In episode five of All Things Marketing and Education, Elana sits down with Chris Walsh, an educator, media producer, and entrepreneur passionate about using digital tools to bring large-scale innovations to teaching and learning. Throughout this conversation, Chris explains how EdTech marketers can meaningfully engage with educators right now and explores his personal impact while working both in and out of the classroom throughout his career.
Recognizing Educators’ Unique Challenges & Needs
Everyone is struggling with mental health and burnout, especially educators. As marketers, we need to understand how outside factors affect our customers and authentically support them at this specific time. To Chris, the pandemic changed how EdTech marketers should engage their educator audiences. “You cannot market to them like you marketed pre-pandemic. It’s impossible.”
Chris described a change of mindset that’s needed right now. “Here’s my only advice. You don’t need to work so hard. If your product is valuable, especially at this moment in time, we all know. Look at all the products that thrived during the pandemic,” Chris says. “Educators are in high need. They will find you. They will come to you. All you need to do is support them. I think the good EdTech companies today know that. No need to overmarket, no need to oversell; in fact, no need to even improve your products dramatically. It’s all about customer service, stability, and supporting those customers at this moment in time. That’s your best marketing.”
Successfully marketing to educators today now requires genuine connections and authentic communication more than ever. Chris said that while working as the CEO of Zaption, “The more we just connected with individual teachers and talked to them about what they were doing and how we could help and how we could leverage video in new, engaging, interesting ways, that’s what they wanted to have conversations about, too.”
When marketing to teachers today, Chris reminds marketers to remember educator circumstances in every interaction — they’re stressed, burnt out, and have tons of other things competing for their very limited time. “You’ve got to find where teachers are willing to engage with you today, knowing that you only have them for a few minutes, and don’t expect more than a few minutes out of them. They only have a limited amount of time anyhow, and now it’s even less; so don’t push it.”
Many marketers have not been educators and cannot begin to understand what it’s like to be an educator, especially during this challenging time. Surrounding yourself and connecting with educators is a great way to begin to understand. Monitor educator conversations and listen as much as possible. Once you do this consistently, you’ll start to notice inequity. “The first thing is pointing out the inequity of the moment, and then recognizing that this inequity is not going away anytime soon,” Chris says. “In fact, if anything, it’s going to continue to probably get bigger and wider, which is something we absolutely have to address head-on.” Chris notes, “If EdTech brands are not addressing that inequity in some way, they are becoming more of the problem than the solution. That even comes down to understanding the dynamics of schools today.”
Finding Your Impact In and Out of the Classroom
Chris reflected on his initial attraction to the world of education. He never had a doubt about his career in teaching. “I’m one of those people that was just born to be a teacher. There’s just no doubt about it. Although I considered other paths, it was pretty certain that my path was related to working with kids and, in particular, teaching,” Chis says.
Throughout his career, Chris has worked both inside and outside of education, recently making a transition from EdTech back into the classroom, which isn’t a transition you see often. “The reason that I made the switch when I did was that I got burnt out on startups, EdTech…I also just got burnt out on the pressure, to be honest with you.”
“For 20 years, I worried about scale,” says Chris. “Every thought I had was about scale. Here’s a great program or a great school that’s working really well. How do we scale it? Here’s a great product we have. How do we scale it? I found, after a lot of reflection, that every thought I had about scaling, and that was keeping me from having a deep impact.”
“I flipped it and thought, ‘in order for me to have scale, I need to first have a deep impact, and then scale that impact,’” Chris says. “That sounds so obvious now because that’s how almost every great company has ever been built, or every great product has been built. You have to go deep first and scale out of that depth.”
This realization led Chris to start working directly with students and teachers. “When I got the opportunity to meet with the folks at Carondelet, who built a new Center for Innovation, and they shared their vision for it, and they basically said, “how can you help us meet that vision?” I knew that I was going to be in a place where I could go as deep as I wanted to with just 800 students; and then figure out, OK, what about that experience do I really think is important; that maybe, maybe I could scale later on.”
Chris’ passions for both education and technology have led him down many different paths, resulting in an unorthodox career in both. While working as a teacher and EdTech coordinator, Chris was also moonlighting with an Internet company, and even running a summer camp. Because he was so stressed, he decided to refocus, and apply for the Stanford Learning Design and Technology Program. Chris says, “that’s really what turned me from leaving the classroom officially because I was at Stanford literally during the height of the first Internet boom. I was working at Stanford right before the bubble burst.”
Chris reflected, “I don’t think those circumstances are going to ever come about in the same way for anybody else ever again, but it wasn’t a switch that flipped. It was an evolution over a few years, but I will say it was fairly fast, because I was deep in it, and I was learning so fast. They talk about 10,000 hours. I compacted 10,000 hours into about three years to learn everything I could in this area. Then that’s where I decided I needed to build on that expertise.”
Note: This interview was originally recorded on October 22, 2021, as part of the All Things Education and Marketing podcast hosted by Elana Leoni.
Take a look at the full transcript of Chris’ podcast episode.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
School180.com (Chris’ podcast)
Carondelet High School (the school where Chris currently serves as Director of the Center for Innovation)
Roger Wagner, Hyperstudio (someone who helped foster Chris’ interest in tech)
Zaption, founded by Charlie and Jim Stigler (Chris was formerly the CEO)
Tiny house project (a project that Chris is working on with his students)
Brightworks Tagline: Everything is interesting. (a micro-school in SF that inspires Chris.)
Episode Skeleton (use this to jump to the parts you want to listen to):
[00:32] A little bit about Chris
[11:13] How do educators rely on EdTech?
[13:24] Chris’ career as an educator
[16:02] Why Chris loves middle school
[19:13] Chris’ intro into tech
[23:00] “It wasn’t a switch that flipped. It was an evolution over several years.”
[24:25] We’re all in this profession not for the money but for the impact.
[25:08] Schedule in and out of the classroom
[28:30] Burning out of startups
[31:15] “In order to have scale, I need to first have deep impact.”
[37:33] The importance of authenticity in marketing to educators.
[42:35] What is the difference between working at a public vs private school?
[42:56] Hybrid learning during the pandemic at public and private institutions
[43:41] Pandemic inequities between the haves and the have nots
[44:47] Marketers in EdTech need to understand and address these inequities
[45:51] Value first marketing, especially when speaking to educators
[50:34] We are all burnt out on zoom.
[50:48] Know the right tactic for the right moment. Find where teachers are today.
[53:12] What inspires Chris?
[55:42] “Everything is interesting.”
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Chris Fitzgerald Walsh, Guest
Chris Walsh is an experienced educator, media producer, and entrepreneur passionate about using digital tools to bring large scale innovations to teaching and learning. Chris started his career as a middle school teacher, and since then has held leadership positions with
In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with family, traveling, walk-n-talks, and searching for the perfect (gluten-free) chocolate chip cookie. His daughter, Kathryn, graduated Carondelet in 2018.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.
Rate, Like, and Subscribe
Let us know what you thought about this episode by rating and reviewing our podcast. Click here, scroll to the bottom, tap to rate with five stars, and select “Write a Review.” Then be sure to let us know what you loved most about the episode! Also, if you haven’t done so already, subscribe to the podcast to be notified when we have more content to share with you.