If you enjoyed peeking into the classrooms featured in the film, read on to learn about more opportunities for exploring the work highlighted in those classrooms. 

This film’s inception stems from a free online course created by the team at MIT’s Teaching Systems Lab, Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices. The course builds on the work of Rich Milner, professor, researcher, and scholar at the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University. As part of his research on equity in urban schools, Dr. Milner has posited that rather than focusing on the achievement gap, educators and policy makers should instead examine the opportunity gap that exists for Black students and students from other marginalized communities. In his award-winning book, Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There (Harvard Education Press, 2010), Dr. Milner lays out an Opportunity Gap framework, which seeks to address the ways that Black students experience individual, structural, and systemic inequality in their schools. 

The course Becoming a More Equitable Educator dives deep into four pairs of mindsets that influence the ways that schools and classrooms operate. Learners in the course reflect on their classrooms and schools and learn how they might work to rebalance the four pairs of mindsets in their own practice. The course also features educators around the country reflecting on their teaching; some of these educators are featured in We Have to Do Something Different. 

If the course is not currently running, an archived version of Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices is always freely available at the MIT Open Learning Library. The course materials and further resources can be found there.