“Most Likely to Succeed” Reflection

I found the “Most Likely to Succeed” documentary to incredibly insightful. I was surprised to be enjoying the documentary as much as I was, but I found the 1.5 hour film absolutely flew by. The documentary followed the lives of students attending an unorthodox secondary school, “High Tech High”. This was a public school, however with limited availability, students were chosen to attend through a lottery system. Upon being chosen from the lottery, overall, parents found themselves excited, yet hesitant to send their child. High Tech High runs their school very differently from other post secondary institutions. Rather than separate the students day into blocks, the school blends subjects together over longer periods to teach different core subjects simultaneously. There is a common theme of encouraging independence and collaboration between the students, which are traits the public secondary school system doesn’t value equally as high. I found the main concern from parents, was that they were worried with attending an unorthodox secondary school such as this one, their child wouldn’t learn the core testable material, (math, history etc.) and find themselves struggling on the standardized tests they would take to be admitted into post secondary institutions. What I found absolutely astonishing was the college acceptance rate for graduates from High tech High was actually 10% higher than a standard public school. The push for independence between the students and collaboration, developing “soft skills” such as people skills and leadership qualities seemed to positively impact the lives of the students, and the growth between how they were at the beginning of the year, versus at the end, was amazing. I took a lot of inspiration from the teaching techniques at this unorthodox school and plan to implement some when I find myself teaching in a classroom.