I’ll start by saying if you have not seen The Most Likely to Succeed movie: 1) go watch it. Especially if you have any interest at all in the long overdue shift in our current standardized educational curriculum. 2) To give some brief context, the movie is about a high school in San Diego (High Tech High) who’s entire purpose is to teach with project based learning, instead of the traditional standardized “subject-based” curriculum.
Overall, I found the movie extremely interesting. I was skeptical at first, as it showed many people (specifically parents and some students worried about getting into College and University) were when first being introduced to the idea; but as the movie progressed through the school year, I definitely found myself jumping on the bandwagon. Actually being able to see the real progress the students were making in not only their projects, but also in what was referred to as their “soft skills” really pulled at my heart strings. I loved that soft skills were the main focus of teaching, and all the factual and memorization-type materials were more so just expected to fall into place. I agree with the idea that soft skills are ones that are much more useful to students once they enter the workforce, than ‘solving for x’ has ever been in my personal experience.
I was still left with some questions on the actual evaluation process, though. The boy that they followed throughout the film that was trying to execute his very elaborate contribution to the project, never actually completed in time for the exhibition. Although it was great to see that he persevered and took the time out of his summer holidays to get his part done, the film did not mention at all what his evaluation would look like because of missing the deadline. Although I feel for the student, I do believe that to foster proper learning and responsibility, there would need to be some sort of repercussions to his lack of organization and time management, wouldn’t there?
My final thoughts related back to my own time in the K-12 public system. I reflect back to how much I missed out on because of a lack of self confidence. I used to get doctors notes to excuse me from P.E. because I was terrified of being judged and letting down my classmates in team sports; I would avoid speaking up in class unless I was pretty much forced; and the thought of any sort of presentation in front of the class would almost cripple me with fear. It makes me wonder now, if I had had the opportunity like the director of the play got to let her true self shine through in such a trusting environment, would my experience have been totally different? Unfortunately, time travel is not yet a thing, so there is no concrete way of knowing forsure, but if our curriculum continues to progress as it has been for the past 2 years, I have faith that we, as Educators, could one day drastically reduce those negative student experiences.
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