Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

And that's, I think, the fundamental problem with the way we've designed our education system today.

In second grade, he was so disheartened with school because he finally expressed to me that they don't study the things in school that he was interested in.

And I said, well, what are you interested in?

He said, well, airplanes and how they work.

Here's what you should do, Ted.

You write a letter to your teacher and you explain and write a proposal in which you say, how about, right?

Like I was able to study airplanes and other kids might be able to study other things that they're interested in.

And you work out how this will happen, right?

And so he wrote a whole proposal to his teachers that basically said, how about if every kid had the chance and the option

to engage in an extra project where they could investigate on their own and explore it.

They could get approval first for the topic and some guidance from their teacher.

And then they could go off and study something they're interested in.

And when they're ready, they could come back and they could report on that to the class.

And so his teacher said, fantastic, you're welcome to do that.

So he went off and began studying about airplane wings and their aerodynamic properties and all these things with my husband, his father, right, who is an aerospace engineer.

And he came back and did this amazing presentation that my husband had helped him design and they did together where they taught the class about how airplane wings work and the ways that lift operates and all these kinds of things.

And he had an amazing time.

The following year,

He had a teacher who was very good, but she didn't understand that the purpose of school was to engage kids deeply with ideas.

She thought of the kids and her as partners in the learning process, that she was giving them the information and their job was to sort of compliantly give back.