|
Hello,
I’m Richard Tucci,
President and CEO of ShakeShock.com. We conceived our name by joining two words,
Shakespeare and shocking, and while some of what we do involves
Shakespeare, our website is about much more than just the Bard.
I’ve always
believed in the American dream, and while my life isn’t a rags to riches story,
I’ve always known and seen firsthand that education is not only essential
to success, but the right of every free American, protected and guaranteed
by divine providence.
However, over the past
several years, darker, selfish, and destructive influences have seeped into
our culture; influences which discourage and diminish education. Where once
our role models were determined individuals driven by the desire for self
improvement like Bill Gates, Colin Powell, Sandra Day O’Connor, Oprah
Winfrey, and Bill Clinton, these have now been replaced by Kevin Federline,
Paris Hilton, and George Bush Junior. Educators and officials alike have
given up more and more hope, succumbing to a defeatist mentality, believing
that their efforts are useless. The high school dropout rate is 36%
nationally, and as high as 50% in some cities.
From a brief experience
teaching at a high school in south central Los Angeles, I saw teachers who were
frustrated by rigid restrictions, and a nationalized school system that
cared more about high standardized test scores than about reaching the
lowest student. However, I also saw classrooms of students who wanted to
learn, who cared about their future, and cared about their goals. However,
they were not being addressed, or in some cases even respected. These were
students who had dreams, and wanted to accomplish them, but they had no one
to give them a hand-up or to tell them that their dreams could be a
reality. I decided then and there, that I was going to start ShakeShock.com
to change all that.
ShakeShock.com, is a
company designed to create short educational Videos based around great
works of literature: everything from Greek tragedies, to Hamlet, to
Huckleberry Finn. But these videos would be revolutionary compared to
previous material.
These short documentary and
educational Video (or Dockees as we refer to them in house) are neither
“Cliff Notes on video,” nor cheat notes. Anyone can get cheat notes from a
variety of sources. Dockees aren’t meant to be only entertainment either,
although they are designed to be entertaining. They’re not going to be the
standard boring documentaries you’re accustomed to seeing either, filled
with what’s called talking heads, such as experts coming in, telling you
what the story is about.
This company is about
creating a new context for classical literature, a new media Rosetta Stone.
We’re not going to give kids the answers to the tests, but we will give
them the methods needed to find the answers on their own, by using modern
day metaphors, flashy MTV style filmmaking, and above all else, humor.
This is something that’s
very close to my heart. As one English Teacher once said to me, “People go
into a math class or a science class to learn how to think, but they need
great works of art to learn how to feel.”
Scientists have also spent
many decades analyzing the human brain, and have determined that a person
learns one of seven different ways. Of these seven ways, school systems
only focus on three. What happens to the people who learn using one of
these other four ways? They get left behind in school, and in life.
We at Shake Shock don't
want them to be left behind. We want to give them a flashlight in the
darkness, and then they’ll realize, “Hey, this isn’t so difficult after
all. I can solve this. I can figure this out. I can probably figure out a
lot of other things too.”
That light will bring them
closer to the material. That material will bring them closer to an A, and
another A, and another A, and that will bring their GPA from a 2.0 to a
3.0, to a 3.5, to a 3.8. That will bring them closer to a scholarship, and
that will bring them closer to a college degree, and THAT will bring them
closer to their dreams. Because at ShakeShock.com, we’re in the business of
making dreams.
So
be prepared for a revolution of intelligence.
|
Check Fried Requests 
Sign In | Sign
Up
