Multiple Choice Is More Than a Film—It’s a Movement
Editor’s Note: In 2015, Ted Dintersmith’s film Most Likely to Succeed identified the problems with our educational system: lack of student engagement or agency, standardized curriculum, and limited ideas about the pathway to success. Ten years later, Dintersmith’s new film, Multiple Choice, offers the solution and a call to action that invites educators to develop multiple pathways through learning and reimagines what we mean by career readiness. The film will be more broadly available for screenings in the fall of 2025, and we hope you’ll join the What School Could Be community in celebrating not just this new film, but the movement we hope it will inspire.
–Jennifer D. Klein
A few days ago, I had the privilege of facilitating an exclusive sneak peek of the new What School Could Be documentary film Multiple Choice at the JAG National Training Seminar in Louisville, Kentucky. The conference was a gathering of more than 400 attendees—specialists, managers, executive directors, and national partners—each deeply committed to changing lives through deep connection, workforce development, and career-connected learning.
For many of us in that space, the film didn’t just resonate. It validated.
In a world where academic achievement still too often overshadows vocational excellence, Multiple Choice gave voice—and visual narrative power—to the work so many of us have been championing for years. In short, it made our efforts visible. It told a story that affirmed what we already knew in our bones: career education, technical training, community-connected projects, and human-centered relationships are education. They are not “alternatives”—they are powerful and essential pathways for human flourishing.
The Stage: Louisville, Kentucky—Where Workforce Champions Were Seen
There was something special about that screening room, not just because of the scale—over 400 people gathered in the Galt House Ballroom—but because of who was in the room and what it represented. We are workforce development professionals. We are relationship builders. We are architects that bridge the gap between education and employment, between adolescence and adulthood, between potential and opportunity.
And for the first time in a long time, our work—our daily reality in Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) classrooms, job sites, career fairs, and community partnerships—was the main character on the screen.
In my role as National Director of Programs and Training, I worked with our incredible JAG University National Faculty to set the tone for the evening. We created discussion circles, framed the experience, and opened the floor to the connections, questions, and emotions the film would undoubtedly spark. And it did.
The energy in the room was electric. I watched as heads nodded, hands clapped, eyes welled, and people turned to one another and said, “That’s what we do.” I’ll never forget one woman who stood up during the reflection time and simply said, “Thank you for sharing this. I’m so excited for my students to see this, so they understand that all pathways are valid.” Another state-level Executive Director shared that she was excited to “use Multiple Choice to tell the JAG story more effectively in her state.”
She was absolutely right.
The Film: Digging Beneath the Divide
For me personally, Multiple Choice hit in ways I didn’t expect. I’ve worked globally at the intersection of authentic learning, trauma-informed care, and place-based education for over a decade. I’ve designed learning experiences that challenge the boundaries between school and community, and I’ve long admired the historic model of Tuskegee Institute for its commitment to self-empowerment and real-world relevance.
But I had never stopped to truly consider how that model, while aspirational, also marked the beginning of a deep and painful divide between “academic” and “vocational” learning.
Creator Ted Dintersmith and the team at What Schools Could Be hold up a mirror to that split and instead of choosing sides, insist that the binary itself is broken. It reminds us that we don’t have to choose between college prep and career readiness. We can choose all pathways—because our young people deserve more than one route to success.
As founder of the Authentic Learning Lab nearly ten years ago, this affirmation was personal for me. It was emotional. The very things I’ve been advocating for—community-connected learning, real-world projects, learner voice, social-emotional foundations—were not only featured in the film, they were honored. And that honor matters. Because for so long, the “alternative” routes haven’t been given the dignity they deserve.
Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of coaching hundreds of students who launched successful businesses before they turned 20, young entrepreneurs who didn’t wait for permission or a diploma to start building their futures—just opportunity, mentorship, and belief in their potential. These students remind me daily that when we empower learners to follow a path that aligns with their strengths and dreams, there’s no telling how far they’ll go.
Multiple Choice doesn’t just make space for these stories—it calls on us to multiply them.
The JAG Advantage: Career, Community, and Purpose
Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG) is a national organization laser-focused on helping young people succeed, especially those facing significant barriers. Our model isn’t just about getting students to graduation. It’s about setting them up for life—starting with trauma-informed care, then through project-based learning, leadership development, and lastly through career exposure and experience.
At the JAG National Training Seminar, we gather annually to sharpen our tools, celebrate our impact, and push ourselves to grow even further. Our partners—from Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) to Bank of America to GE Verona—bring invaluable insight from industry, helping us align our classrooms with the future of work. Next year we will expand the conference beyond the JAG audience and invite a host of external partners that revolve around the nexus of education and employment. The JAG Edge conference will be the National Training Seminar on steroids.
Multiple Choice was the perfect capstone for this kind of convening. It didn’t just show students learning. It clearly showed that alternatives to the traditional education system can work and currently are working. And that’s exactly what we’re doing at JAG. We’re reimagining high school as a launchpad—not just for college, but for careers, for creativity, and for contribution. We’re proving that when students feel safe, seen, and supported, they thrive. And most importantly, we’re doing it in classrooms, communities, and states across the country every single day.
Relationships First: No Learning Without Connection
Here’s a truth I come back to again and again: No meaningful learning happens without a significant relationship.
This is more than a personal philosophy—it’s a lived reality in JAG classrooms across the country. Many of our students have experienced trauma, disconnection, and marginalization. But when a caring adult enters their life—when someone sees them, believes in them, and invests in their future—everything changes.
This is why trauma-informed care and social-emotional learning are not “add-ons.” They are foundations. They are how we ensure that every young person can access the opportunities we’re building. Whether it’s a project on environmental justice, a paid internship at a hospital, or a capstone presentation at city hall, it only works when the student feels safe enough to show up as themselves.
That’s what JAG gets right. And that’s what this film honors.
A Film, A Spark, A Movement
The question we asked ourselves after the credits rolled wasn’t just What did you think? It was What will you do now? We were aiming for mobilization more than direct reflection.
Already, JAG Affiliate leaders are planning state-wide screenings and partners are brainstorming how this film could be a tool for engagement, awareness, and systemic change. We weren’t just watching something powerful, we were gearing up for action.
We know this film will show again—at festivals, in school board meetings, at regional training sessions, and inside classrooms. And every time it’s shown, we’ll get a little closer to collective clarity: the future of education must be inclusive, expansive, and genuinely human.
Collective Connection and the Power of Plus Wonder
During the conference, I gave a workshop on Plus Wonder, an organization that has deeply influenced the way I think about connection and systems change. Through their Six Degrees of Connection framework, they show us how relationships move from transactional to transformational.
The workshop on the Six Degrees involved guiding our educators and leaders through practices that cultivate trust, purpose, and impact. The final degree—Degree 6: Collective Connection—is about co-creating something bigger than ourselves.
That’s exactly what this pre-screening was.
It wasn’t just a film night. It was a moment of alignment, a coming together of practitioners, visionaries, and learners who believe that the way we’ve always done education is not the way we must continue.
Plus Wonder Connection Architects across the world are building networks to not only reflect on their personal connections but also to build new ones—with employers, with families, with communities, and yes, with one another. They are using the free toolkits and classroom-ready resources to activate this work in their local contexts and collaborating virtually to share their experiences.
Final Thoughts: This Is My Something Bigger
This work—this movement toward an education system that values every pathway and every learner—isn’t just my job. It’s my calling.
Years ago, I started the Authentic Learning Lab because I believed that learning should be rooted in people, place, and purpose. That belief hasn’t changed. But thanks to my role at JAG, and thanks to Multiple Choice, to Plus Wonder… it’s grown even stronger.
I believe more than ever that we are on the edge of a new era in education. One that honors both the mind and the hand. One that builds relationships before anything else. One that values employers, community leaders, and young people as co-creators in our collective futures.
So if you were in that room with us, thank you. If you weren’t—don’t worry. The movement is just getting started. And we will call on you soon enough!
Let’s build together. All pathways. All people. One powerful, connected future.
Learn more about JAG’s National Training Seminar & JAG Edge
Learn more about Plus Wonder Educational Toolkits & Opportunities
Nick Martino is the National Director of Programs and Training at Jobs for America’s Graduates, overseeing the programmatic delivery and instruction of 85,000 youth annually focused on the JAG Advantage, a unique blend of Trauma-Informed Care, Project-Based Learning, and Employer Engagement. As the founder of the Authentic Learning Lab, Nick has led curriculum design projects and trained K-University educators across the globe.