Insights on the film “Most Likely to Succeed,” screened by SPS

Shrewsbury, a school district that prides itself on innovation in education, screened the film “Most Likely to Succeed” to the community at its high school this past week. The film explores project-based learning at a truly unorthodox high school in San Diego.

Members of Shrewsbury’s Innovation and Learning Team had just returned from a visit to High Tech High, the subject of the film.

High Tech High promotes project-based learning and stresses the four Cs: communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. The school believes that these are the skills jobs require of workers today and tomorrow. Indeed the classrooms at High Tech High seem more like labs or offices, where there are no periods or subjects. All subjects are combined and students explore theories working collaboratively. The end result is not a final exam; but rather, a group project expressed artistically, mechanically, or otherwise. Every year an exhibition night is held and the projects are presented to the community.

Project-based learners believe that learning by doing can be transformative. Teachers are largely autonomous, work on one year contracts with no tenure, and are called designers. Teaching is student centered vs. teacher centered with students making decisions and driving projects. Advocates for project-based learning argue that our education curriculum hasn’t changed much in the last hundred years.

Most learning in today’s high school is rote with students memorizing facts for the test, which are largely forgotten shortly afterward. With Google, facts are accessed in moments, so we’ve moved from a knowledge-based education to a skills-based model. They assert that the skills needed are the four Cs.

While High Tech High would never be accused of teaching to the test, their students score on average 10% higher than their peers and the school boasts a 98% college acceptance rate.

For further information visit http://www.hightechhigh.org/

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By Colleen Corbett