1
00:00:07,711 --> 00:00:09,912
So how many of you are educators, past, present, or future?

2
00:00:09,912 --> 00:00:11,321
Raise your hands.

3
00:00:11,321 --> 00:00:12,791
Good. I'm in the right place.

4
00:00:12,791 --> 00:00:15,503
I'm a recovering high school English teacher.

5
00:00:15,503 --> 00:00:16,526
True story.

6
00:00:16,526 --> 00:00:18,374
How many of you mentor young kids? 


7
00:00:18,374 --> 00:00:19,470
Raise your hands.

8
00:00:19,470 --> 00:00:22,488
I'm definitely in the right place.

9
00:00:22,488 --> 00:00:27,033
For 25 years, we've heard about failing schools

10
00:00:27,033 --> 00:00:29,308
and the need to reform our schools.

11
00:00:29,308 --> 00:00:31,275
Anybody who wanted to reform school? 


12
00:00:31,275 --> 00:00:33,337
Raise your hands.

13
00:00:33,337 --> 00:00:35,446
Einstein once said that formulation of the problem

14
00:00:35,446 --> 00:00:38,564
is often more important than the solution.

15
00:00:38,564 --> 00:00:40,943
I would like to respectfully suggest our schools

16
00:00:40,943 --> 00:00:43,453
are not failing; they certainly don't need reforming.

17
00:00:43,453 --> 00:00:47,610
The system is obsolete and needs reinventing.

18
00:00:47,610 --> 00:00:49,373
Not reforming.

19
00:00:49,373 --> 00:00:50,766
What's changed?

20
00:00:50,766 --> 00:00:52,176
It's simply this.

21
00:00:52,176 --> 00:00:54,966
Knowledge today is a commodity.

22
00:00:54,966 --> 00:00:57,584
It's free. It's like air. It's like water.

23
00:00:57,584 --> 00:00:59,823
How many of you have been on the Khan Academy website?

24
00:00:59,823 --> 00:01:00,830
Raise your hands.

25
00:01:00,830 --> 00:01:02,868
Yeah, most of you. Right, you know.

26
00:01:02,868 --> 00:01:05,523
You know the quality of education people can receive

27
00:01:05,523 --> 00:01:08,078
on that if they're willing to take the initiative.

28
00:01:08,078 --> 00:01:11,702
How many of you had to memorize the periodic table

29
00:01:11,702 --> 00:01:13,494
in high school? Raise your hands.

30
00:01:13,494 --> 00:01:15,210
Ah, everybody! Good.

31
00:01:15,210 --> 00:01:17,014
So, how many were there again?

32
00:01:17,014 --> 00:01:18,556
No wait, I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

33
00:01:18,556 --> 00:01:20,262
Whatever number you came up with is wrong,

34
00:01:20,262 --> 00:01:22,704
because two more were added last week.

35
00:01:22,704 --> 00:01:25,270
And planets, are we up one or down one?

36
00:01:25,270 --> 00:01:27,323
I don't know, I haven't checked my news feed today.

37
00:01:27,323 --> 00:01:29,014
And let's see, let's have a contest.

38
00:01:29,014 --> 00:01:31,932
Why don't you recite the 50 state capitals from memory

39
00:01:31,932 --> 00:01:35,880
while I google them? Let's see who's quicker.

40
00:01:35,880 --> 00:01:37,367
Knowledge is a commodity.

41
00:01:37,367 --> 00:01:39,539
The world no longer cares whether or not

42
00:01:39,539 --> 00:01:40,882
you're smarter than a fifth grader

43
00:01:40,882 --> 00:01:43,024
or how well you do to triple your pursuit.

44
00:01:43,024 --> 00:01:46,298
What the world cares about is not what you know,

45
00:01:46,298 --> 00:01:49,561
but what you can do with what you know.

46
00:01:49,561 --> 00:01:54,021
And that is a completely different education problem.

47
00:01:54,021 --> 00:01:56,154
Then the question becomes,

48
00:01:56,154 --> 00:01:59,731
Do you have the skill and do you have the will

49
00:01:59,731 --> 00:02:03,381
to use the knowledge you have acquired?

50
00:02:03,381 --> 00:02:06,586
Okay, I gotta tell you a kind of an intellectual journey I've been on.

51
00:02:06,586 --> 00:02:08,524
2005, I read "The World is Flat" by Friedman.

52
00:02:08,524 --> 00:02:10,107
How many have read that book?

53
00:02:10,107 --> 00:02:11,386
Scared the heck out of me.

54
00:02:11,386 --> 00:02:13,418
Because as you know, he describes a world

55
00:02:13,418 --> 00:02:15,496
where increasingly any job that can be routined

56
00:02:15,496 --> 00:02:17,959
is rapidly being offshored or automated.

57
00:02:17,959 --> 00:02:20,852
White collar, blue collar, doesn't matter.

58
00:02:20,852 --> 00:02:23,038
Talked to him recently, interviewed him for the new book.

59
00:02:23,038 --> 00:02:24,498
He said, "I got one thing wrong in that book."

60
00:02:24,498 --> 00:02:25,691
I said, "What was that?"

61
00:02:25,691 --> 00:02:28,890
He said, "The pace of change is happening so much faster."

62
00:02:28,890 --> 00:02:32,221
So I worried about what kinds of skills will our young people need

63
00:02:32,221 --> 00:02:35,955
to get and keep a good job in this new global knowledge economy.

64
00:02:35,955 --> 00:02:37,814
And in fact are they the same skills they'll need

65
00:02:37,814 --> 00:02:40,823
for citizenship and for continuous learning?

66
00:02:40,823 --> 00:02:43,155
So I've interviewed a wide range of innovators, literally,

67
00:02:43,155 --> 00:02:47,905
from Apple to Unilever, executives, U.S. Army,

68
00:02:47,905 --> 00:02:49,992
community leaders, college teachers, asking all of them,

69
00:02:49,992 --> 00:02:53,586
"What are the skills that matter most today? What's important?"

70
00:02:53,586 --> 00:02:56,762
Came to understand, there's a set of core competences

71
00:02:56,762 --> 00:03:01,541
every young person must be well on the way to mastery

72
00:03:01,541 --> 00:03:03,873
before he or she finishes high school.

73
00:03:03,873 --> 00:03:07,924
Not just to get a good job, but to be a continuous learner

74
00:03:07,924 --> 00:03:11,847
and an active and informed citizen in the 21st century.

75
00:03:11,847 --> 00:03:13,585
Very briefly, they are:

76
00:03:13,585 --> 00:03:15,693
No. 1: Critical thinking and problem solving.

77
00:03:15,693 --> 00:03:17,059
What do I mean by critical thinking? 


78
00:03:17,059 --> 00:03:18,783
The ability to ask the right questions,

79
00:03:18,783 --> 00:03:20,614
ask really good questions.

80
00:03:20,614 --> 00:03:25,815
No. 2: Collaboration across networks and leading by influence.

81
00:03:25,815 --> 00:03:29,769
No. 3: Agility and adaptability.

82
00:03:29,769 --> 00:03:34,214
No. 4: Initiative and entrepreneurialism.

83
00:03:34,214 --> 00:03:39,870
No. 5: Effective oral and written communication.

84
00:03:39,870 --> 00:03:43,700
No. 6: Accessing and analyzing information.

85
00:03:43,700 --> 00:03:48,800
and lastly, No. 7: Curiosity and imagination.

86
00:03:48,800 --> 00:03:51,784
So, a couple things happened when that book came out 3 and a half years ago.

87
00:03:51,784 --> 00:03:54,430
There's a global achievement gap that Hellman just referred to.

88
00:03:54,430 --> 00:03:57,348
First of all, I got a kind of affirmation

89
00:03:57,348 --> 00:03:58,650
from literally, around the world

90
00:03:58,650 --> 00:04:00,090
that simply stunned me.

91
00:04:00,090 --> 00:04:04,100
Taiwan to Singapore, to Helsinki, to Madrid, 


92
00:04:04,100 --> 00:04:07,114
and kind of all places in between.

93
00:04:07,114 --> 00:04:10,851
Thailand, Bahrain, Birmingham, England.

94
00:04:10,851 --> 00:04:13,797
From Wall Street to West Point,

95
00:04:13,797 --> 00:04:17,819
people said to me, 
"Yup, these are exactly the right skills."

96
00:04:17,819 --> 00:04:20,568
I felt pretty good. Not bad.

97
00:04:20,568 --> 00:04:22,916
Then the other thing happened.

98
00:04:22,916 --> 00:04:24,780
Economy collapsed.

99
00:04:24,780 --> 00:04:27,157
And I saw kids coming home from college,

100
00:04:27,157 --> 00:04:30,658
seemingly having acquired some, many, most of these skills,

101
00:04:30,658 --> 00:04:33,712
coming home from college to no job.

102
00:04:33,712 --> 00:04:35,012
They had the skills.

103
00:04:35,012 --> 00:04:36,546
Something was missing.

104
00:04:36,546 --> 00:04:40,898
Right now today, half of all recent college graduates

105
00:04:40,898 --> 00:04:43,785
are either unemployed or underemployed.

106
00:04:43,785 --> 00:04:46,063
A third are living at home.

107
00:04:46,063 --> 00:04:48,475
Maybe some of you in this audience.

108
00:04:48,475 --> 00:04:50,733
What did I miss? What was wrong?

109
00:04:50,733 --> 00:04:52,700
Well, as I tried to understand


110
00:04:52,700 --> 00:04:54,314
the essence of this economic crash,

111
00:04:54,314 --> 00:04:55,897
I came to understand it's a lot more

112
00:04:55,897 --> 00:04:58,798
than the credit default swaps we read about,

113
00:04:58,798 --> 00:05:01,469
a lot more than just a hyper-inflated 


114
00:05:01,469 --> 00:05:03,324
real estate market and so on.

115
00:05:03,324 --> 00:05:04,487
Here's what I learned.

116
00:05:04,487 --> 00:05:06,892
Maybe you all know this. I didn't.

117
00:05:06,892 --> 00:05:11,388
More than 70% of our economy
is based on consumer spending.

118
00:05:11,388 --> 00:05:13,376
What's everybody's biggest fear?

119
00:05:13,376 --> 00:05:16,483
That consumers will stop spending.

120
00:05:16,483 --> 00:05:18,354
That's why we lose jobs.

121
00:05:18,354 --> 00:05:20,513
No. 2, that that consumer spending has been

122
00:05:20,513 --> 00:05:24,871
increasingly fueled by people going into debt.

123
00:05:24,871 --> 00:05:27,244
Pulling money out of the house as fast as they could,

124
00:05:27,244 --> 00:05:29,430
putting money on credit cards as fast as they could.

125
00:05:29,430 --> 00:05:33,862
2007, the savings rate was minus 2%.

126
00:05:33,862 --> 00:05:35,913
Leading me to conclude

127
00:05:35,913 --> 00:05:38,068
that maybe what we have done

128
00:05:38,068 --> 00:05:40,392
is create an economy based on people

129
00:05:40,392 --> 00:05:42,870
spending money they do not have,

130
00:05:42,870 --> 00:05:45,410
to buy things they may not need,

131
00:05:45,410 --> 00:05:48,833
threatening the planet in the process.

132
00:05:48,833 --> 00:05:51,258
I think it's increasingly clear

133
00:05:51,258 --> 00:05:54,015
that kind of an economy is not sustainable.

134
00:05:54,015 --> 00:05:58,080
As Jeremy Cloud said, it's not sustainable environmentally.

135
00:05:58,080 --> 00:06:00,460
It's not even sustainable economically.

136
00:06:00,460 --> 00:06:03,375
Right now today, the savings rate is about 4%.

137
00:06:03,375 --> 00:06:06,330
Consumers are saving

138
00:06:06,330 --> 00:06:08,764
more than they are spending.

139
00:06:08,764 --> 00:06:11,784
I don't think it's sustainable spiritually either.

140
00:06:11,784 --> 00:06:13,182
We need something different.

141
00:06:13,182 --> 00:06:15,132
So as I tried to understand what's the alternative,

142
00:06:15,132 --> 00:06:16,956
what's gonna be our niche in the global economy,

143
00:06:16,956 --> 00:06:19,041
one word appeared over and over again.

144
00:06:19,041 --> 00:06:20,928
Innovation.

145
00:06:20,928 --> 00:06:24,095
The idea, not just the major innovations in STEM,

146
00:06:24,095 --> 00:06:28,395
but becoming a country that produces more better ideas

147
00:06:28,395 --> 00:06:31,504
to solve more different kinds of problems,

148
00:06:31,504 --> 00:06:33,264
ideas that generate jobs,

149
00:06:33,264 --> 00:06:37,153
ideas that other people want and need as solutions

150
00:06:37,153 --> 00:06:40,795
to real problems, every kind of problem.

151
00:06:40,795 --> 00:06:42,879
So, you know, America has always been known

152
00:06:42,879 --> 00:06:44,721
as a highly innovative country.

153
00:06:44,721 --> 00:06:47,728
But is that because of, or in spite of,

154
00:06:47,728 --> 00:06:49,859
our education system?

155
00:06:49,859 --> 00:06:51,143
Important question.

156
00:06:51,143 --> 00:06:52,695
You know we have infrastructure,

157
00:06:52,695 --> 00:06:54,590
we spend on our R&D,

158
00:06:54,590 --> 00:06:56,332
copyright protection laws,

159
00:06:56,332 --> 00:06:58,473
good immigration policy, until recently.

160
00:06:58,473 --> 00:06:59,769
What about education?

161
00:06:59,769 --> 00:07:02,876
Alright, trivia question of the day so fast you won't be able to google the answer.

162
00:07:02,876 --> 00:07:04,598
What do Bill Gates, Edwin Land,

163
00:07:04,598 --> 00:07:06,441
the inventor of Polaroid instant camera,

164
00:07:06,441 --> 00:07:08,360
Mark Zuckerburg a Facebook fame,

165
00:07:08,360 --> 00:07:10,046
and Bonnie Raitt, the folk singer, all four have in common?

166
00:07:10,046 --> 00:07:11,654
(Audience) College dropouts.

167
00:07:11,654 --> 00:07:12,824
Sorry, they were not dropouts, 


168
00:07:12,824 --> 00:07:15,269
they were Harvard College dropouts!

169
00:07:15,269 --> 00:07:17,269
That's different! Thank you very much.

170
00:07:17,269 --> 00:07:20,638
You know Steve Jobs is a dropout, Michael Dell is a dropout.

171
00:07:20,638 --> 00:07:24,541
These guys were Harvard dropouts.

172
00:07:24,541 --> 00:07:27,347
So I decided to take a different tactic.

173
00:07:27,347 --> 00:07:30,776
Trying to understand what must we do differently

174
00:07:30,776 --> 00:07:32,654
to develop the capacities of many more

175
00:07:32,654 --> 00:07:35,609
of our young people to be innovators.

176
00:07:35,609 --> 00:07:38,860
What must we do as parents, as teachers,

177
00:07:38,860 --> 00:07:41,618
as mentors, and as employers.

178
00:07:41,618 --> 00:07:44,437
Started interviewing a wide range of innovators in their 20s.

179
00:07:44,437 --> 00:07:46,160
Extraordinary young people.

180
00:07:46,160 --> 00:07:49,297
Range some from privileged, some from poverty.

181
00:07:49,297 --> 00:07:51,229
Wide range. All over the country.

182
00:07:51,229 --> 00:07:54,172
Some in STEM fields, some in arts,

183
00:07:54,172 --> 00:07:57,247
some were social innovators and entrepreneurs.

184
00:07:57,247 --> 00:07:59,260
Then I interviewed each one of their parents.

185
00:07:59,260 --> 00:08:00,932
Trying to understand if there were

186
00:08:00,932 --> 00:08:03,681
patterns of parenting that I might observe.

187
00:08:03,681 --> 00:08:05,783
Then I asked each one of them,

188
00:08:05,783 --> 00:08:07,465
"Is there a teacher or a mentor

189
00:08:07,465 --> 00:08:10,881
who's made a significant difference in your life?"

190
00:08:10,881 --> 00:08:13,128
One third of them, one third, 


191
00:08:13,128 --> 00:08:16,441
could not name a single teacher.

192
00:08:16,441 --> 00:08:18,293
Of the two thirds who could, 


193
00:08:18,293 --> 00:08:19,689
they could name at least one teacher.

194
00:08:19,689 --> 00:08:21,086
The third that couldn't name a teacher

195
00:08:21,086 --> 00:08:22,103
could always name a mentor by the way.

196
00:08:22,103 --> 00:08:23,198
Very important.

197
00:08:23,198 --> 00:08:25,994
We underestimate the importance of mentoring.

198
00:08:25,994 --> 00:08:30,360
So I went and interviewed each one of those teachers and mentors.

199
00:08:30,360 --> 00:08:33,806
And I made, what was for me, a shocking discovery.

200
00:08:33,806 --> 00:08:36,421
In every single case, the teachers whom I interviewed --

201
00:08:36,421 --> 00:08:39,353
and I interviewed teachers from elementary school 
to graduate school.

202
00:08:39,353 --> 00:08:41,071
The full spectrum.

203
00:08:41,071 --> 00:08:43,924
In every case, every one of those teachers

204
00:08:43,924 --> 00:08:48,013
was an outlier in his or her school setting.

205
00:08:48,013 --> 00:08:51,101
In fact, I went to five colleges.

206
00:08:51,101 --> 00:08:54,423
Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, Tulane.

207
00:08:54,423 --> 00:08:55,869
All five of those college teachers

208
00:08:55,869 --> 00:08:58,392
having produced brilliant innovators and continued to do so,

209
00:08:58,392 --> 00:08:59,820
none of them had tenure

210
00:08:59,820 --> 00:09:02,714
nor were they ever going to get tenure.

211
00:09:02,714 --> 00:09:04,393
What's the problem here?

212
00:09:04,393 --> 00:09:06,274
Well, what I came to learn

213
00:09:06,274 --> 00:09:09,328
is that the culture of schooling,

214
00:09:09,328 --> 00:09:11,259
as we have grown up with it,

215
00:09:11,259 --> 00:09:14,621
is radically at odds with the culture of learning

216
00:09:14,621 --> 00:09:19,014
that produces innovators in five central respects.

217
00:09:19,014 --> 00:09:21,920
No. 1, we celebrate and award individual achievement,

218
00:09:21,920 --> 00:09:23,218
and sure there's an important place for that,

219
00:09:23,218 --> 00:09:26,055
but, as you well know, innovation is a team sport.

220
00:09:26,055 --> 00:09:29,703
And all of these teachers built real, accountable teamwork

221
00:09:29,703 --> 00:09:33,291
and collaboration in all of their assignments.

222
00:09:33,291 --> 00:09:36,349
No. 2, we are all about specialization in American education.

223
00:09:36,349 --> 00:09:38,437
High school, universities are divided and conquered

224
00:09:38,437 --> 00:09:40,475
by something we call Carnegie units,

225
00:09:40,475 --> 00:09:43,406
which are 115 years old.

226
00:09:43,406 --> 00:09:45,678
Chemistry this, biology that, and so on.

227
00:09:45,678 --> 00:09:48,326
The world of innovation is interdisciplinary.

228
00:09:48,326 --> 00:09:50,944
And problem-based learning.

229
00:09:50,944 --> 00:09:52,643
Judy Gilbert at Google, she said to me,

230
00:09:52,643 --> 00:09:55,893
if there's one thing educators must understand,

231
00:09:55,893 --> 00:09:58,867
is that problems can no longer be solved

232
00:09:58,867 --> 00:10:00,369
nor even understood

233
00:10:00,369 --> 00:10:05,056
within the bright lines of academic disciplines.

234
00:10:05,056 --> 00:10:08,740
No. 3, the culture of schooling is all about

235
00:10:08,740 --> 00:10:13,407
risk aversion and penalizing failure.

236
00:10:13,407 --> 00:10:15,506
Students' job is to figure out what the teacher needs.

237
00:10:15,506 --> 00:10:17,457
Give the teacher whatever the teacher wants.

238
00:10:17,457 --> 00:10:19,407
Teacher's job is to avoid trouble, you know.

239
00:10:19,407 --> 00:10:24,403
We are not encouraged to take risks as educators, right?

240
00:10:24,403 --> 00:10:26,565
The world of innovation, as you will know,

241
00:10:26,565 --> 00:10:28,562
is all about taking risks,

242
00:10:28,562 --> 00:10:31,404
making mistakes, and learning from them.

243
00:10:31,404 --> 00:10:32,870
I went to IDEO, the most

244
00:10:32,870 --> 00:10:35,442
innovative design company in the world, they said to me,

245
00:10:35,444 --> 00:10:39,889
"Our motto is, 'Fail early and fail often.'"

246
00:10:39,889 --> 00:10:44,472
That's because there is no innovation without trial and error.

247
00:10:44,472 --> 00:10:47,175
I went to the D School started by David Kelley from IDEO,

248
00:10:47,175 --> 00:10:50,477
an amazing interdisciplinary program at Stanford.

249
00:10:50,477 --> 00:10:53,551
They were talking around a table together saying,

250
00:10:53,551 --> 00:10:56,427
"You know we are actually thinking F is the new A."

251
00:10:56,427 --> 00:11:00,553
Try selling that report card back at your schools.

252
00:11:00,553 --> 00:11:02,458
I talked to a student at Owen College.

253
00:11:02,458 --> 00:11:04,041
Owen is by the way, probably the best

254
00:11:04,041 --> 00:11:05,731
college in the country right now today.

255
00:11:05,731 --> 00:11:07,745
Every course, interdisciplinary,

256
00:11:07,745 --> 00:11:11,295
team based, project based -- extraordinary place.

257
00:11:11,295 --> 00:11:13,091
Talked to a student at Owen, he said,

258
00:11:13,091 --> 00:11:15,811
"You know, we don't even talk about failure much here.

259
00:11:15,811 --> 00:11:18,812
We talk about iteration."

260
00:11:18,812 --> 00:11:22,029
Heck, I don't think I knew what the word meant five years ago.

261
00:11:22,029 --> 00:11:24,861
But it's become something so important as a concept to me.

262
00:11:24,861 --> 00:11:27,768
In learning, there are no mistakes, there are iterations.

263
00:11:27,768 --> 00:11:29,320
Although I have to ask you, how many of you learn

264
00:11:29,320 --> 00:11:31,294
more from your mistakes than your successes.

265
00:11:31,294 --> 00:11:32,365
Raise your hands.

266
00:11:32,365 --> 00:11:34,236
Yeah, me too. God, that hurt sometimes.

267
00:11:34,236 --> 00:11:35,808
That's painful.

268
00:11:35,808 --> 00:11:38,287
But the point is, we protect children

269
00:11:38,287 --> 00:11:40,074
in school, we protect children at home,

270
00:11:40,074 --> 00:11:41,445
the helicopter parents hover.

271
00:11:41,445 --> 00:11:43,308
They don't want their children to make mistakes

272
00:11:43,308 --> 00:11:46,775
lest their perfect record become blemished in some way.

273
00:11:46,775 --> 00:11:50,273
But that's the only source of real self-confidence.

274
00:11:50,273 --> 00:11:52,219
That you can learn that you can recover from a mistake.

275
00:11:52,219 --> 00:11:54,027
And you don't wanna learn that when you're 35, 


276
00:11:54,027 --> 00:11:57,372
because it hurts a lot more then.

277
00:11:57,372 --> 00:12:00,193
The fourth one. You know, the culture of learning

278
00:12:00,193 --> 00:12:02,892
is so much about passive consumption.

279
00:12:02,892 --> 00:12:05,238
In fact I think that's where we all learn

280
00:12:05,238 --> 00:12:07,004
to be good little consumers, in school.

281
00:12:07,004 --> 00:12:09,894
Because we sit and get all day long.

282
00:12:09,894 --> 00:12:13,072
The classrooms of innovators are all about creating.

283
00:12:13,072 --> 00:12:16,352
Creating real products for real audiences.

284
00:12:16,352 --> 00:12:19,095
Lastly and most important,

285
00:12:19,095 --> 00:12:22,897
we rely on extrinsic incentives for learning.

286
00:12:22,897 --> 00:12:27,114
Carrots and sticks. Money for good grades.

287
00:12:27,114 --> 00:12:29,986
The world of innovation, these young innovators,

288
00:12:29,986 --> 00:12:32,160
every one of them whom I've interviewed,

289
00:12:32,160 --> 00:12:36,687
was far more intrinsically motivated.

290
00:12:36,687 --> 00:12:39,039
They want to make a difference in the world.

291
00:12:39,039 --> 00:12:41,268
And so then when I look back at what these parents had done

292
00:12:41,268 --> 00:12:43,420
and what these teachers had done to encourage

293
00:12:43,420 --> 00:12:47,515
this intrinsic motivation, I found another pattern.

294
00:12:47,515 --> 00:12:51,682
Play to passion to purpose.

295
00:12:51,682 --> 00:12:54,784
Parents and teachers alike encouraging more exploratory play,

296
00:12:54,784 --> 00:12:58,762
fewer toys, toys without batteries, less screen time,

297
00:12:58,762 --> 00:13:03,717
more time that was unstructured. Get out, and play.

298
00:13:03,717 --> 00:13:06,569
Parents who encouraged students to find and pursue a passion,

299
00:13:06,569 --> 00:13:09,984
who knew that was more important than mere academic achievement.

300
00:13:09,984 --> 00:13:13,521
Teachers who encourage students, made time in every class

301
00:13:13,521 --> 00:13:16,718
for students to do projects, to do research, to do experimentation,

302
00:13:16,718 --> 00:13:22,130
to find and pursue an intellectual or artistic passion.

303
00:13:22,130 --> 00:13:25,323
And every case as these kids have developed passions,

304
00:13:25,323 --> 00:13:27,266
they morphed, they changed, they evolved

305
00:13:27,266 --> 00:13:30,424
into a deeper sense of purpose.

306
00:13:30,424 --> 00:13:35,903
Because parents and teachers alike said one thing:

307
00:13:35,903 --> 00:13:38,671
"Give back. Make a difference."

308
00:13:38,671 --> 00:13:41,412
And all of them have that value,

309
00:13:41,412 --> 00:13:45,402
want, in some way, to make a difference.

310
00:13:45,402 --> 00:13:47,235
So what does this mean for our work?

311
00:13:47,235 --> 00:13:49,156
Well, we can have a lot of long conversations

312
00:13:49,156 --> 00:13:51,189
about how the system needs reinventing.


313
00:13:51,189 --> 00:13:52,791
I've written some things about that.

314
00:13:52,791 --> 00:13:55,900
But, you know, I come back to what each one of us can do.

315
00:13:55,900 --> 00:13:59,129
And I come back to the idea that, first of all,

316
00:13:59,129 --> 00:14:02,266
we have to be innovators in our teaching,

317
00:14:02,266 --> 00:14:05,202
and in our mentoring. We have to model

318
00:14:05,202 --> 00:14:08,223
the values, the behaviors of innovation.

319
00:14:08,223 --> 00:14:12,198
We have to, in our teaching, be willing to take risks.

320
00:14:12,198 --> 00:14:15,129
Be willing to learn from mistakes.

321
00:14:15,129 --> 00:14:19,320
Work more collaboratively with our colleagues.

322
00:14:19,320 --> 00:14:21,025
But I think above all,

323
00:14:21,025 --> 00:14:23,796
maybe what's most important for me is that I,

324
00:14:23,796 --> 00:14:27,520
as a teacher and a mentor, now think much more about

325
00:14:27,520 --> 00:14:30,137
where and how am I encouraging

326
00:14:30,137 --> 00:14:34,008
the play, the passion, and the purpose

327
00:14:34,008 --> 00:14:36,693
in everything that I do with the young people.

328
00:14:36,693 --> 00:14:37,739
Thank you very much.

329
00:14:37,739 --> 00:14:40,339
(Applause)