Author: Milton Chen, Executive Director, George Lucas Educational Foundation

George Lucas, founder and chairman of our foundation, has said: “It’s imperative that we create new kinds of schools, freed from an educational system deeply rooted in the distant past and the kinds of schools so many of us attended decades ago.” For more than a decade, our foundation has been chronicling solutions to Industrial Age educational thinking that treat students as widgets moving down an assembly line, where everyone learns the same content in the same way at the same time.

One common feature shared by the innovative classrooms we’ve shown from across the nation in our Edutopia films, website, and magazine is authentic learning, learning that makes “school life” more like “real life.” And one of the keys to authentic learning is taking advantage of all of the places and people in a community that can “keep it real” and ensure that students never have to ask that nagging question: “Why do we need to know this?”

San Francisco, our world-class city, has world-class companies, universities, labs, museums, science centers, parks, and many other places where students can learn about “real life.” In the areas of science, mathematics, engineering, and mathematics, the STEM skills that policymakers from the White House to the state house are emphasizing for the future, San Francisco ranks second to none. Already many of these groups have programs serving K-12 students and teachers, such as the California Academy of Sciences, The Exploratorium, the Golden Gate National Parks, San Francisco State, and UCSF. Many companies invite students to visit their workplaces and have employees who mentor and teach.

For instance, unlike many urban communities, we are fortunate to live near a national park. San Francisco middle and high school students have been working in native plant nurseries in the Golden Gate National Parks, propagating plants from seedlings and learning about the fragile biodiversity of the northern California ecosystem. National Park rangers, adult volunteers, and others work with their teachers to integrate the learning that happens inside and outside the classroom.

What have your children and students learned from one of these San Francisco organizations and companies that enrich their school experience? What more could be done to strengthen these experiences and bring them to more students? How could obstacles be overcome? Dream big. This city and these times demand a bigger vision.