Esther Wojcicki is a celebrated educator, a pioneer in instructional technology, Founder of the renowned Media Arts Program at Palo Alto High School, and the author of the bestselling book, How to Raise Successful People. Esther was named Teacher of the Year in California in 2002 and received the Charles O’Malley Award for outstanding teaching in journalism in 2011. Esther is also the Founder of the Journalistic Learning Initiative at the University of Oregon, and is the Founder and CEO of GlobalMoonshots.org. Esther raised three daughters: Susan (CEO of YouTube), Anne (CEO of 23andMe), and Janet (professor, UC San Francisco).
Key Takeaways
[3:25] Talk to your teenagers. Their creative minds are impressive.
[5:35] Helicopter parents have the same problem as bad managers, they micromanage!
[7:50] Helicopter parenting might be due to having access to more information than before and it’s making parents fearful for their children.
[8:55] Esther believes we’d be happier people if we had access to less information, but that’s simply not possible with our world today. What we need to do is learn how to cope.
[11:15] Esther believes teaching media literacy is a critical skill to have as we live in an information-overload environment. People need to know how to read between the lines and figure out if something is truthful or not.
[13:10] 18-24-year-olds are completely different from the millennials. Millennials are even having trouble working with 20-year-olds!
[15:00] Children today grew up with information overload.
[16:15] Children of CEOs are afraid they’ll never live up to their parents’ expectations.
[17:25] There are a lot of kids in the Midwest or the South where the American Dream doesn’t seem achievable or realistic for them.
[21:55] Esther emphasizes the importance of teaching children how to learn because this is a skill for life.
[22:15] Why memorize a test when students will forget 95% of it a year later? We have a re-skilling problem in the United States.
[24:55] For people to take chances, they have to feel safe.
[28:35] We all have deadlines. It’s important to make people feel comfortable to take risks, in spite of them.
[31:55] With so much democracy, we have communication chaos. We don’t know which source to believe.
[38:05] If children aren’t learning about trust and risk at home, how can they learn these skills? Esther believes it starts at school.
[44:10] The power to change the schools lies with the parents.
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Quotable Quotes
For people to take chances, they have to feel safe. Click To Tweet “We are all fearful. Everybody is afraid non-stop. I’m afraid for the world.” Click To Tweet “Every generation is different because they’re growing up in a different world.” Click To Tweet “Children today tend to be much more risk-averse because somebody was always there helping them.” Click To Tweet “Here we have a lot of kids whose parents are CEOs and their number one fear is they’ll never live up to the standards set by their parents.” Click To Tweet “What does it take these days for people to achieve the American dream?” Click To Tweet “I’m teaching kids how to learn because this is a skill for life. I am not teaching them to memorize.” Click To Tweet “Believe in the student and they believe in themselves. They rise to levels that are completely unexpected.” Click To Tweet “When you’re really upset and worried, you tend to be less productive than when you feel good about yourself and when you feel supported.” Click To Tweet “You want kids to feel at home at school. You want them to feel a sense of community. Today, many schools don’t do that.” Click To TweetAdditional Resources:
- Raisesuccessfulpeople.com
- Globalmoonshots.org
- Esther on LinkedIn
- Follow Esther on Twitter @EstherWojcicki
These are the books mentioned in Esther’s podcast
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