How can schools best prepare students

for the future? Give them real work to

do
Aug 24, 2018 / Ted Dintersmith.

The public education system in the US has been the same for over
a century, with teachers talking at students and giving them tests.
But at Iowa BIG, teens address their community’s most pressing
needs — and the results are benefiting them and their town.

In 2012, some members of the community in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, asked, “What should school
look like?” To explore the question, they created the Billy Madison Project (yes, named after
the Adam Sandler movie in which a misbehaving adult goes back to school), which brought 65
adults, including local leaders, to a high school to re-experience student life. All 65 of them went
through an entire school day, complete with desks, lectures, textbooks, bells and permission
slips to use the bathroom.

At the end of the day, they were asked, “What do you think?”
Regardless of income, gender, age or politics, each participant reached the same conclusion:
“We can do much better.”

They decided to create a program that made learning more meaningful — where students could
choose how they use their time and what they pursue, and where curriculum is integrated across
disciplines and integrated with the community. So, in the fall of 2013, they launched Iowa BIG.
It started with just a dozen students; 207 are currently enrolled (and there’s a waiting list to get
in).

This “school” has no building or curriculum. Its students attend their regular school part-time,
and commit several hours a day to Iowa BIG, where they work with over 100 local organizations
(businesses, nonprofits and policy groups) to identify problems they can help solve. The heart
and soul of the school day is the work these students do to improve their community.

Iowa BIG students at local business Mad Fish Farms, a hydroponic and aquaponic
farm, from the 2017-18 academic year. Photo courtesy of Iowa BIG.

Iowa BIG draws students from three Cedar Rapids school districts. These districts have
historically viewed each other as rivals, but Iowa BIG has united them and the wider community;
students, teachers and local organizations now view themselves as a team.
Assessment at Iowa BIG is different and meaningful. The community partners meet frequently
with students and their teacher, providing no-nonsense feedback. There’s no ambiguity about
their goals — the teens need to keep working until they solve the partner’s problem, or fail.

“Students develop their work plan, organize it into tasks, and learn and do what’s required to
make progress. Individually or as teams, they work on their own for long stretches,” says Troy
Miller, who cofounded Iowa BIG. “Faculty track progress and hold them accountable for
completing work, not class attendance or checking off boxes.”

The program doesn’t work for every kid. To date, some 15 percent have left and returned to
normal school, but as Iowa BIG cofounder Shawn Connally says, even these kids end up learning
life lessons “an order of magnitude more important than turning in an essay on time.”

Of its roughly 500 graduates to date, some 97 percent who applied to college were admitted
to their first choice. Since Iowa BIG students still participate in their normal schools, they’re able
to list AP courses and extracurricular activities in their college applications.

“But Iowa BIG students also have a résumé worth looking at,” points out Connally. One was
waitlisted at the Air Force Academy against long odds. In pleading his case, he emphasized his
real-world experience with BIG, how he struggled with team dynamics, and what he learned
about leadership. He got in. These distinctive experiences, as Connally puts it, “have a lot more
value to many employers and colleges than a good SAT score.”

Many Iowa BIG students also get great summer jobs. “This year, we had a junior in high school
who got a summer position at the University of Iowa Hospital, beating out 17 undergrads and
13 postgraduates. Without his Iowa BIG experience, he wouldn’t have been able to get that
internship,” say the program’s founders. “We can’t take credit for his intelligence, but we can
take credit for giving him opportunities to be exposed to things that will take him to the next
level.”
Iowa BIG students working on SHE CAN, a project that focused on empo wering
middle school girls to be creative and explore the entrepreneurial world, from
the 2017-18 academic year. Photo courtesy of Iowa BIG.

“With the traditional model of education, learning is static — not much has changed in roughly
125 years. With this model, learning changes every day,” they continued. “Plus, these kids get
to know their community in new ways and appreciate it. That’s really important. We have kids
who used to call this place ‘Cedar Crapids.’ Now, one student away for college told us, ‘I’d be a
fool not to come back to my network.’ ”

Kyle came to Iowa BIG to learn how to start a business. While at BIG, he started a monster.com-
like website, and though the site eventually failed, he won a competition with it and raised some
money. In his second year, he worked with a large local company, analyzing their distribution
data using his coding and database skills.

“The VP asked him what he was planning to do for the summer, and he said, ‘Probably wait
tables.’ The VP said, ‘No, you’re going to work for us.’ He was hired as a full-time data scientist
writing code to analyze their business data,” says Miller and Connally. “When he took a
computer science course at his conventional high school, he failed. Now he is getting paid a
healthy salary to do something that’s an ‘F’ on his transcript.”
As an Iowa BIG freshman, Isaac designed underwater submersibles, helped his school system
optimize practices for students who experienced severe childhood trauma, and designed and
programmed drones — all in seven months. He says, “I also had a project where I was
researching genomes of different mushrooms and how to promote the commercialization of
new species. A lot of my projects have been around making small apps and websites. Through
that, I’ve been introduced to several coding languages — TSS, THP, HTML, Arduino.”

When he was 15, Isaac organized a summer class for middle-school kids, introducing them to
the skills he learned through BIG: coding, Photoshop, making websites, building drones. He was
paying it forward to other kids, while making three times the minimum wage.

Connally adds, “As a teacher, I watch Isaac doing things he thinks of as coding projects. Students
often don’t explicitly see how other subjects are integrated into their learning. I think about his
ACES [childhood trauma] project: He’s reading texts above grade level, contacting resources in
the community, interviewing adults, and understanding information. This psychology project is
actually three or four classes … The buckets don’t fill at the same rate, but overall they fill faster
and deeper.”

Miller shared a powerful explanation for how he ended up at Iowa BIG: “I left a well-off school
district for one that has all the classic urban problems: poverty, economics, race relations. These
are issues I care deeply about. But after years of telling these students that if they can just
struggle through, then they will get a job and get out of poverty, I realized: That’s not true. These
subjects and tests are not designed to cut the poverty cycle,” he says.

“As an instructor, I need to keep a pulse on what employers genuinely want, and be giving
skills to students who don’t have parents who can do that. Otherwise, I’m just prepping them
for high school courses that will prepare them for some intro college course that will prepare
them for more advanced college courses that basically prepare them for nothing. Meanwhile in
college, they are accumulating huge amounts of debt and will probably drop out, falling right
back into the poverty trap.”

Because BIG is so different, some in the education field view it cautiously. Miller says, “Some
pushback comes from people who believe everything has to work on a set timeline, all English
classes need to read certain books. In their value system, they are right, but that’s not my value
system and it’s not the value system of business.”
“It’s baffling to me that more parents don’t advocate for their kids. It’s fear — fear of change,
fear of what it will mean for college, and a lack of vision,” he concludes. “I don’t think it’s going
to come from within the school. The community needs to step up and say: Our students are not
being prepared the way they need to be.”

Your local school might not be up for something as ambitious as Iowa BIG, but you can start
small with help from School Retool (a nonprofit created by Stanford University’s d.school), the
Hewlett Foundation (funder of the Deeper Learning initiative), and design firm IDEO.

School Retool’s mission is to help schools create cultures of innovation. Their “Shadow a
Student” campaign has enabled thousands of adults, usually principals, to walk in a student’s
shoes for an entire day and then share reflections with their community. Drawing on these
resources, you could invite community leaders to your school to shadow a student or a teacher.
Like the civic leaders in Cedar Rapids, they could become your staunchest allies.

https://ideas.ted.com/how-can-schools-best-prepare-students-for-the-future-give-them-real-
work-to-do/