Long story short she starts her own startup called Wild Pockets. Designing a web interface
for 3D design. Struggles through the worst recession in our recent history. But manages
for five years to keep she and her 12 employees afloat until Auto Desk comes along. Buys her
company and employs all of her colleagues in their new wing. Their new business. So
here's now a kid who from the age of seven only wanted to be an artist. Whose parents
totally supported that. She's now, at the age of 29, a senior executive and very successful
at Auto Desk. And I think that would not have happened if her parents had said "Well you
know, really you're not gonna make a living at art. You should just quit that."
>>Male #3: Hi, I'm a ninth grade algebra teacher in the area. And I wanna ask a question about
the fifth factor that you mentioned earlier. The intrinsic motivation. Which you said might
be the most important one. With the end of the school year coming up I'm struggling to
get my ninth gradersó
Excuse me. To show a level of mastery to be able to be tenth graders. They're not motivated
by extrinsic factors like grades. But I also don't see the intrinsic motivation. So I'm
wondering from your experience as an English teacher do you have any words of wisdom? How
to develop that intrinsic motivation in our kids.
>>Tony Wagner: I do in English. I'm not so sure about math. [chuckles]
[quiet laughter from audience]
I think that the dilemma in math is, how do you make it real for kids when they take algebra?
How do you make something as abstract, something that they understand they can and want to
use every single day? I think that's the challenge in any kind of advanced math. Beyond that,
I think what kids really could be engaged with in math, and need are statistics, probability,
computation, and financial literacy. But we don't require any of those things in school.
Why?
So maybe an end of the year unit where you're thinking about a very applied way of using
algebra. As it relates to something that is immediate to them. I think that's the challenge.
How do you make it less abstract? More like a tool they want and need to use? I mean,
what I did in terms of English, was [clears throat]. First of all, every student had a
portfolio. And this was back before digital portfolios. And every week I'd assign a particular
genre of writing or type of writing. Like childhood memoir. Description. Dialog. And
every student brought one piece of writing in every single week to read aloud. They didn't
care what I thought. But they cared a lot about their peer views. And they learned an
enormous amount from everybody trying to tackle the same problem. There's 17 and 25 ways of
doing a childhood reminiscence. And then for me the grading became simpler. Because I graded
students on a body of work. And I said "Here's my standard for a B." which is what I consider
to be your standard of proficiency. And here is exemplars of B quality work. And now let's
talk about what an A is and what that should mean. But what I basically said is, I held
the standard constant and varied the time and support students needed to meet that standard.
So the B was, a B, I mean students work was considered incomplete until they met that
standard. And I don't care how long it took them. One student took an entire extra year.
Not to say that he repeated the course. But continued to work until he met that standard
and finally got the credit he wanted.
Yes?
>>Male #4: So. Um. Oh. Hi. [laughs] So I very much enjoyed your description of your methodology.
Speaking with young innovators and looking at that from a scientific perspective I couldn't
help but wonder ifóI mean I understand you can't do a randomized study and assign people
to different educational systems. But did you talk to people who were not innovators
and tried to find of those patterns were present or if they were not present? And sort of look
at the other side of the equation?
>>Tony Wagner: Well, sadly, people who are not innovators are pretty easy to find.
[laughter]