This week in EDCI 336, we watched the film, Most Likely To Succeed, a 2015 documentary produced by Ted Dintersmith and Tony Wagner and directed by Greg Whiteley.
The film explores our traditional modern day education system, asking such questions as:
Why do we still have compartmentalized subjects?
Why do we still have bells between periods?
Why are we still running school much the same way we did 124 years ago?
The film centers around a school in California called, “High Tech High” which bases student learning around projects that they create and then share at the end of the term. Personally, I did not know schools like this existed and it opened my eyes to how beneficial straying from the norm in classrooms can be. This type of teaching strategy aims to take learning that encourages students to simply absorb, memorize, and then recite information and replace it with collaborative, creative, and leadership skills.
I’m excited to dive into a free inquiry based project this term after seeing from the film just how much learning can occur when students are personally interested in the subject
Featured image by Akshay Chauhan on Unsplash