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 [00:00:00] Here it is. This is one of the ones I’ve been waiting for. So welcome to the Better Learning podcast. We are talking Ferris Bueller today, like one of the most iconic movies.

Kevin: One that like

just so much personal connection to that you’ll hear about. And I’m gonna be joined today with my co-host, Nathan Stringy, with Fielding International. Nathan, how’s

it going? 

Nathan Strenge: It’s going great.

Excited to be here, Kevin.

Kevin: Thanks for doing this with me. I mean, we’ve been, we’ve become

friends over the, you know, over previous years here of just working the industry together and, uh, we were just talking about how this is like a special movie we had to,

we, there’s high

standards on this one, so.

Nathan Strenge: A game.

Kevin: we, we do. So, um, so the, so people who are not familiar with this format that we’ve been doing this year is, is we,

we really wanna dig into the movies in, in a fun way, but the whole power of why we’ve been

doing the movie format is taking it back to the work that we,

do in education. we’ll make sure we, we bring that up at the end and, and really tie it in.

But man, this is just such a fun movie. I

mean. I watched it again last night. You said you did too?

Nathan Strenge: I did. Yeah. 

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you had to guess how many times in your life have you seen this

movie?

Nathan Strenge: Gosh, 20.

Kevin: Yeah, I, I would say I’m at least

that, um, even watching it again, so many lines that I still

like use today with my kids or just in, in life

that go in there.

So, we always wanna start out. You, you wanna, if anyone has not seen this movie, uh, one, they should, right? They should probably watch it instead of taking their time listening to us talk about it.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah, go. Go find a way to watch it and do that right now. Then come back and listen to

Kevin: Uh, come back. honestly, this one to me was like the core of what I viewed education to be like. This was honestly in a lot of ways, like my experience with education and until I got into the industry much later on. this has become the movie to me that I keep pointing to and saying, we have to break.

We have to break the perception of what school looks like because so many of us. Still view school the way Ferris Beeler is.

Nathan Strenge: exactly. Yep, exactly right.

Kevin: How do I ditch it? How do I get out of it? It’s an obligation. Like there’s just so many things, um, that you’re like, man, like school just is, is just one of those things that we force kids to do. So if we set up, if we set up kind of this movie, it’s a John Hughes movie, which, you know, classic filmmaker.

He did a lot of, you know, like just a lot of funny classic movies in the eighties, in particular. he also does a lot of settings like in exactly where this takes place in Chicago, which is not very far where I grew up from. so I think that’s a little bit why it relates to me. Um, for you, I guess watching it when you watched it 20 times, what, what were things that related for you?

Nathan Strenge: I mean, particularly on the, the school side, it’s just, it, it just captures in such a quick but powerful way. Just like the, I irrelevancy of so much of what you do and just like the boredom that you see on the people who are there. and just outside of that, the experiential learning that. That Ferris and Sloan are doing, um, and Cameron are doing throughout the day, like experiencing the city and, and getting to these amazing places.

Um, it just, it speaks to what could be. Um, so I’m excited to dig

Kevin: Yeah. Very cool. All right, so Ferris Beeler’s day off. I’m pulling up IMDB ’cause I always look at this and I’m, I don’t know how much research, did you do much research on this? Or is you, or was it more of I’m gonna watch a film and we’re gonna talk about it versus

Nathan Strenge: More of the latter. I did a little bit of like finding some like Easter eggs and fun things, but, uh, I mostly just rewatched it to kind of re reacquaint myself with some of the, the one-liners and, and whatnot.

Kevin: All right. I’m, I’m a big IMDB fan. Um, so just like it’s. To me, this is the website I go to when I want to get like real reviews of what I, what I think a movie or what if, if it’s gonna be a good movie or not. So they do it on a scale of one to 10. Anyone, you know, anyone can vote. This isn’t just like film critics.

What’s your guess on the scale of one to 10 that this one landed at?

Nathan Strenge: I bet it is close to eight.

Kevin: 7.8.

Nathan Strenge: 7.8.

Kevin: Nice job. Uh, uh, my, my view is always, if it’s over seven, it’s probably a good movie. and, but like, kind of a dumb comedy like this, it’s really rare that it does get over seven and then even to like get close to eight. And there’s, and there’s literally like only a handful of films that are even like over eight.

Um, like just on the history of like all time best movies on imdb. So this is, this is up there.

Nathan Strenge: Oh, totally. It, it deserves to be up

Kevin: it, it does. And it’s probably, it, it may be one of the highest [00:05:00] rated ones that we’ve, we’ve done. ’cause we’ve done some, like we, we’ve done a lot of movies and a lot of good ones and a lot of dumb ones.

And, this is definitely up there. It, it came out in 1986. I was 10 years old. I don’t even know, were you born yet?

Nathan Strenge: I was born in 86, so we’re both turning 40 next year. Me and.

Kevin: Perfect, perfect. So, so I was very impressionable at this time. This is like what, like cool, high schoolers looked like to me for sure. there would be, you know, like when we were in high school, there was a lot of um, you know, like, can we recreate it type of things. And like, I even remember my friends and I being like.

There’s no way they could have pulled that off. Like it’s that Cubs game in particular

Nathan Strenge: Yeah.

Kevin: like throws everything off because we knew, you know, like that go, those games start at one 20 those day games and there’s just no way they could have pulled all this off, uh, in one day. But, you know, that was always like the, the dream of like, can we, can we do all of these things in one day?

And, uh, Matthew Broderick plays Ferris Bueller. Alan Ruck plays Cameron, his best friend, which is honestly like, definitely like the role that he is known for most.

Nathan Strenge: totally. Yeah.

Kevin: Um, but, and any other comments of about the movie before we start getting into some of the, some of the award categories that we go through?

Nathan Strenge: No, let’s get into it.

Kevin: All right, cool. So we start out with the John Keating Award, um, that ties back to Dead Poet Society, Robin Williams character. When we are looking at this movie here, who is the best educator

Nathan Strenge: Hmm.

Kevin: this movie?

Nathan Strenge: You know, I actually think it has to be, it has to be the title character. It has to be Ferris because like he is, and we will get into it later, but Cameron’s like journey, his character journey throughout the day is so, it’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. Seeing him from where he starts. Like in bed says he is dying.

And, and Ferris is giving him this experience and showing him that he doesn’t have to live like this. He doesn’t have to be afraid. He doesn’t have to be so tightly wound. So I actually think through the experiences that, that, that Ferris is, is guiding through the day, um, he is showing what what a great experiential learning can be and, and just the development that, that Cameron has, um, because of that is, is so profound.

Kevin: every time I tried to like thi, like even think of an alternative here, I couldn’t come up with any. Anyone else? I mean, the actual educators in this movie, you can’t put that with e with Edward r Rooney as the Dean of students or Ben Stein, you know, who is the teacher that, you know, has that iconic Bueller, Bueller, like classroom set up?

yeah, like it, it had to be Ferris speed and, and I like how he even like. kind of breaks that like wall of the it with the camera where he speaks to the camera throughout the movie and

Nathan Strenge: learned that most of those, uh, breaking the wall like that was improvised that that wasn’t a part of the script. So, there’s some really cool things that, that good acting that, that, that made this just what it is today, the iconic film that it is today.

Kevin: Yeah. What, to those point of like the Easter eggs in here when I was digging a little more than, pro honestly, than I probably should have, but Charlie Sheen, who plays like, you know, like he’s, he’s in one scene in, in the police station, but that’s, I, I learned that they actually were building out. more for that role and that role was actually meant to be the son.

Alright, this is gonna get a little complex. I’ll try to keep the son of the family that his mom, who was a realtor, was gonna go show houses to, and that Cameron, or I’m sorry, that, um, Charlie Sheen’s character was good friends with Ferris Bueller younger, but then he veered into drugs and Ferris Bueller Felt responsible to like that he didn’t felt bad, that he didn’t kind of get him back. And he views Cameron now as like, he doesn’t wanna miss that opportunity with, with Cameron as his friend do that. Which I, I, I, it makes sense why they pulled it out of the movie ’cause it was definitely a mu like didn’t need that, that additional complex relationship in there.

Nathan Strenge: But speaking, what I learned when I was doing my little digging last night is Char uh, Charlie Sheen stayed up for 48 hours before filming that scene so he could get that like strung out like drug you look, and he, he has it like he looks like he is just come off of.

Kevin: He does. He does. And, and that, did you, did you read too that he, he was, um, that was like his, his time off. He was right in the middle of shooting the movie Lucas, which I don’t know if you know the movie Lucas. This is definitely more of like an obscure one. I felt like this was more of like a cult classic.

Um, but it’s ano, it’s [00:10:00] another school movie. It’s with, uh, Cory Ham is, is Lucas, and he’s like this tiny kid, but Charlie Sheen starts one of the best slow claps in like any movie that I’ve ever seen that’s been repeated a bunch. So I just thought that was interesting. Like he, he was like right in the middle of Lucas when he did this one.

Um, and that it was like, kind of before it was like, you know, like Charlie Sheen, you know, like he, he was known but he wasn’t like. He, he can still do a cameo like that in, in Ferris Bueller. All right, so we land on Ferris Bueller best educator. Okay. All right. All right. Awesome. Next one, the cliques, the stereotypes where there’s stereotypes reinforced in this movie.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah. What, what was the first thing that came to your mind on this one?

Kevin: Uh, the, the first thing came. To my mind was the line that Grace the Secretary uses. That’s the first thing I’m like, like she just like, literally like lays out every like group and how they all love him and I feel like I, I should have had it written out, but I, of all the ones that she listed in there, um, there, yeah, like she just lists. Every type of group and how they just all love him. They think, and then, and then she heads at the end. They all think he’s a rightest dude,

Nathan Strenge: Yeah.

Kevin: I mean, other than that, I mean, they really didn’t dig into like, you know, for a high school movie, they really didn’t dig in too much of like the jocks or like those type of

Nathan Strenge: we didn’t get too much of that. I mean, you kinda get, like, he has that conversation with the freshmen, and he’s the, like the kid who’s trying to get outta summer school. So you get a little bit of it. But yeah, there, there wasn’t, it wasn’t like a big part of the movie I felt.

Kevin: Yeah, it, and I felt like it actually, like a big part of the theme of the movie was that he cut through all of it.

Nathan Strenge: Yes, totally. Yep.

Kevin: like that it, yeah. That we’ve always thought, you know, like you’re, you’re in one group and those groups don’t interact. And he was like, Nope. Like, I’m just. Yeah, he, because I, I don’t even know where you would put him in the group.

I mean, I guess you can say he is a cool kid ’cause everyone knew him, but the fact that everyone also knew him and liked him.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah. I mean, clearly, like he had elements that you could, like, he, he was clearly, physically gifted and that you could see him running like, but he had like a computer background. He could like, you know, manipulate the, the attendance data and like create those cool sounds on his stereo.

He was a great singer, you know, singing, you know, Donka Shane. Twist and shout. So like, he sort of like transcends all of these things. Um, and maybe that’s why like he’s just such a, an amazing character is like he doesn’t fit some sort of like, he doesn’t fit a, you know, a particular mold.

Kevin: Yeah. Yep. All right, so the, the next one it’s, it’s called the class Clown. Category, but it’s really, it’s like, it’s, it’s somebody that like, doesn’t have a major role, but they steal the show. Like every time they’re on screen they’re, they they do,

Nathan Strenge: So for me, this was grace. Like, I just love, like, she’s got so many great lines and like the conversation that in the beginning when she’s like pretending to be ruining and like groaning and like pulling the pencils out of her hair. Like I just, I just, every time she’s on, I just, I just laugh out loud.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I agree. I mean, she had great, like that’s true. I, man, I did not have her in that category, but that, that, that is, I, I, I, I like that. I think that may be the winner there, because I was kind of thinking, I’m like, eh, is it like Ed Rooney? but. Every time. You’re right.

Literally every time. Like, and yeah, you, you shouldn’t be, what was it? Something around like, you shouldn’t be doing something with your bad knee or bad back.

Nathan Strenge: I don’t trust him as, as far as I can throw. Well, you shouldn’t be throwing anybody with your bad. Yeah, it.

Kevin: Yes. Yep. Yep. Awesome. All right, cool. The next one, homecoming scene. The iconic moment of the movie. Typically in these seven movies, there’s like a, you know, it’s a school dance, a pep rally, a sports game.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is definitely getting outside of school into kind of that experiential learning like in the city, but like the parade

Kevin: parade. It’s the,

Nathan Strenge: I mean, and apparently like, like Chicago, um, citizens just like flocked into it. Like when they saw they were filming, like it wasn’t like it, so it was very like organic, like all the people like down there and say, obviously there was, you know, staging and whatnot.

But, um, I just love it. Like, and then you see like Ferris’s dad, like looking down and like doing the twit. Like just the, the tension. I mean, there’s so many like tension moments between like yeah. Rooney and his parents coming in and like you’re like, there’s no way he could, he could get away with this, but it’s just, oh, [00:15:00] that, that parade scene to me really sticks out

Kevin: it, it’s so good. Like, I don’t like there there’s movies, you know, like where you can flip through and, and you know, and you can, this is one I can like pop into any time and I would just like watch it anywhere. But that, that is like, just like the classic feel good scene. Um, and to me it’s like this, it’s the representation to me of like.

Why I love Chicago, it felt so real. It felt so real to like the vibe of Chicago, especially like in that era. If you gotta think 1986, that’s the Bears. Like the one year the bears win the Super Bowl, and they were so good. And the just the energy that was coming from that city, the time was just unbelievable.

1. It just hit like everything of just like, um, Chicago, kinda like in. It wasn’t quite summertime, but it was close to summertime. and just that vibe that you just get of just like, this is a talent that’s just like, uh, yeah.

Nathan Strenge: and it also.

Kevin: have a big parade in the

Nathan Strenge: Right after, uh, like Ferris was talking with Cameron and Cameron’s like, oh, I haven’t seen anything good today. And like they were just at like the art institute. I think it was after the, the Cubs game where he, you know, caught the ball and like Ferris is like, oh, I gotta ratchet this up to the next level.

I’m putting myself in the middle of this parade. And it was sort of like this inflection point that you saw in Cameron. It was like, he had this, you know, big, you know, Ferris can do anything, but then as, as that parade’s going on, he’s talking to Sloan and they have that really great conversation. Um. It actually ties back to the school side.

’cause they’re both talking about, you know, what do you wanna do in the future? And Cameron’s kind of like, oh, I don’t know, go to college. And Sloane asked him like, what are you interested in? He’s like. Nothing. She’s like, me neither. And it just like speaks to how like their entire school experience has not cultivated like any like passions or, you know, areas that they’re, they wanna go deeper into.

So it is sort of a, it sort of brings in kind of that school side in that conversation too.

Kevin: And they did such a good job to even think of that, of like, obviously the music, you know, like Twist and Shout and Donga Shane, and they like great music that like that did that. But the way they actually did that scene, how they had kind of that more serious conversation going on, um, yeah.

Between, between Cameron and Sloan. it, it was great. I mean, I, I think that was like that, that, that was absolutely pulled everything together in that movie. the next one is a one liner. There are so many in this movie, but what’s the one line that, like, the most memorable, funny quote thing that, that, uh, that you would even, and I feel like we could put a lot, even just in this category to, to start with, um.

Nathan Strenge: Gosh. Yeah. There’s so many that stick out. I love the, you know, when they’re dropping off the Ferrari in the parking garage and the, the parking garage attendant says, you can trust me. I’m a professional,

Kevin: I’m a professional.

Nathan Strenge: I’m a professional. Cameron’s like professional. What?

Kevin: Yes. Yes.

Nathan Strenge: Love that love.

Kevin: Me too. All right. I didn’t think that was going to hit your radar. That was one to me. I’m like that, that’s one of my favorites. Um, I mean, the one liner that probably is gonna is just the Bueller. Bueller, like the Ben Sign. Um, Buer. Buer. Um.

Nathan Strenge: Anyone? Yeah.

Kevin: Any, yeah, anyone? Anyone. the other, um, yeah, I mean, there, there are so many in here.

Um, when, uh, Rooney is coming into that restaurant and, and the ga, the Cubs game is on and he goes, what’s the score?

Nathan Strenge: nothing,

Kevin: There’s nothing, nothing. Who’s with the bears?

Nathan Strenge: Bears. Um, obviously there’s life moves pretty fast. I mean, that is just like the thing that kinda speaks to the, the theme of the movie, like, don’t, don’t let the time that you have go to waste, like go out there and live. And I think that is like. The thing that always resonates with me is like he wasn’t afraid to go out and take, take risks, right?

Like there were so many risks. Like he put himself out there, almost absurdly. But um, yeah, life moves pretty fast.

Kevin: So here, here are some other ones that I wa I was listing in there too, of like when he is talking about like how he can fake out his, his parents to be sick and he goes, when you lean over, you have to lick your palms. He is, it’s a little childish, but so is high school. yeah, when the Cameron stuff, when he’s calling him and he’s in bed, and when Cameron sings this song too, of like, when, when Cameron was in Egypt, let my Cameron go, like, I so random. the line too of like, you’re not dying. You just, you just can’t think of anything good to do when he calls him back.

The other one, like when you, we talked about when he is hacking into the system and changing from, from his nine times of that, nine times

Nathan Strenge: Yep.

Kevin: right now. Like it still to this day, if somebody [00:20:00] like brings up nine or like, and they’re, I’ll still say that nine times. It’s kind of like the kids right now with the six seven of like, yeah, anytime you get that in there, um, I, I think I hit the majority of them.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah, that, that’s a good list

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah, we got a lot in

Nathan Strenge: we can go on all day, but.

Kevin: Alright. We could, all right. Realistic or ridiculous category. we’re talk, we’ve kind of hit a lot of the realistic components of like, that are true the way school or childhood or, you know, like that, you know, that, senior in high school, or 16 to 18-year-old view is I, I felt like that was pretty realistic.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah, it’s, I would say like the, there’s kind of two different scenes where they show teachers like lecturing, like the Ben Stein one is the more, um, iconic one. But then there’s the other one where Sloan is in her class. It’s an English class. I think it is definitely over the top of like teacher directed instruction, almost no engagement at all. Like kids are like drooling on the desk and like half asleep. So like that’s definitely over the top. 

Kevin: Do you, do you think it’s over the top then or now?

Nathan Strenge: there’s probably still some, you know, there’s a teacher out there who still is very much like, you know. Lecturing like that, but I think it’s, it’s a lot rarer,

there’s still a lot of like, sage on the stage type of things. Just within that, you try to see more, you know, engagement strategies to try to bring people in. you know, even on a, you know, basic, you know. Think para share type of thing. but so I would just say like, if there’s one thing that’s a little ridiculous from a school side is like, that is like the, you know, very much of like a, almost like caricature of a, of a teacher directed lecture.

Kevin: yep. Yeah, I mean, I agree. I, I do think at the time that was probably the predominant. Teaching method the way, and, and I would say, like from my experience, it was, it was pretty similar to that. Um, like it was just literally sit there and watch the clock until this teacher stops talking. so we can.

Go in the hallway and talk to our friends for a few minutes before we go to the next class that, but I, I am so glad and I think maybe a moment for us to recognize how much, how far the industry has come and has evolved, but we still are now, we still have to break that stereotype, that caricature that you’re talking about.

I still think a lot of people that are kinda my age and older for sure still think that’s the way school is, and that’s.

Nathan Strenge: Oh.

Kevin: it should remain.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah. Yeah. At least how it is. Um, or that’s like the version of school that they went to. So you definitely have to, like, we need good storytelling to show that there are way better ways to engage kids, um, than just talking at them for long periods of time. I.

Kevin: Yeah. Um, how about, how about ridiculous? I, I have a few. I mean, obviously just like how much that they can do in the day. I think that was ridiculous. I couldn’t really pull all, all of that. But even within school, for me, the one thing that stood out is that the dean, the dean of students is not gonna go to a kid’s house.

Nathan Strenge: Right.

Kevin: Like, like that obviously was just like ridiculousness to just be funny in a movie.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah.

Kevin: Um, And the whole idea too, of even just like the, the way that he was waiting with Sloan at the front of the

Nathan Strenge: Right. Yeah. The one thing that I think is actually very realistic, there were a couple of scenes that showed a hallway space and like how empty it is, like dirt while class is going on. Like the, probably the most famous one is where Rooney is like running between the doors and then like stopping to like walk, like as he goes by like the window of the door.

Um, but it’s like, yeah, like this is, this happens all the time where we have like these like very isolated, almost like siloed classrooms, that there’s no connections. And like, especially at the high school where you have like, you have your math that is over here in this part of the school, and then you have.

Within that you have a single classroom, like just how isolated it is. Like I actually think it does a really nice job in those sort of like hallway scenes of capturing just like how isolated schools can be,

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree. Awesome. All right. The iPhone effect,

Nathan Strenge: oh this, this is a huge one. This is a

Kevin: is a huge one. They make you make this movie today, which I, I did learn, I, I kind of remembered this, but they actually like turned, tried to do a TV series in this, in like the early nineties. Um. Yeah. I, I, I wonder for the, like, I would love to actually try to watch that, and it looked like Jennifer Anderson was playing the sister role, uh, in there.

Um, but yeah, but take that. Yeah. Erase your, erase your memory of me, of me mentioning that and go back to [00:25:00] if this

Nathan Strenge: like there, there’s, we’ve mentioned them already, but there’s two things that would absolutely give Ferris’s Day away. And that was if he’s singing in the middle of a parade and there’s that crowd, like there’s going to be social media, like somebody’s gonna be on their iPhone posting that to social media, and there’s, so there’s right away there’s documentation of it.

Um, and also like the Cubs game, it’s gonna be on. Broadcast is gonna, there’s gonna be a recording of it. You know, maybe there was at that time too. but certainly like when he catches that fall ball and like rooney’s there in the, in the pizzeria and he is like looking away and then, right. It cuts to like back to the game.

But like, those things like today would’ve just been like, okay, you clearly were having a day off, not, not sick. So that, that’s definitely the, the effect of what it would be in today’s world. But there might be more. But those were the two things that came to my mind.

Kevin: Yeah. Yeah, I would agree on that. I, I think, um, I think also just literally just like the tracking of phones right now and Snapchat way that every kid knows where all of their friends are at all times. like that component of like one, the parents would know exactly where, where he was that, Between Find my phone, Snapchat and like things like Life 360 and stuff like that. There’s, there’s just no way, uh, it kind of makes me feel sad, like for the younger kids right now, that there’s no way that they could actually like, pull something like this off without, um, without being found out. So, yeah, so that component of it too.

And I also think just that dynamic too, that I think was in some ways like realistic was like with the payphone in the hallway where they were just passing the phone off and Ferris, he is like, just gimme someone else and just hands it to a random girl. they all knew, like how fast that word spreads around there.

I think that is unbelievably realistic, but now just done with technology.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah.

Kevin: It’s like they all like it. It is just unbelievable between, you know, like whatever social media they’re using. It seems like Snapchat’s the most prominent one right now, but they just all know, um, exactly what’s going on and where everyone is at at all times.

I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. I don’t know. Maybe him hacking into the school computer system. 

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 substitute, would you recast any of the main roles.

Nathan Strenge: I, I would say no. Like, I don’t think you could get it better than they got. Like they were just so well done. Um, I mean, I, I can’t think of any, I was trying to think like if you were to make it today. As like a try to remake this maybe for like 40 years later, different, different era. Uh, like is there somebody today who could, who would be interesting in that role?

Or maybe like a different spin on it. Like what if you took like a, like a female perspective, for instance? Like if, but I don’t know. Nothing really came to mind. What about you?

Kevin: I agreed with you. The, the only one that just kind of always bugged me was Jennifer Gray as Jeanie in the sister role. But the, but that was her role, so I’m like, maybe she was just like, like she was supposed to be like, kind of that annoying, frustrating, yeah. One that you’re like, like, oh, come on. Why are you like trying to, trying to bust your brother?

Um, um, so much. Yeah, I, I thought that role especially, ’cause she was a pretty big star at the time. Like she was, uh, I mean she was dirty dancing. Uh, I don’t know if that one was, came out right before, but I felt like she was like kind of underutilized and maybe not in the right role in there. Um, but again, no dirty dancing was after that.

Um, which I also did not know that. They were, Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Gray were dating, like even though they played sisters, they were dating.

Nathan Strenge: they were, oh, I did not know

Kevin: Yeah. Or they, or they either dating or started dating, um, from that movie. but I always thought, Sloan, so Mia Sarah played Sloan. I never understood why she didn’t get. A lot more roles.

Nathan Strenge: [00:30:00] Yeah, she was

Kevin: this was really like her, like the only thing that I, that I know her from. but overall, I mean, Cameron was perfect, like

Nathan Strenge: Oh

Kevin: played the perfect Cameron, and I know they looked at a whole bunch of different

Nathan Strenge: when they filmed this, he was 29. Alan Ruck was.

Kevin: I saw that.

Nathan Strenge: Isn’t that interesting? Yeah.

Kevin: Yeah. Yep. All right. Um, so the hags have a great summer, like what kids are writing in the, in the yearbook at the end of the year.

What, what would be the final comments that that, like if somebody was just gonna write a little one-liner or lasting impact of this movie, one stand out for you.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah, it’s like, don’t wait to live your life. It’s like, get out there, get in the world, like try things. Don’t, don’t let fear like hold you down. It’s like, I think for me, like that is like the lasting, and it’s what makes it timeless is like, it’s really fun, but it has that like really deep, like rich meaning behind it.

So like for me, it, it’s all about that. Like, let’s go and experience the world. Let’s go experience life. Let’s not wait until, you know, we get to some age and have some. The right time, the right moment. Like, let’s, let’s get out there. And, and that applies to school too. It’s like, how can we, how can we take that same idea of like making our, the learning more authentic, really connecting it to community solving problems that, that kids can, can get into and, and research and, and form relationships with people outside of the school. So like to me, there’s so many different, kind of strands that, that you can pull from that theme that, that do have, a, a meaningful connection to the way we look at school.

Kevin: Perfect. Yeah, I, I totally agree with that. the only other one that I had in there is just like, when Cameron gets pulled out of the, pulled out of the pool, and it’s like, Ferris Bueller, you’re my hero. I, I can see maybe people, somebody writing, writing that in there. but totally agree with you of the lasting impact of it.

Um, so to keep things moving, where are they now? So this was. 40 years ago, so Ferris Bueller is now 58 years old.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s a great, what is a 58-year-old Ferris Bueller doing with his life? Well, I, I hope he and Sloan got married and they have a family and like, I don’t know, I, I could envision them, you know, just being like, I don’t know, out there, like, not only in Chicago, but like having these experiences.

And so maybe they’re like, uh, they signed up for like, you know, there’s like school on a ship, or like school at sea. Like they are like captaining co-captain, like the, these experience that like bring them to different parts where they get to do all these cool, like cultural things. Like, I don’t know, that’s just throwing it out that I made like another school connection.

But what, what do you think a 58-year-old Ferris Bueller’s doing?

Kevin: I mean, he clearly, he’s clearly a leader. He can get people to follow him, he can influence people, and he can win people over. So to me, that, that went in a couple different ones. Would he go kind of more politician like is he, is he like the mayor of Chicago type of guy? or some other type of like, uh, yeah, like business leader or something like that?

Um. I, I don’t know if he would’ve, um, stayed anywhere near education with his experience and his views of education. I don’t, but I don’t know. Maybe, maybe if he gets married and they have kids and he starts saying, I don’t want my kid, I don’t want my kid to go through that too.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah, exactly right. Yeah, I think.

Kevin: is. He becomes a charter school leader and he, he opens, opens his

Nathan Strenge: I could, I, I think it’s something like in an entrepreneurial spirit, um, I, I, you know, whether that’s the business side or Yeah, opening a new type of school or something like that. I, I feel like he would get too bogged down in like, the bureaucracy to like be a politician, but, I don’t know. Yeah. It’s a great, great kind of thought exercise to think about.

Kevin: Yep. All right. Uh, battle the bands. This is our last one. If we are gonna pick the best music from this movie,

Nathan Strenge: Yeah. Oh

Kevin: I, I, I have three that, that stand out for me. Um, two, two that I, that I, I would have a debate about.

Nathan Strenge: Okay. Well let’s start with yours. I want to hear yours first.

Kevin: So you could say Donka Shane, just like, I mean, that, that was good. twist and shout,

Nathan Strenge: Yeah.

Kevin: you know, in the parade. yeah, I mean, it, it’s. We already talked about how that pulls things together, but then the oh oh oh song that is kind of like played throughout that, which I didn’t realize. I just thought that was like a kind of like a eighties song that like hit, but it actually came out earlier, didn’t really get much traction, but then did after it, like, kind of got a little comeback from this movie.

Um, like at, you know, just at the end.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah.

Kevin: The end where Rooney’s on the bus sitting with the kids. so, so one of those two because, and, and I wanna throw that in because [00:35:00] if you hear that song, at least for me, I think definitely Ferris Bueller Twist and Shout. You know, it’s got a story of its own outside of the movie.

Nathan Strenge: Yeah, yeah. No, that’s a great, and that scene with, with Rooney going on the bus, such a great way to end the film too. Like,

Kevin: Yep.

Nathan Strenge: I loved the, the way they used the, the Star Wars theme when the, when the guys were in the Ferrari Drive-in it just like, it, it just felt like such like a, it hit.

Just, you know, right. As like the opening credits of Star Wars, like these guys like going over the jump on in the road and like just flying, going hundred miles an hour. It’s like, yeah, just, I love

Kevin: Yeah, I agree. I think that was good too. And then even just like, just in the background, they had a quick shot of like MTV and the MTV music theme too. Like just again, capturing that, that moment there. Um, but yeah. All right. all right. Well I think that, I think what we’re talking about with that song and the credits is a good way to wrap it up.

One of the first movies that I could think of that in the middle of the credits, there was more to the movie movie. Like there’s more laughs where he comes back on the screen and says like, what are you doing? Like it’s over, go home. Um, because of that, I have been one of those ones, if I go see a movie in the movie theater, I stay to the very end

Nathan Strenge: Just in case. Yep. Just in case. What always works for you for like a Marvel movie, like you can just count on it there.

Kevin: See, I’ve never, I’m not a marvel, like all the Marvel, like superhero movies, Avenger, like I, I’ve, I haven’t seen any of ’em.

Nathan Strenge: You know, that’s a whole nother, that’s a tangent, but there’s always that like post credit, like, you know, teaser for something else.

Kevin: I didn’t know that. All right. Maybe, maybe I should, uh, watch them now. all right. That’s Ferris Bueller.

Nathan Strenge: Woo. All.

Kevin: I, I, I hope we, uh, yeah, I hope we did well representing that one. I’m sure I’ll get comments most likely from, from my brothers there because I’ve watched this movie with them a lot, so I’m sure they’ll tell me things that I missed.

Real, real world. Tell me what, what are you working on now? What are things that you’re, you’re spending a lot of your time and thoughts and focus on.

Nathan Strenge: you know, I, I, the biggest thing right now is a common problem that, that schools that we are working with is facing is they built this brand new school, um, that probably has, you know, flexible learning environments, but teachers haven’t received any real training to actually. Activate these spaces and work on more collaborative adult practices, um, to connect into more interdisciplinary, really, like we were talking about with, with Ferris Bueller de-siloing education, to try to bring more authentic experiences to try to create more student agency, more movement.

so like that is coming down to one word is, is activation. So like that’s the big thing. Um, and really excited to be working with you. Um. Towards a four Ali’s uh, learning scapes here, uh, at the end of

Kevin: Learning scapes. I can’t believe it’s that time of year

Nathan Strenge: I know we are like almost a month away from this, just over a month away, and we’re doing an amazing film festival to kick off the conference together.

So excited for what that’s gonna look like. And I just think there’s so much that we can do, together when we look at the power of the environment and how we can help people use it to the best of their ability.

Kevin: Awesome. I wanna hype up more of this film festival. So it is gonna be on that Wednesday, October 29th at learning scape. So if you’re going to learning scapes in Phoenix this year, the general session is Wednesday afternoon, but there’s actually this like special film festival that, um, that we’re gonna be doing before that.

So. Highly encourage you to go to it. And um, and it’s really something.

that came from you and I talking at learning scapes last year of, of talking about kind of the power of storytelling and, 

and, uh, how much it can influence people. do you wanna talk through kind 

of some of the things or should we leave it just as like a cliffhanger of like, just just, go there and. And, 

Nathan Strenge: Well, you, you should just go there. 

There’s gonna be these. Really

trying to keep it really tight to, to get not only the short 

films, but

also some discussions to really talk about 

how we can use these to catalyze the moment that we’re in, 

to really leverage 

learning environments as, as a, as a way to, transform education.

Because communities all over the place are talking about 

transforming 

education, and we know that 

the learning environment can be a huge factor in making that happen. So as you said, Kevin, we’re gonna have these. 

Really powerful stories that we’re 

gonna feature through short films

generate some conversations and yeah, so come there.

Um, 

the film’s gonna be, uh, the film festival’s gonna be amazing. 

Kevin: Very cool. Yep. And, and for the people who don’t know, I mean, you’re, I appreciate you, you representing the K 12 gear, but you also have your fielding international gear where you work. and for the people who don’t know. Fielding [00:40:00] International, and I didn’t fully understand this until we started talking to you guys more about this is how much your focus is on bringing kind of those three components together of like the built environment, the interiors of the space, and then the most important one of the instruction.

Like how do you, how do you connect all three of those together? And it’s been really fascinating learning more about how you guys work and more 

of like how 

I feel like our industry needs to really be thinking about

that because we’ve. All had

those examples where we’re really proud of the building. We, we, we built. 

you know, it looks great, you know, at that opening day. And then you come back there.

six months

later and you’re like, oh, like. It’s just not being fully implemented the way it, it was planned. and so I’ve really enjoyed kinda having those conversations with, with you guys at Fielding of how do we put all this together into, into, to your point, that activation, like we know the why, the why, like we understand kind of the research.

It’s now it’s just like, How do we do this? we need 

Nathan Strenge: How do we actually make the implementation changes that are going to lead to the vision that we’ve, that we’ve 

cultivated. And I’m also very excited to the possibility of, of having these conversations alongside you and, and Mark at K 12, um, with other people to how can we, how can we have this conversation, zero, that initial 

conversation that gets us to the how?

’cause it’s, yes. It’s not as much about the why anymore. 

Um, it’s how do we actually do

this work? 

Kevin: Yeah, and this is a little sneak peek on the things that I’ve been working on too that that we’ll 

be introducing. And not just me, like our, our teams and the industry. This is really an industry initiative, but one of the things that’s been on my plate that if you’ve been following the 

podcast for the listeners that Last year I did a really, we did a three part series of 

looking at, um, how do we connect 

all, all of these components together? and this is really kind of the evolution of, 

it, of what we’ve been calling kind of these project 

or these conversation zero of like, how do we get everyone to the 

table really early on that

recognize the importance? and then, We’re working on a book here that’s coming out here, 

um, that’s really gonna be looking at the approach of all the lessons learned of what are those core components that need to happen so that we don’t miss 

out on these opportunities when the community does have the opportunity either build a new school or do like a massive.

Renovation. So I’m excited about it. We got a lot of things like I, I just we’re going into that time of year where it’s just like, I feel like it’s the Super Bowl of, like our industry. So I, I’m excited about it and it’ll be good to hang out with you too. All right, awesome. For the listeners, um, you know, it, it’s learning scapes, sign up, attend to that, absolutely do that.

But then, um, if you enjoy this type of, these types of conversations and really bringing our industry forward, uh, hit subscribe wherever you’re listening, watching to this, whether it’s YouTube, Spotify, apple, or Better learning podcast.com, which is our hub for everything. it, it’s been really fun going through these movie formats this year and, uh, and just really, Having, having some fun conversations about also knowing that we’re making an impact. So just appreciate the audience so much because it is a really cool community that, that we’re surrounded by. So Nathan, I will see you in a little of our month. 

Nathan Strenge: Alrighty. 

Kevin: All right. Thanks for doing this.