Last Updated on November 17, 2017

The Truth Behind Inspiration

The scene of the apple falling on Newton’s head may be iconic, but it generates misleading messages. Why? Because inspiration is not based on these “Eureka!” moments. Rather, our epiphany moments are the result of two main factors: preparing for and creating the right conditions for out-of-the-box thinking.

The world’s greatest inventors are persistent practitioners who have been cultivating their grounds for innovation over many years. They surrounded themselves with a circle of inspirational peers and experienced many failures for each success achieved, before coming up with the breakthroughs in their fields that they are known for today.

From Sir Isaac Newton and gravity to Nikola Tesla and the alternating current motor, great inventors often become famous for one major research outcome. But what we don’t know is that these contributions to society took several inventions and attempts across many different fields. This same trajectory also applies to the serial entrepreneurs we know today –  from James Watson and Francis Crick who solved the structure of DNA to Elon Musk and Peter Thiel– who have forever transformed human lives.

It is their openness to trying new approaches and courage to fail that enables these creators to combine the best of different worlds and generate new schools of thought.

Now, it’s time bring this model of innovative thinking into the classroom.

Inspiration as the New Educational Model

What kind of education should we strive for? Education that empowers the world’s youth to not only think of the impossible … but act on it. Education that empowers and creates a student with the potential to become the next great changemaker – be it inventor, artist, entrepreneur, scientist, or any other creator. It should be our goal to turn this model of education into the rule, rather than the exception, across schools and teaching models.

To do this, we must begin with three fundamental concepts: 

1) Inspire.

Make school relevant to real-life again, bringing the world into your classroom in a seamless way, to inspire students to dream big while preparing them for the workplace of tomorrow. 

2) Engage.

Bring the world into your classroom by inviting real-life role models to connect with your students, helping them to interact with them & generate precious data.

3) Measure.

Leverage technology to discover and understand student learning patterns and make data-driven teaching decisions … because if you can measure it, you can manage it.

Deconstruct the Current “Education Bubble”

Peter Thiel defines a bubble as consisting of “things costing more than they are actually worth, creating abstractions away from reality.” When we apply this to an educational context, we hold a lens up to the fact that current educational models only teach the “smart” kids, as they continue to reward academic excellence along the same beaten path of sending talented minds to the same universities and programs.

As a result, teachers end up teaching to this model and lose sight of the passion that first drove them to teach. And together as a society, we forget to inspire our young minds to imagine alternate futures that could lead them down a changemaking path.

Plan Your Inspiration

With the 100mentors platform and technology, now you can unlock the power of student data to drive informed decisions for planning curriculum and inspiration. From sourcing a curated mentor pool to tracking student engagement over time, 100mentors equips you with all the tools you need to bring a new model of innovative thinking into you classroom. Ready to join forward-thinking educators across the world in bringing the world into your classroom?