Breakout #4: Schools Hit the Big Screen: Influencing the Public Mindset
Participants at NewSchools Summit got a sneak preview today of three new documentary films that highlight both the failure of public schools to serve minority students and the efforts of visionary entrepreneurs to provide underserved children with a first rate education. Waiting for Superman, Teached and The Lottery are set to hit the big screen […]
Breakout Session #2: Messages, Media, and Mindshare
As Walter Isaacson shared with the audience during the morning session at the NewSchools Summit, the world needs more storytellers – it has plenty of preachers. In the afternoon, participants dug into effective storytelling, particularly in terms of what it takes to enlist ambassadors as evangelists for a shared message and to engage the media. […]
Object lessons in political savvy
Yesterday, I woke up to the latest in a series of object lessons in political savvy for education entrepreneurs. My alarm clock radio is set to NPR, and this morning, I hazed into consciousness listening to a terrific piece by Claudio Sanchez on the growing field of teacher residency programs. The piece focused mostly on […]
Guest post: Time to get TEACHED
This guest post is from filmmaker Kelly Amis of Loudspeaker Films, who will be a speaker at NewSchools Summit 2010. TEACHED is her first film. Public education is supposed to be the great equalizer in America, but here we are in 2010 and our education system is almost perfectly designed to ensure some groups will never perform […]
Telling stories with letters and pixels
All eyes are on education entrepreneurs these days. Parents and communities are watching to see whether chronically failing schools can be turned around by new operators, whether new charter schools will make a difference for low-income students, and whether new ways of preparing teachers and new tools for instruction will change the way classrooms work. […]