Most Likely to Succeed is a documentary about High Tech High, a charter school in California that uses its own unique teaching method. The director starts the documentary with the story of his own daughter, a fourth-grade girl who suddenly gets tired of the traditional educational method in public school and changes from a model student to a rebellious pre-teen. The director begins to question the current educational method and thus starts his observation in High Tech High. In High Tech High, unlike most of the public schools in the United States, teachers are only signed a one-year contract with the school, but instead, they are able to do whatever they would like to do with their curriculum without any restriction. Teachers from different departments are encouraged to work together to create new courses. Instead of dividing classes into periods, students just work together and learn some subjects together. Instead of finals and grades, students are doing an exhibition at the end of the school year to show their results for the previous semesters and all parents are invited to the exhibition.
One of the most influential scenes to me is at 55:56 when Samantha and her peers were working on their final rehearsal for their performance. At the beginning of the documentary, when the semester first began, Samantha, like how she described herself, was such a shy girl. Since it was her freshman year and she didn’t really know anyone, when she was asked to speak in class, her voice was really low and she wasn’t able to make eye contact with both teachers and her classmates. We did see a dramatic improvements At 55:56, when she was directing the performance, she was almost demanding her classmates by saying: I want you to lead the audience because they will know, I want you to keep your butt and I want you to…… (Whiteley 55:56) And when she was saying these words, she also raised her voice up and she was moving around using her body language as well. I think this scene was really powerful because we are able to see the growth of confidence of this girl and it also is a great proof that the unique teaching and learning method in high tech high does help students to build up their characteristics and become more outgoing and comfortable in public. During this scene, when the director was shooting the scene, Samantha was the only one who was standing and was moving around while her classmates were all sitting on the chair or on the stage. Also, Samantha was using her fingers to point at her classmates to remind what they all need to be careful about. The director was almost at the same angle with her classmates who was sitting on the stage. All these gestures show that she was the one that was in the leadership position.
I think Welner will say that High Tech High is a model charter school because High Tech High doesn’t really use any of the twelve structures that Welner mentioned in his essay, at least not in the documentary. In the documentary, the director also mentioned that half of the students’ families in High Tech High were self-identified as low-income families, but all their kids were enrolled in the school. However, Welner might also argue that in the documentary, we are not able to see that whether there are students with disabilities in the school or the detail admissions process of the school as well. But most likely, Welner will agree that High Tech High is a good example for other charter schools because the school is trying to “decide how best to use the educational tools, to maximise their benefits and minimise their harm” (Welner 5) by really trying to make the students learn and at the same time sending the large majority of them to colleges as well.
Bibliography
Welner, Kevin, “The Dirty Dozen: How Charter Schools Influence Student Enrollment,” Teachers College Record, April 22, 2013,
Whiteley, Greg, Most Likely to Succeed, Video Documentary (2015), 55:56.