Life Of A Maverick: Esther Wojcicki

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When one thinks of Silicon Valley, “creative” seems to be the perfect descriptor. Wild ideas, impossible concepts, and quantum leaps have been the wellsprings that grow and nurture the amazing technology that is part of everyday life. Yet one of the most prominent players in the Valley is neither designer, entrepreneur, scientist, nor business person. Growth of her “business” isn’t charted on any stock exchange or touted by a venture capital firm. Her position may seem modest, but Esther Wojcicki (pronounced wo-jiske), a Palo Alto High School teacher and founder of the school’s renowned Media Center, is a mover and shaker non pareil. Her revolutionary, maverick approach to education has turned the concept of traditional schooling upside down. And once you learn more about her methods, it all makes perfect sense. It’s an ancient idea anchored in mythology, enabling empowerment by discovering one’s passion, “following your bliss,” as Joseph Campbell put it. Wojcicki’s passion is education and she epitomizes the teacher as coach, allowing her students to blossom through personalized experiential learning, working on projects in groups and placing their energy and effort into what they care about in the real world, regardless of what that may be. Called “the godmother of the Silicon Valley” or just “Woj”, Esther calmly ignites an ardor that burns for a lifetime. As a young child, Wojcicki (nee Hochman), grew up poor in the San Fernando Valley, the daughter of Orthodox Jewish immigrants. Her father was an artist and her mother stayed at home and food was often hard to come by. Around age ten, she observed that people who had degrees made more money. She then made up her mind that she would go to college. She was determined that when she became a mother, her children would have a better life growing up than she had had. Armed with a scholarship and bolstered by a fierce will, Wojcicki graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in English and Political Science. To supplement her stipend, she worked side jobs as a reporter/journalist, writing for three cents a word, which she later recalled, motivated her to write-a lot. Fast forward to 1984 when Wojcicki, a full-time English and Journalism teacher at Palo Alto High, encountered her first Apple Macintosh. Sensing they could be a fabulous new learning tool, but unable to afford the $3000 price tag, she got creative and wrote a California grant to acquire a machine or two for her classroom. She ended up getting eight and enlisted her students in a group project to learn how to use the fledgling personal computers. Those baby steps have led to a current journalism program of 600 students that produces ten self-sustaining, highly polished publications, including a newspaper, sports, foreign affairs, literary, and arts magazines/websites. Her journalism program at Palo Alto High School is regarded as the best in the United States and has more than 600 students. Many former students from her program have gone on to have an outsized impact on the world including Gady Epstein of the Economist, Noah Sneider of the New York Times, actor James Franco, and Tod Scacerdoti of Yahoo, to name a few. Wojcicki co-authored a book on blended learning entitled Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom. The book encapsulates the Moonshots movement manifesto and details ways to revolutionize education for the digital age with the focus on giving student more autonomy and agency in the classroom. Wojcicki attributes her profound successes to fostering an environment where students incorporate three Cs into their joint projects: Collaborate, think Critically, and Communicate, resulting in a fourth, all-encompassing C, Creativity. Wojcicki’s method to what some would call her madness isn’t all that complicated. She bases her teaching on a simple acronym, TRICK (Trust, Respect, Independence, Collaboration, and Kindness). As evidenced in her own family, with three hugely successful daughters (Susan, CEO of YouTube; Janet, Professor of Pediatrics and Epidemiology at U.C. San Francisco; Anne, CEO of the biotechnology firm 23andMe), she has always practiced what she preached. “’TRICK’ begins at home, where parents are a child’s first teacher. We need kids feeling good about themselves and doing things. Not just listening to somebody tell them about it.” -- P.D. Crane