Waiting For Superman

Have you heard the buzz on Davis Guggenheim’s new movie “Waiting for Superman", which premiered last week? You might remember Guggenheim’s best known work, “An Inconvenient Truth” the documentary on Al Gore's campaign to make the global warming a worldwide issue. “Waiting for Superman" is an exploration of public education in the U.S. and how today’s educational opportunities affect our children.

The film follows five unforgettable kids whose futures depend on charter school lotteries in their search for a better education, and through the film Guggenheim aims to spark a national conversation about public education, and how communities might transform their local school systems. Public education is one of those issues with the potential to bring people together on its own, and the hope is that community leadership organizations like United Way will convene diverse stakeholders to discuss common-ground efforts to provide every child with a quality education.

By engaging diverse stakeholders, including residents, non-profits, businesses and others to develop sustained collaborative efforts to strengthen education, community leadership organizations could be in a better position to link unique local resources together with its educational resources to provide a more effective, nurturing learning environment. As I‘ve written before, it isn’t rocket science, but getting a community’s assets all working together to support education, could be a very empowering tool.

If you get a chance, go to see the movie, then add your voice to the discussion. We owe it to our children to provide them with the best education possible.