Chandler School

Our society remains deeply biased against careers that involve any sort of risk. Economic anxiety caused by rapid change has encouraged more conservatism when it comes to careers, at precisely the time when we should be most innovative.

Second, and most importantly, we need to address the risk of these professions head on.

First, we need to cultivate more role models that show how to be a maker and that such a career is entirely possible and potentially even profitable.

KWL chart

She uses functions to control objects by assigning a number, or input, to a variable that results in a specific output or movement, producing the action that you see in a videogame. She also uses algebraic reasoning, coordinate graphing, linear equations and rate of change or slope to create her games.)

When is it OK to humiliate students? Never.

Many of us can recall a situation when we were humiliated by a teacher. If you close your eyes and recall it, it still has the power to make you cringe. And also for many of us, if we never resolved our feelings with those teachers, we still haven't forgiven them

Consider the same pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies.

“This country is a lot better at teaching self-esteem than it is at teaching math.” It’s a funny line, but there is actually something powerful in the plucky confidence of American, Swedish and Israeli students. It allows them to challenge their elders, start companies, persist when others think they are wrong and pick themselves up when they fail. Too much confidence runs the risk of self-delusion, but the trait is an essential ingredient for entrepreneurship.

technical chops are just one ingredient needed for innovation and economic success.