An Entrepreneurial Way of Being: Finding Ikigai Through Innovation | Don Wettrick | TEDxPurdueU

so the year was 2012 and this was a really exciting year because this was the year the Indianapolis held the Superbowl and it was even a better years because I was a high school journalism and television journalism teacher and we had just found out that the NFL is going to open up media day to the public what we thought was is that you could just go down there and interview the players turns out as an invitation to sit down in a seat and watch the people get interviewed but we had seen this and we're like we should go so I asked him my students who wants to go to this event and we rounded up some seniors I told them to dress professionally let's bring our nicest cameras and let's see if we can sneak in and they're like seriously I'm like gasps I mean we've all seen that movie right well we can see if we can sneak in and I told them opportunities are everywhere just be single focused on let's interview anybody and see if anybody has an extra Press Pass or they know a backdoor something like that so we get there and we started interviewing anyone that will talk to us from police officers the volunteers and then we started working our way up to a little bit better we we got a hold of Adam Schefter and rick reilly and and then everybody we talked their local media we're like hey you know do you have a way and they're like nice interview with your kids but no so finally out of a vision of the night we see d'amore smith now a lot of people may not know who did Moore Smith but as some act of god I'd seen 60 minutes two days before and des Morris was the NFL Players Association president and he just starts walking past and I want Tyler go grab that guy and I told him he was the Tyler runs up to him taps him on the shoulder he's like hey can we interview you sir and he says sorry today doesn't even look back he's so sorry today guys today is not about the NFL Union say it's about the players and then Tyler reeks just deep and says I'm just a kid I'm here from my high school media team and des Morris if you're watching us - Morris thank you turns around and says all right sees five well-dressed kids and the teachers just like please so we we turn around and he starts interviewing them there's a picture of it right there and so we're enjoying this Tyler wraps up I'm totally amazed and he turns to me he hands the microphone he says are you their teacher I said yes yes good job really professional I said thanks he goes they're gonna love interviewing Tom Neal I and we know who that is right and I'm like will that's the funny thing we don't really have press passes we just have tickets and he reaches in Tazewell it pulls out his pen write something on the back and he says go to gate two now I say that story one because it's just cool and I like reliving it but also because it was if students have a passion all right and if they have a drive on something and they're told that opportunities are everywhere you just go find them they find their way in to some degree of irony the very next month I get this email that just said watch this and it was a link to Daniel Pink's TED talk and Here I am in a TED stage it was his talk on what motivates people autonomy mastery and purpose and as I was watching that he was talking about how some of the best companies use this time to they gave their employees one day to they got to do almost what they wanted and so I thought why don't we do that in my class do I allow for some autonomy a little bit do I offer mastery on things that I sign and purpose I didn't see that as much in our education system so I make my watch my sir I Mitch might make my students watch this TED talk the very next period and I'm like what you guys think and they said yeah sure let's give it a try and certainly enough the next Friday we did and I heard a lot of students say finally a chance I can do the things that I want to do but when I started it a lot of students especially my eight students were paralyzed like why what do you want me to do well what did you want to do I want to get an A I'm like what are you passionate about getting an A and that's kind of when it bugged me that I realized that a lot of other people's passions or somebody else's passions what are you passionate about oh that my favorite came my series on Netflix it's not yours and then on the flipside I had my less than a students put me the test they're like you know what are you to work on and one kid Gus I'm gonna do a sleep study in this class and I said not flashing oh my gosh you should I'm like this right after lunch you're already tired I'll buy you sleep masks he's like I was just joking wet Rick but I'm shocked that you were gonna let me do that and that was the whole point and so we finished out that semester and I asked my school corporation could I have my own class not that it's 20 minutes on a Friday but that's the class and so the innovation and open source learning class was born animation and open source learning is the first seven to eight weeks you learn how to think for yourself you identify what's wrong in the world you're passionate about some of the things that you either want to learn more about or enhance what you're good at and so picture there is we have some people come in from the town they were pitching them some problems to our students it became this hub and this Innovation Center and the hardest thing to do though I'm not gonna lie was how do you build a culture of innovation I mean it's really difficult when all of a sudden you switch it on them so I introduced them probably first and foremost to Daniel Pink's Drive and the fact that it started from a TED talk Seth Godin Tina Seelig these are our mentors and people we got to talk to but then also people that are really future forward Peter Diamandis Steven Kotler who wrote bold and just most recently the future is faster than you think listening to podcasts like impact Theory that the guest on those shows were really ahead of the curve and then also strange thing is that I also really encouraged social media use especially LinkedIn because 16 year-olds aren't on LinkedIn is often and if you're working on something and you're on a mission there's a lot of adults on LinkedIn the go that's pretty cool or in some cases they just were inspired by the fact that there was a class that you could do things that you kind of wanted to do and you're encouraged to fail and pivot and all those things we say in Silicon Valley it's we were essential Indiana now it also is kind of cool because they started identifying so these people that we wanted to talk to you like our Mount Rushmore of awesome was people like Tim Ferriss you see their Navon Jane Dan pink Tina Seelig we were reaching out to these people and they were intrigued that this class existed but they also started to look to them in the sense of I could listen to a performer complaining about things or I could work and talk to people that were dedicated toward solutions and that's what this class was heavily built on that before I sell you a bill of goods that it was perfect it was not matter of fact several of our students really struggled with the whole I can allow you to do whatever you want because I soon realized that the hardest things in the world to do are the things that you say you're going to do and if you don't say I have some sort of a project manager or someone prodding you it was really difficult because as I put there creating a culture of innovation is difficult when you're fighting a century of reward and compliance and memorization good boys and good girls sit quietly and wait for instructions innovators move fast fail and embrace it then and this was a really hard shift to start this in high school I still think that it's worth it but a fairly hard shift so I started working more and more with elementary and middle schools I think that the now jeans I by the way I think Dan pink is the Godfather of genius our 20% time in schools but essentially if our Elementary's offer this time especially like students stopped liking statistically school by third grade if you offer a time on a Friday 30 minutes it's kind of a glorified show-and-tell you just kind of keep it keep going you're proud of some of the things that you love and some of the skills you have but you also want to make sure that you share that joy with others and maybe learn more about it and at the middle school level hey man I get it I get a lot of middle school teachers say I don't have time to do this I have to cover the standards and truly I taught middle school for 11 years and then high school for 10 I think no one has it worse and there's not more pressure like middle schools the Jan Brady of Education you've got the element tree where they're cute you just do fun things and then the high school gets all the attention because the sports and the APS and whatnot and middle school has it rough but a lot of middle schools are teams and if you share this as a team you don't have to do it once a week you can do it once every four to five weeks if I'm an English teacher I have 30 minutes on a Friday and that's genius our time next week at science next week is social studies I was told not to get off this carpet by the way um and so I I really wanted to do that and but we still saw some holes in working with other students ingenious hours at all grade levels and my students kind of came up with the rule of thirds and I think this is a really good rule of thirds for anything you really want to pursue number one are you passionate about it and this is where a lot of people when they have passion time in the classroom start and end but just because you're passionate about it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a great learning experience you may be passionate about binge watching a Netflix series or you may be passionate about food trucks it doesn't necessarily mean it's that great what skills you develop is sending a different kind of message we are now moving away from just diploma based economy to a skills based economy if you have a diploma great but if you don't have skills to show for it or they're not in demand you're not in demand and I want my students to know that if they choose a project they might as well make it a good skill that they can use later in life and then lastly who is it going to benefit other than you I want to teach my students how to be successful sure but also how to bring value to other people and quite honestly most entrepreneurs bring simple solutions to people so to demonstrate this point I'm going to talk about one of my students Robert Robert took my class several years ago and he started really difficult he couldn't get down the culture of this classroom he had a lot of ill feelings toward school he had a count of a tough childhood at age six he lost both his parents to a murder-suicide so it was not school sometimes was uncomfortable for him and so the first seven eight ten twelve weeks Robert just kind of shuffled things around and didn't necessarily work as hard as I want them to so finally I was like do you want to do and so finally he kind of said I kind of want to share my story and so I was like what do you need and he's like I don't know equipment done school had equipment so he and another friend Jack they started a podcast and all of a sudden you know he started to do things because he was passionate about it he later then as soon as right about time to high school was over he started a a channel called Jenn style he wants to send and do more videos on LinkedIn and YouTube on young men dressing and acting professional so is he passionate about it check skills developed audio video editing he even taught himself how to sew so we could tailor his own suits and serving others a double check and if you're thinking about this it's kind of not ironic that today's theme is a key guy right what do you love okay this is a class where you can start thinking about some of the things you love what the world needs we have a lot of people in this current generation that they're passionate about awareness and they will tell you the things that they don't like but giving them the time to work towards something and infuse that love is something that I think is dearly needed and then what you're good at do we give students enough time to double down what they're good at normally we say you're proficient and then we load up your schedule with what you're not good at which is kind of crazy when you're thinking about all this talent you could have more time but instead you're working on things that you may not have any passion over and lastly what you can get paid for I want my students to think more like entrepreneurs it's okay if they have a source of income by their junior year I think that's kind of awesome they're looking at opportunities however if there's one thing that we saw there's one thing that bugged us is that my co-founder who is a former student Hunter and I we saw that a lot of schools either aren't starting this enough or they're not starting fast enough especially at the high school level so with this help a state of Indiana we started this started up Foundation at startup foundation we have a spark develop execute mentality our spark nights is probably one of my most favorite is that we have chapters and we're growing throughout the state and beyond is it at these events we have students from hopefully two or maybe three high schools come to one destination think usually a co-working space or a cool tech hub and there we have a guest the night and the guest the night is a small deserving nonprofit thank opioid crisis center homeless shelter etc and they do a reverse pitch here's our problem area here's what our mission here's our vision is and then they ask our students here's what we're struggling with what do you think students listen with empathy they ask some questions and then they go off into teams of about seven to ten then they whiteboard here's my favorite thing when you're in white boarding mode your phone is you're not talking about things online you're in the state you're like oh we're writing things down my uncle knows the guy oh I know a guy that could you know what we should do and this sort of emotion and enthusiasm is contagious and those kids start thinking I can make a difference instead of you temporarily feeling powerful for saying I think the world stinks awareness is great doing is another and so we want to get those kids into what we call an entrepreneurial way of Ming we also four times a year do longer formatting like hackathons and boot camps hackathons in the sense we have bigger problems they meet with mentors and then boot camps there's several offerings we have that you can you may not want to go to college or have to go to college with some of the tech certifications so we give you a one-day experience to think we're gonna dip your toe into the pool to see if these things are right for you and then lastly for my favorite things we do is we run innovate with them with our partners especially the IEDC we have started something wonderful we have and among the nation's biggest pitch competitions for high school students and even though the cash prizes are great the thing that I'm most proud of stuff is that it's not a novelty check in a handshake it is a travel experience and a summer accelerator so the idea that you have in theory we want to make sure that you can make some changes and actually do it and then my absolute favorite thing is is that we get the students out of Indiana nothing wrong with Indiana but we want to show them that you can be working on something in Spencer Indiana and it can be relevant in New York City so in year one we took them to New York City was a wonderful day we got to spend some time with Seth Godin and New York Stock Exchange and in Atlantic Records last year it was we did a dual city trip between Austin and San Antonio and then this year we're going to go to Seattle where again we're wanting them to see what innovation looks like beyond the state boundaries lastly this is probably where my heart is most if you're an educator it's time to stop saying imagine if imagine a world where we could infuse some Mickey got in your classroom right now especially for elementary this doesn't take much effort start a genius our program if you're a middle school same thing if you're in high school our schools to become social impact hubs they see solutions to our biggest problems and place them into teams collaborate network scale execute allow it to be a fate the safe place to fail have them work with the community and parents the students if you're not seeing this in your school do something it contact us we'd love to start a chapter in other cities because the gap between the haves and have-nots is going to be scary in the sense that the people that sit around and wait for instruction in the new age of gig economy and contract work and those who feel empowered and want to move fast and on their own and what to do things faster that is accelerating faster and faster and then lastly what I'm truly hoping to do is stop the endless scroll of comparison in a lot of ways our programming is to get you off your cell phone for a couple of hours is for you to find some purpose in your life that it's okay to identify the things you hate but it's better to identify the things you love to understand where your passions are to understand where your strengths are and in this entrepreneurial way of being know that you can make a difference in the world not hypothetically but in a real real sense so while our kids can learn online if we give them this time our schools cannot just be places to learn they could be places that they could solve real problems and hopefully not only change your community but who knows seriously the world thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 871

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Education reform, Entrepreneurship, Exploration, Innovation

Id: hbBYPLmvPTk

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020