Hands-On Learning Turns Minds On. | Daniel Jackson | TEDxRaleigh

In my first job after my MBA, we were encouraged to do about 15 hours of community service each month. So every Friday afternoon I went to high school and there I helped young entrepreneurs to start and run their own student-based enterprise, a silk-screening t-shirt shop. After about three or four visits, I was hooked. I went home one night and I said, "Man, this education gig is pretty cool. I can see myself doing this full-time." So my wife and I sat down and we put together a plan for me to climb the proverbial corporate ladder for about 10 to 12 years and then move on to education. 9/11, 2001, when the towers came down, we reevaluated like many of us did, and we decided to move the timeline up. For 15 years I have been helping young people learn to think and thrive in the life after high school. My mission is to provide a spirited learning environment in which students feel comfortable and confident to strive for their very best. Now I'd like to take you to my favorite nation: imagination. And imagine, if you will, you're a secondary schooler, grades 6 through 12. What did you like about middle school? About high school? What was your favorite subject? Who was your favorite teacher? And now the big one: do you remember anything you learned? What I've learned after 25 years as a professional is that what I was taught in school I rarely, if ever, used. So let's discuss why that might be the case and what we can do about it.

In 1983, a landmark government report came out entitled "A Nation at Risk." It was about the American education system. In it, the report stated, "If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we very well might have viewed it as an act of war." That was 35 years ago. How have we done since then? Many of us are familiar with Einstein's theory on insanity. I'm here to tell you we must be insane. I mean, in those 35 years since the publication of "A Nation at Risk," we have engaged industry to shape education, we have decentralized the system, we've centralized the system, we've tried to leave no child behind, we've had a race to the top, we've even developed a common core for all 50 states. But what has this done? Is it working? We're tweaking the same industrialized paradigm that was developed over 100 years ago. Today, much of the evaluation of student performance is based upon test scores: EOGs, EOCs, MAPs, SATs, ACTs, GMs, the Regents, and the international favorite, PISA. But are our students learning anything useful? Well, we work very hard to improve test scores. Ask yourself: are we interested in nurturing proficient test takers, or do we wish to develop thinkers, doers, innovators?

I was putting my seventh-grader to bed for the last Tuesday night in which he would have to have lights out at 9:30. "Oh dad, I don't want to go to bed. Come on, I want to watch the rest of the hockey game." "No son, you have to wake up refreshed for your end-of-grade assessments." "Oh dad, EOGs are stupid. They test us all the time on this stuff, and now we got to sit down for five hours and be tested on it again. Come on." In my 12 years as a marketing manager, I was paid to solve real problems, I was paid to make real decisions, I was paid to work with real people. These tests are getting to be a little too much, and Forbes agrees: they are a flop. So how are our graduates doing in developing the thinking and doing skills necessary in the workforce? Well, that depends upon who you ask. The ultimate customer of our overall education system are the employers, companies large and small across our globe. In 2016, Gallup conducted a poll. They surveyed universities and employers. In this poll, 96% of universities thought that they were preparing their graduates for success in the workplace. Sounds pretty awesome. In contrast, 11% of employers thought that the graduates they were hiring had the competencies necessary for success in the workplace. Seems like a bit of a gap to me. But really, what difference does this make? Who really cares? After all, well, it makes a big difference obviously to the employers who are hiring our graduates. Countless articles have come out in the last year or so. This is just one of them from The Wall Street Journal: "Employers aren't just whining; the skills gap is real." And companies paid dearly to develop these skills. In 2013, Forbes magazine reported that worldwide companies spent 130 billion dollars on leadership and organizational development. That's what the B is, by the way. So why are employers having to pay so much to develop these skills? Well, with the exception of the education industry, a lot has changed in the last century. First, the raw materials from which we have to make the product, the student, has changed. Second, the product specifications demanded by the customer, the employers, has changed. And third, our environment is constantly changing. What we learn in school today very well may be a thing of the past tomorrow. So what can we offer our young learners that actually adds value to their human capital and by the time they get to work hasn't become extinct? In 1991, we were introduced to SCANS skills. SCANS skills became soft skills. Soft skills became 21st century skills. Today we're calling them survival skills. But ask yourself: why do we call them 21st century skills? Are these not the same skills that man used to invent the wheel, put man on the moon? We call them 21st century skills because in the 20th century we schooled out of our children collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking, and a very important fifth C: curiosity. And another thing: why do we call them soft when apparently they are so hard to obtain? 130 billion dollars, really? So for over 35 years, we have been lamenting about the state of the American education system, yet our testing needle has barely moved, and employers are continuously disgruntled about the skills that their new hires have. Each year, Gallup conducts a poll that measures student engagement. Student engagement has been linked directly by Gallup to student success, and yet from the time that students enter fifth grade to the time that they graduate high school, they are less and less engaged in what Gallup calls the student engagement cliff. We can conclude from looking at this graph that 50% of middle schoolers and two-thirds of high schoolers are bored.

Toward the end of last school year, one of the better learners, thinkers, and doers that I've had in my classroom came in after school. She showed me an Instagram from a friend of hers who also happened to be a student of mine. This Instagram said how stressful and tiring the junior year was. The emerging leader in my room looked at me, held back a yawn, and said, "No one looks forward to school anymore." Is this what we want for our high school graduates' memories to be? "No one looks forward to school anymore." I don't want to lay the blame at the feet of the education system. However, there was a recent study that was done in North Carolina that surveyed 12 to 17 year olds. 16% of them had said they had seriously considered suicide. I'd like to think we can help. My vision is for all students of all ages to wake up every day looking forward to going to school, not dreading it. So how do we develop the skills that employers demand and keep students engaged? We must first encourage our children to take rigorous and relevant courses, not just load up their transcripts with APs. Second, we must hire passionate and inspirational instructors, and we must train them to engage students, to text tests, the boredom, depression, or worse. And third, high schools and universities should partner with industry to develop the skills critical to our students' growth and the growth of our economy. So now the question is: where? Where can we find the intentional development of technical and non-technical skills that the ultimate customer wants and that students are excited about? Career and Technical Education, also known as CTE, is no longer just shop, welding, and home economics. Today it includes biomedical technology, advanced manufacturing, engineering, my favorite marketing and entrepreneurship, and many other promising career pathways that excite students. According to the Association for CTE, students who are engaged in CTE classes and concentrate in a pathway have a graduation rate nationally of 93 percent. Compare that to the national average for those students who do not engage in CTE of just over 80 percent. Additionally, the Association for CTE says that, quote, "After high school, CTE students were significantly more likely than their non-CTE counterparts to report developing skills critical to their future success." Now I suggest we really up our game, and we're going to take CTE and we're going to couple it with entrepreneurship, the development of an entrepreneurial mindset. The Global Entrepreneurship Index ranks the United States of America number one in entrepreneurship. So now the next question becomes: how can we advance an entrepreneurial mindset in our youth? The educational paradigm that I envision inspires children's creativity and imagination; it doesn't stifle it with tests, books, and bells. As an example to illustrate the complexity of starting a business, I use jigsaw puzzles, games, and Lego. This year, one of my favorites: a simple phone holder. It's ingenious, but in 15 minutes they came up with a problem and solved it. Each year we go to North Carolina State University on a field trip. One of my favorite activities is what they call Problem Product Pitch. Students are given a team, a large sheet of paper, a collection of markers, and they have to identify a real problem, design a real product, and then at the end of 20 minutes they pitch it to the rest of the class. At the end, we vote with fake dollars in terms of who had the best pitch and the best product. The thing about these activities is that it engages all students in all four C's. I've even had one student comment, "The idea that I learned more in one class of entrepreneurship playing with Lego than I did in an entire week of math class at Apex Friendship High School." We call the partnership between CTE and the entrepreneurial mindset Applied Synergies Partnership, or ASAP. ASAP was founded on the question of how do we synergize high-quality CTE, the North Carolina institutions of higher learning, and industry so that all stakeholders benefit. ASAP is an educational paradigm that is based upon experiential entrepreneurship education. We foster an entrepreneurial culture that focuses on grit, growth mindset, design thinking, self-directed and reflective learning, and most importantly, how do we learn from failure. This has very little to do with standardized multiple-choice tests. In his book "Lifelong Kindergarten," Mitchel Resnick, professor at MIT, says, "If portfolios and other non-quantitative approaches are good enough for MIT, why not for K through 12 schools too?" I've been an educator now for three years longer than I was in the corporate world. The paychecks aren't as large, but the rewards are exponential. Every day I learn from and have a chance to guide amazing, outstanding young people. A big part of this is DECA, an international organization of 200,000 marketing students across the world. In April of 2017, I stood on the steps of the Anaheim Convention Center and I gazed upon my twelve DECA Patriots, none of whom had made the international stage, and I assured them that they could look themselves in the mirror with peace, knowing that they did the very best that they could and that there would be other opportunities ahead of them. One year later, in Atlanta, I stood and listened and watched as my young entrepreneurs, many of whom I've known throughout their entire high school career, and the one under my right arm finally crossed the international stage. Experiential entrepreneurship education develops the skills that employers need, offers opportunities that students are excited about, and delivers results. Hands-on learning turns minds on. Thank you.