Gaige Wood

Prof. Reinard

IDC-201

4/25/22

The documentary “Most Likely to Succeed” was a very thought-provoking story on how

a charter school called “High Tech High,” in San Diego, California, was able to move away from

a traditional teaching approach (conventional education) and changed to a learner centered

approach (inclusive). The reason being is that the U.S. economy can make more money by,

simply, not hiring people and instead using robots that can easily do the job without pay. As a

result, about 54% of college graduates are unable to find a job and we are going to start seeing

that middle class jobs will no longer be available because the workers will be replaced by robots

and Artificial Intelligence.

Throughout the documentary it was evident that the students at “High Tech High” are

learning more about their ability to work as a team and their ability to think critically, which is

needed in the future work force. High Tech High’s main goal is to develop students for future

jobs that haven’t been created yet so that the next generation of workers won’t be out of a job.

Even though the students weren’t learning/memorizing the information required for the state

tests, they were learning real life skills that will help them in the work force. One of the skills

that they learned was being able to complete a task in a certain time frame and being able to

divide the work amongst their groups so that the task gets done on time. All groups, except for

Brian’s group, were able to complete this task. However, Brian was able to learn the critical
thinking skill of accountability and self-assessing the reason why he couldn’t complete the task,

which is a main part in expanding and applying their growth mindset. He did this by re-assessing

himself and realizing that he shouldn’t have slacked off so much and worried about the small

details without actually completing the main part of his mechanism. However, Brian did return in

the summer and completed his project, which then it was placed in his spot on the giant gear.

I thought it was interesting that the teachers were hired on a 1-year contract and they have

to be strong in the areas that they teach. Other than that, the teachers basically have total

intellectual freedom. Teachers, like Mike and Scott, would teach the students the basics of the

curriculum but it was up to the students to expand on their ideas, using critical/complex thinking.

In Mike and Scott’s class, all the students were grouped and they had to come up with a theory,

in which they would research how their theory would be validated. In the end, the groups would

have to build a gear driven mechanism that would tell the story/explain their theory and their

mechanism would be shown on one exhibition night where it would basically get graded by the

people who showed up, who were mostly parents. This gives the students real life experience

because the work that you do in the work force will not be graded/judged by one person, it would

be graded/judged by all the people that use/encounter the product that you worked on.

The one “thing” that I took away from this documentary was how the lives and the

dedication of the students were changed because they, basically, had to. For example, in the

beginning, Samantha was the quiet kid that didn’t enjoy talking, but because the class is student-

led she found out that herself as well as the other students grades depended on the workmanship

of all the individuals involved. Then she started stepping out of her comfort zone and became the

director of the Pakistan rendition of Athens. This is one of the reasons why High Tech High is

about 10% above the U.S. average when it comes to their students being college and career
ready. The whole debate comes down to, do you want your students to be great workers or great

test takers? The answer seems obvious, you want good workers who are going to do a great job

so the company keeps making money. Plus, the documentary suggested that the workers who did

good on their state test were worst workers, then the ones who did poorly. I think that speaks

immensely about their priorities when it comes to the work force, because you would expect that

the people who do excellent on their tests are going to be great workers, because they were

determined and learned the curriculum to pass the test. However, when they put all of their

priorities into that one test, they limited their selves in their workmanship, because you can’t

learn that out of a book, your workmanship is based on your real-life occurrences and how you

were able to handle a situation.