Three films, Waiting for "Superman", The Lottery, and Teached, all of which provide a candid and critical look at U.S. public education, will hit the big screen this year. Positioned to generate conversation and action about education reform, these documentaries take you into the lives of children and families who are struggling in a system that is failing them. 2010 Sundance Audience Award winner Waiting for "Superman" has already garnered attention through its support from Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Mark Zuckerberg, among others. This panel of filmmakers speaks on their experiences telling these powerful stories and offers ways for the audience to be part of the solution in their own communities and via media platforms. They spoke at the 2010 NewSchools Summit, an event convened by the NewSchools Venture Fund.
Eric Adler is co-founder and managing director of The SEED Foundation. Adler taught high school physics for eight years and was dean of students at St. Paul's School in Baltimore, before earning an MBA in finance from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a management consultant to Fortune 500 clients, the principal of an investment advisory firm and an adjunct faculty member of the Johns Hopkins University Graduate Division of Business and Management. He is a graduate of the Sidwell Friends School and of Swarthmore College, where he earned degrees in engineering and economics.
John Schreiber joined Participant Media in January 2007 as executive vice president, Social Action & Advocacy, where he is responsible for managing the creation, development and execution of unique social action and advocacy campaigns for each Participant film. These campaigns are designed to inspire citizen action, awareness, education, and legislative advocacy. In 2010, Schreiber and his colleagues will develop, produce and manage more than two dozen unique social action campaigns for Participant’s films.
Kelly Amis is the founder of Loudspeaker Films, an independent production company focused on issues of social justice and education equity. After teaching in South Central Los Angeles as a Charter Corps member of Teach For America, she became a passionate advocate for equity in public education. She received an M.A. in education policy at Stanford University and researched the Australian education system as a Fulbright Scholar. Amis worked for U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein and several education reform organizations, including the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, the Sallie Mae Fund, the American Council on Education Reform and Fight For Children, where she conceived the “three sector strategy” that provided the framework for enacting the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. Amis also helped grow the Cesar Chavez Charter School for Public Policy into a system of three schools serving 1,200 students, and helped design and launch Building Hope, which provides facilities assistance to high-quality charter schools. In 2009, Amis founded Loudspeaker Films to expose the ongoing disparities in U.S. education to a broader audience.
Kira Orange Jones began her career in education as a South Louisiana corps member and taught fourth grade at Eden Park Elementary in Baton Rouge. She currently serves as executive director of Teach For America-Greater New Orleans. In her capacity as the Executive Director of Teach For America-Greater New Orleans, Jones has overseen an unprecedented expansion, managing the program through one of Teach For America’s most ambitious growth plans, scaling the region from 100 teachers to 500 teachers in a two-year time period. At this scale, the Teach For America-Greater New Orleans region is currently the second largest corps in the nation with its alumni base more than tripling in the next two years, making the size of this group of talented and dedicated leaders the largest per capita concentration of Teach For America alumni in any community in the country. With over 500 teachers and 300 alumni working across 6 districts and in over 70 independently run district and charter schools, corps members and alumni in Greater New Orleans currently impact 1 in every 3 students in the region.
Resources:
NewSchools Summit 2010: Breakout 4: Schools Hit the Big Screen Part 1 from NewSchools on Vimeo. NewSchools Summit 2010: Breakout 4: Schools Hit the Big Screen Part 2 from NewSchools on Vimeo. NewSchools Summit 2010: Breakout 4: Schools Hit the Big Screen Part 3 from NewSchools on Vimeo. NewSchools Summit 2010: Breakout 4: Schools Hit the Big Screen Part 4 from NewSchools on Vimeo. NewSchools Summit 2010: Breakout 4: Schools Hit the Big Screen Part 5 from NewSchools on Vimeo. NewSchools Summit 2010: Breakout 4: Schools Hit the Big Screen Part 6 from NewSchools on Vimeo.
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