Making our Students Most Likely to Succeed through ED Innovation
Q&A with Executive Producer Ted Dintersmith
At the Business Innovation Factory, we believe that transforming social systems requires including all stakeholders into the conversation. The Student Experience Lab is dedicated to just that — bringing students, educators, and community members into the education innovation discussion. Last month at our BIF headquarters, we brought together a group of people involved in education to our screening of the documentary, Most Likely to Succeed, which takes an in depth look at our nation’s stagnant education system and its desperate need for transformation. We were also honored to have Ted Dintersmith, Executive Producer of the film, join us for a Q&A session following the film.
Aside from the constant stream of education innovation projects that the Student Experience Lab leads (examples of which can be found here), we’re also committed to bringing together education thought leaders to share their work, and learn from one another. Our film screening allowed us to invite some of Rhode Island’s top education leaders and innovators to watch a film about educational transformation. We had a diverse group of people from across multiple schools, businesses and organizations all brought together by their belief that our education system is in dire need of change. We filled our office space with students, teachers, administrators, policymakers, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to education. We were thrilled to have over 80 people show up from across Rhode Island to watch the film. If you weren’t able to attend, there is another opportunity to see the film and partake in a discussion!
Next week on October 8th, the Rhode Island Department of Education will be putting on an even bigger screening at the Providence Career and Technical Academy. If you would like to watch the film and be a part of the discussion, you can register here.
For the Q&A portion of the event, we wanted to make sure everyone in the room got the opportunity to ask Ted their question. We wanted to be considerate of the time because many of the educators and students present were starting their first day of school the next day, so we had attendees write their questions down. Fortunately, Ted agreed to answer them after the screening over email. Below is a synthesis of the questions received and Ted’s answers.
Audience Question: How can we share the film with others at our schools, and communities?
Ted: For the foreseeable future, the only way to see the film is to organize a community screening at your school, or find one happening in your area. We are now getting over 200 requests a week from schools to show the film, and our website www.thefutureofschool.us has a list of upcoming screenings. Chances are good you can find one in the near future near you. But it’s so much better to bring your school community together to see the film and engage in discussion about its relevance to your school’s strategy.
Who is the film exciting and who is it upsetting and why?
We’ve been blown away by the response to the film. I was recently at a screening in Fargo, North Dakota, where the audience of 600 gave the film a several-minute standing ovation. It’s a really inspiring film. I suppose the standardized testing companies aren’t thrilled with it, and we occasionally run into traditionalists who aren’t excited by it. But I’ve now been at fifty Q&A’s for the film, and only rarely does someone not like it. The surprise is that the film calls into question almost every assumption we have about education, so we expected far more people to take issue with it.
How do we change the mindset of a nation that continues to have an industrial educational comfort zone?
I’m a big believer in the power of film, and I think Most Likely To Succeed has the potential to unlock innovation all across the country. It conveys the urgency of change, since millions of “good students” are at risk of chronic unemployment unless we re-imagine education. But it also provides an inspiring look at what the possibilities are for our schools, students, and teachers. So i’m taking the film to all fifty states in the country this school year, reaching the people in every state who can influence the futures of our kids.
It seems like college acceptance is a big barrier to these alternatives to traditional education, how much disruption are you seeing at the college level?
Sadly, very little. A few colleges are offering alternative admission paths, and that’s encouraging. But for the most part, our college admissions process is in urgent need of change. We demand that high school kids be excellent at things that they’ll never use, all in the hopes of getting into a marginally more selective college. And, on balance, most of our colleges actually deliver very little real learning, at unaffordable tuition levels. So we have this curious situation of kids and families pursuing college acceptance with frenzied intensity, while the colleges drain their bank accounts and deliver mediocre education. This isn’t sustainable. I encourage high school guidance counselors to not simply assume every student has to go to college, but to engage in a discussion about what objectives they have from four very expensive years, and whether there are viable alternatives. My prediction is that many colleges will fail in coming years, and as they do, parents and high school students will become increasingly skeptical of the value of a college credential.
What role can/should standards play in a new vision of education? Do tests have a role in determining success of alternate models of education?
Let me start with tests. My friend at Harvard Eric Mazur gave a talk last year with the great title of “Assessment: The Silent Killer of Learning.” I’d highly recommend it. I do think we need to be able to evaluate and assess the work of students and teachers in an effective way. The issue, though, is when we decide it’s important to rank order the performance of a student against millions of other students. We can’t do that cost effectively on anything that matters. So we see the nonsense we have now, where much of what we test is formulaic and low-level, and it’s destroying our schools, demotivating our teachers, and telling millions of kids that they’re mediocre. Regarding standards, I think we need to do all we can to help students achieve high standards, but on skills and character traits that matter. But I also think we need to give our teachers and schools the trust to come up with their own means to achieving these standards. I was in Utah recently, and teachers related how they were required to be on a certain page of the text on any given day. I can’t think of a more direct path to destroy engaged learning, student curiosity, and teacher motivation.
How does a school with many (or all) traditional structures shift towards alternative education models like PBL?
There are lots of great options. I’m a big fan of the work being done by Big Picture Learning, New Tech Network, Expeditionary Learning, High Tech High and others to help schools make profound transformations. And I see lots of success cases where schools launch a “school within a school,” and let students and teachers interested in a different approach move forward accordingly. In these cases, the innovative model goes from tiny, to small, to bigger, to ubiquitous. But even if we can encourage teachers and principals to try small experiments that encourage more engaged learning, we’ll begin moving education in the right direction.
How do we support teachers, parents, and students to make this shift?
The reason I organized and funded this film is to give the innovative teachers, parents, and students a great vehicle for convincing those around them that this shift is not only important, it’s essential. So when they venture out from traditional school and get pushback, my hope is that their next step is to screen the film in their school community.
What changes need to be made in teacher prep programs to provide educators with adequate training in experimenting with alternative education models?
Hmmm . . . great question. If we teach our next generation of teachers with lectures and multiple choice questions, we will take too long to change school. So as part of my fifty-state tour, I’m trying to reach out to heads of education schools across the nation and encourage them to screen the film to their faculty and students, and begin helping our next generation of teachers to develop expertise in a far more student-driven model for engaged and authentic learning.
