrell:Well? And yeah, and it's been huge. And, you know, we hear a lot about the in the news, about people coming, you know, to the country and different things. But look at us. We went around to different countries as well, and we wanted to operate in those countries. And it's instead of the students carrying around their phone and trying to do whatever they can as a family, grandma can help them, mom and dad, the brother, everybody. You can ask it in any language. And, you know, I've talked with some school leaders across the country, you know, some in, you know, up in the northern part of the country. And they're like, you know, we have 22 languages at our school. Not like, it's not like, Spanish and German or whatever, one or two, have you ever and they're like, can it do it in this? Can it write it in that? And I was like, Sure, let's, let's look at it and, and so it's phenomenal that that they can work it together and then work their way back towards, you know, getting, getting the understanding and getting the stuff turned in for
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:sure, well, and to me, I again, I love that follow through of, you know, connection, right? Communication, meeting people where they're at, regardless of what language they speak, but also to building in that system of accountability, right? I think, like you said, too many parents, not busy all working. I don't have time to check up on Jamie's assignments, right? Unless you tell me to right, like there's just too many things going on. So I feel like any type of reminder, any type of accountability system that you can put in, helps on both ends, right? Do you feel like it's benefiting both students and parents at this time?
Porter Cutrell:Oh, no question. And I tell you what, it's creating a bond now, as opposed to a buffer between the school parents the again, anybody in their life. I mean, I have some, I have some students who, you know, go to work right after school and and they were struggling. And, you know, they get home late, they work. There's a lot of things going on, but I got their, I got their boss involved. And so, you know, and those, a lot of times, our bosses are kind of father figures, mother figures as well. And they care about the kids. And they want the, you know, they want. We want the best for our community. Everybody in our community really does want the best. Nobody wants somebody struggling. Nobody wants, you know, nobody grows up. And I hope I'm homeless, or I hope that that'll happen. And the reality is, it begins, it begins to create kind of an All for one, one for all system, you know, the because it is a database, and it's online, and we can all see it. You know, the coaches. We can differentiate them by coaches. We can differentiate them by, you know, not just teacher, but any other little you know, some of our mid schools have teams in eighth grade, so they they call the dinosaurs and the, you know, the violets and the different things like that. So everybody can look and who knows, who has a, you know, and that's, you know, who has a kind of a better rapport with some of these different students, as opposed to, here we are at nine weeks, you know, we got 14, you know, failures. We got 22 here, it's not about that. It's about, you know, creating the ability to work with what we have and and also, you know, let people know if you're saying, students aren't there. Well, I tell you what you can immediately. It's not a lot of times they can do things. They're just not there. Hey, so guess what? You put it in, send it out to them. Doesn't matter where they are. I mean, they could be three states over, they could be on a basketball trip. They could be on a football, you know thing, hey, they got it. They weren't there. Here's the stuff there. It starts to cut down that putting your hand, like when you come back to school. And as a teacher, I always struggle with this, miss, Mr. What I miss? What I miss? Hey, miss, right, you know? And so you got five of those kids, right, who missed, and you don't even remember what day exactly I was Tuesday, Thursday, yeah, man, I put all that in there, yeah, and, and now, you know, it just starts to streamline the effect. And for sure,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:well, and I guess what I'm hearing too, Porter, is that it takes a village, right? You talked about your community, and everyone in the community wanting everyone to succeed, right? Like, and hearing about those students that have their bosses involved, to me, that's just like to advance someone who cares about you, cares about your well being, and like you said, this is their last chance, last pre pass in America. Okay, so you might as well use it as much as you can. No kind of getting into more of the technology side of it. Porter, let's talk about what, what benefits does it bring to teachers? You know, kind of focus more on, I understand that soar plugs into existing platforms like class link, clever canvas, Google Classroom. Like, how does that help teachers? And kind of, you know, give them that one stop shop instead of just one more tool,
Porter Cutrell:learning management systems in in particular, like Canvas. And, you know, that's one of the big ones, classroom, you know, and we're trying to get here in our state, and even in our our district here, we're trying to really get a lot of things put up on Canvas, because we want to have access. When you think about equity, you really got to have access to the work. And we're trying to get our teachers to not be, you know, the keeper of all assignments, the keeper of whatever they are, the kind of the guide on the side to help push people forwards. The coach, you know, we're getting them going and things like that. So we have to have an area where the work is accessible. And so, yeah, it you, you, you can. We can work to connect with the grade book, in in learn, in Canvas and things like that. So if you put in a whatever it's going to be, we can choose if it's a zero or an i, or whatever it then that sends out the information of where you know what the actual assignment is, you know. And some, you know, schools don't have that, but so they do have the Xerox copy one so you know what. Everybody's got a phone, you know. Again, back to that. Everybody can you can scan, take a picture, send it in, takes one second, take the picture, send it in. Yep, there it is. I mean, worst case scenario, they can bring it up on their their computer and begin to type the questions, and still, they can access the and again, they have to be an active participant in their own rescue. But the reality is is, you know, 95% of them want that anyway. It's what happens is when you get behind the end, and you're so far behind that you don't feel like you can dig out that you choose and think we can think of that our own self, you know, bills, life goes on, the weeds, the weeds in the yard or something, we're just like, oh, man, I just not even going to think about I'm not going out there. I'll just deal with it, right? And with it, right? And, and, you know, again, you have a limited time to get the knowledge and to get going and, and I think part of the way it helps teachers, too, is, you know, you always hear the the 11th grade teachers don't think that the 10th grade teachers teach and the ninth grade think the eighth grade wasn't good and the fifth grade wasn't good the whole deal. It could be better. And, you know, you can miss stuff. I mean, you know, when you move every two years, or when whatever. I mean, for us, you know, yeah, things were different. You know, in California was different. So, but, but, but that shouldn't be a thing that that limits your ability, you know, it should be a piece that we can work on. And again, that's where we think the the AI tutor and and that is a is a helpful component,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:for sure. Well, I mean, speaking of AI, obviously there's a lot of fear around AI and education. You kind of touched on it earlier. But what do you say to educators and parents who are skeptical about AI and education,
Porter Cutrell:you know, I mean, I hear them. I The first thing I say is, I hear you and and I, I do believe there are some things that that's that that's going to be a problem for but it's going to be here. And again, it's like saying, Well,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:I'm sorry, Porter, it's already here. Actually, already here? No,
Porter Cutrell:it's here. It's not going away. And a matter of fact, it's going to change slightly, and everybody's going to need to use it probably is the same when shovels or the diesel engine came in and everybody was like, Ooh, I don't know about that. It's not going away, so we've got to learn to work with it. And you know, the one thing that you know by by myself, working with some some great computer people that are in our company, you know, we were able to to help guide and teach and harness and create what you know, for lack of a better terms, maybe a bridge that's in between the, yep, to also to where it puts out the information to the to the people and so, so that piece isn't anything to be afraid of. And if your assignment and now we got to go back and look at our assignments and and how can our assignments be more to begin to move away from the, you know, 90s and, you know, whatever to the A is the answer, B is the answer. You know, it's got to be more of a philosophical think our way through the the answers and and, and kind of take the the power away of from the just getting the answer, from getting from your friend, from your big brother, whatever else. It doesn't
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:mean it's right, exactly, and yeah, and it doesn't mean that you can replicate it either, right? I mean, or replicate, replicate that same thought process. So tell me then, Porter, thinking back on I mean, obviously this is already in schools, right? SOAR is already available in some schools. From your past experience, Porter, again, I'm a teacher. I want to bring this to my school. What do you based on your past experience, what are some kind of the best practices for teachers who are completely new to this soar system? What do you tell them in order to implement it into their school year for the upcoming school year, for 2026, 2027 or 2025
Porter Cutrell:2026, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, we, we have a pretty good training program. We have a, it's very simple. I mean, they have, that's the first nice thing. A lot of the a lot of the hard work, is taken away again, by the computers, by the ability to download, to download the information. So really, you just have to make the decision that you're willing to to, to sit down and get with your teacher buddies and your administrators and yeah, and begin the process of of working with it. And it's funny, my my myself and and who? Okay, great. I'm in a school administrator and my buddies that do it as well. We've noticed that, yeah, our schools have begin to kind of stride out in front of the other ones. And again, we not to be fair. We didn't get we they definitely didn't get any better because they still got up
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:across the board Porter, like, let me just say I didn't get any better. But,
Porter Cutrell:I mean, right, yep, we created a system. I mean, we, our teachers are the same, the students are the same. Students, yeah, we're getting some more to come in, because they're, you know, they're starting to understand that. Wow, there, there is a support system out there and, and it's great. So, yeah, really. I mean, you know, get a hold of us. Www, dot soar, K twelve.com, there you go. I love that. Get us up on and send us an email, and I tell you what, we'll get started. I mean, come, come listen to us speak, ask questions, come look at our booths and some different things, but, but the reality is is, yeah, it's just the to make the decision and and, and give it a go.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:Just do it right? I feel like that's the essential thing. Just do it. Okay, well, then, but tell me more of a success story. Porter. Tell me about a school where you feel like soar was really able to help that's the school and provide that support system talk to me.
Porter Cutrell:Well, I mean, yeah, I can, I can say as a group. I mean, I'll go ahead and use the group that's around me so they like most high schools. We have feeder middle schools that which are the kids that go to those middle schools come to our high school. We also have, in our district, we have an alternative school where, you know, where students that are kind of disillusioned with the high schools try to go, and it's a smaller school, smaller setting, and that is is hooked on to early college high school and early college high school so they can get their high school diploma and their Associate's degree. So I'm going to say our little five group of people who decided to just go ahead and give it a go. I mean, it wasn't even, you know, it was, it was just something we're like, Hey, we're tired of what we've always gotten. You know, you do what you've always done, you get what you've always gotten. We're tired.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:Porter, that's literally the definition of insanity, right? Is doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results, right? So if you don't, we're not willing to change or take a risk, or, you know, at least invest in any kind of support system, then you know, never gonna happen, right? You're never gonna get there, exactly.
Porter Cutrell:And so, you know, just, I mean, right now, and we're about, you know, we're at the end of the school year, so I'll have some little bit better data. We've been able to look at just just the failure rate that we used to have as a group. You know, when we looked at our data combined, we always in our schools, it appeared, over the last 10 years, decade or so, always had about a 30 to 35% failure. I mean, it's just students with at least 1f and going there. Now we've seen, yeah, we've seen it in our expectation is that it's going to be again. We're not quite there, but again, we can take some preliminary data. We're not at the end of the year, but we see that we believe we're going to be at a at a 15% failure rate, which is a 50% drop. You know, just by doing some little simple tweak, we've also seen a huge uptick in in our in our behavior, okay? I mean, 1300 students, which is we have two comprehensive high schools here in the town, you know, we didn't have a fight. Wow. Okay, all right, so we're, we're a semester, like, if you take from from the beginning of the year, so we're in the middle, we're almost at the end of the second semester. We haven't had a fight and that, and that's, I mean, you hate that. You have to use something like that. But the reality is, is that that makes us happy, I mean, and that goes along with a lot of other things. We were noticing that our discipline referrals are down, our bullying is down. Our, you know, because we're starting to build a, it's crazy, we're starting to build a team of students, students, helping students, parents. I mean, you know, you know, we actually kind of put together a little an area where we can, we call it our tutoring center, and we have some adults, man, that we put some of our subs, different things. We have some of our students go in there to help out. And we really be, you know, because you don't have to be a master of anything. You don't have to be like, Oh, dude, I'm really not good at math. But like, Come on, sit down. Let's I'm really good. I've worked with the AI tutor. I'm pretty good with it. Let's start working and let's start moving forwards. And so, you know, those things are positive, parent contacts. This one's crazy to me, since, okay, I'm gonna go since December, because we'll just start from December, 101,000 contacts between between our five schools with their parents both, both the fact that the maybe had missing assignments. Also, when you complete the assignment, source sends them a thing that says, hey, great job. You your kid, completed assignment. Jimmy completed assignments. Jimmy Julie did as well. Which is, you know, how many times do you want to give them an attaboy for something and things like that? But people are spread out, all over the place. Great. I collected it clicked. It took me one millisecond. Off. We go and right now, I mean, we're looking at, I mean, again, since Christmas, we got about 20, less than 20. About 21,000 22,000 missing assignments have been uploaded. We have about a 65% completion rate now, of the missing ones, I mean, that's the piece that you know, that we really find exciting, and we just feel like it's becoming All for one and one for all. And what about those parent What
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:about those parent teacher conferences? Have you noted? What have you noticed? They're improving between those times that that happens now,
Porter Cutrell:the the catered meal is all gone. And you know, if you don't get going well, I told you at the beginning, the very first time I was there, I got one of my friends owns a Mexican restaurant here, and I love his food. And I went down there, and I was like, Hey, let's cater the stuff for our guys. And again, I was taking trays and trays back home, and I was thinking, What is going on? But it's, it was the it was the fact that, you know we were, I think everybody was all stressed. Now we go to those and I tell you what everybody eats, everybody's, I love it. They know those. They're all working together. And, yeah, I mean, again, are we still going to have students to fail Absolutely? But the reality is, is they're not left alone. They don't feel, you know, that they can't pull it off, and it's just been exciting to to be a part of
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:no for sure. Okay, so now, I mean, because Porter listen, you and I could probably chat on for another hour or two, because I got this, I right, but I kind of want, let's now look into the future, right? You kind of mentioned some data, statistics about your groups. Where do you want soar to be in five years? What are the next five years look like? What do you want? Where do you want soar
Porter Cutrell:to be? You know, I think everywhere. You know, I really feel like, Yeah, I'd really like that every kid has an opportunity and to have their own little buddy again, we were with with the data that we can take out of soar that we see in soar, when people log in, when kids do different work. You know, we're discovering that school doesn't go nowadays, in the 21st century, between eight and three. You know, we have students logging in at you know, 215, in the morning, 10. You know, 1045, at night, you know, 615 and we see them, you know, beginning that process. And, yeah, they're busy as well. So I really it'd be great if everybody had that opportunity. I think it would be awesome. Okay,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:all right, so obviously, we do want everyone to get it. And I love how you dream big and think big, right? But what about Okay, so we talked about, obviously, we you have it there in New Mexico. It's there in other states right now.
Porter Cutrell:Yes, we have some schools in Colorado, so New Mexico and Colorado. We just got done presenting in California. We're kind of school year. School has their their money kind of encumbered, so they're, they're looking for the future, and, yeah, our hope is to to branch out and and be, you know, pretty much wherever. And the nice thing it is is because it is replicable. You know, you don't have to haul things, you don't have to build something. You don't have to you don't have to have a big truck to to get it there. It's one phone call, it's one email and, you know, there it is right one
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:to it. Like I said, it plugs into their systems that they already have, right their tracking systems, which I again, anytime you can make a teacher's life easier, I'm here for it. Okay? We are closing out. This is what I love to do, Porter. This is my lightning round. I'm going to ask a bunch of questions and like, one sentence, answers, one word, one sentence. Okay, you ready, sir, you ready for the lightning round? Ready? Okay, okay. Here we go. One word to describe public education right now, one word,
Porter Cutrell:dynamic, most underrated tech in the classroom.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:Ai, your education hero, my mom, ooh, what could stop at night?
Porter Cutrell:You know that we really haven't solved the problems of education yet.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:Yeah, okay, that's perfect. Last one. What gives you hope for the new education
Porter Cutrell:system? You know that I really think that we're making progress, and from what I've seen from soar and just the little bit of data that we do have, I mean, I'm excited that that we are making progress, and I think I'm excited for American public education.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:No, for sure, you gotta, well, you gotta, to me, it's a ripple effect, right? Once you put the stone in the lake, it's gotta spread, right? And once you start seeing results, I feel like people get jump on and they want that for their schools. And luckily, people are competitive, right? Like you were saying, getting back to this whole game and coaching synonym, right, that you use for almost the entire talk, I loved how you're trying to get people on the team, right? It's not just teacher, like you said, standing behind a podium and and dispelling and holding on the information you're creating a team, right? That includes the parents, includes the students. So I'm not bar flat, okay?
Porter Cutrell:The states, the states right now, have a, like a, like a school grading system, I mean, and you know, honestly, one of the ones in Colorado has been, has been wanting to move up in the in the school grading system. We want to move up. We want to see where we're going to be. My friends here, want to see where we're excited. Because, guess what, yeah, we put in a new offense. We're playing hard. We got our players going, and we're excited. And, you know, it's going to take a little bit to get them exactly where we want them, but we want to see step by step progress, and when we see that, I tell you what, we're going to get together again, and we're going to high five each other. And we just need, like, a, you know, like an NCAA tournament on TV and
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:to go know,
Porter Cutrell:being able to call some of our buddies and be like, yeah, see that? Catching up you. Here we come.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:That's right. Better watch out. All right. Well, final question, how can people get involved? Porter, how can they get a hold of you? How can I get sore out into the world. Tell me, tell me, here's your pitch.
Porter Cutrell:Yeah. I mean, I mean, first of all, our website is great, www, dot soar, K twelve.com, and, yeah, come listen to us talk. Uh, we'll be, you know, on our website, we'll have the places where we're, we're going to be out there,
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:um, and, yeah, what's the email address where they can get you. What's that email address? Uh,
Porter Cutrell:it's my first name, Porter, P, O, R, T, E R, at SOAR, K twelve.com. Makes it kind of easy, of course. Listen, make it easy. That would be great. Yep. So we're excited.
Julie Wanzer | Business Rewritten:definitely. Well, thank you so much, Porter No, for giving me your time today. I do like, I listen, I'm having you back on this podcast and like, well, hopefully rather sooner rather than later, I hear more updates about this Porter. Seriously, I think this is an important issue. It's a great way to show people that you care, about students, about their progress, regardless of where they live, regardless of what language they speak, or regardless of what language their parents speak. Creating that community and that connection is super important and so much needed in today's world. And we have to do it right. So again, thank you. Again, Porter, I love seeing what's possible, and let's disrupt this public education system. I'm here for it. Let's bring in the AI and and shake things up a little bit.
Porter Cutrell:Let's roll Thank you.
