The film, called Multiple Choice, features students who love to weld.
“You’re in the moment. Nothing else is bothering you, and you’re 100% locked in on that," says one.
"I started welding my freshman year. I just thought it would be cool. I did two years of welding and a year of carpentry. It’s very calming and satisfying," says another.
What’s different at this school in Winchester is that everyone spends time learning trades. Filmmaker Charles Haine spent a few years as a bicycle mechanic and thinks this hybrid approach makes sense.
“I look at all the culture wars we have in America, and so much of it starts so early – where we start tracking people in different directions, and we start saying: You’re going to go fix stuff, and we don’t need to teach you thinking, and you’re a thinker, and we don’t need to teachyou to fix anything,’ and it’s like, well actually no. These are all skills about what it means to be a person, and I think the longer we keep educational experiences together, the better off society is.”
And, he says, students may also better off.
“High school for most people is cripplingly boring, and it was so exciting to get to go to a high school where the students seemed happy. They had autonomy. They were making decisions about their own time. They were excited about what they were learning. If you’re between 13 and 18, you should be up, moving around for half your day. Sitting at a desk – it’s almost impossible when you’ve got all that energy.”
The Innovation Center at Handley High offers training for emergency medical technicians and nurses, electricians, firefighters, carpenters and cyber-security experts – jobs unlikely to be replaced by artificial intelligence.
“We don’t know what’s going to happen with the job market with AI," Haine says, "but it’s going to change it. There will be jobs that don’t exist anymore, and there will be a bunch more new jobs. The people who thrive are going to be the people who have gained skills in working collaboratively with others. People who’ve gained skills in learning how to be adaptable as their career changes, and – frankly -- the people who have the most physical engagement with the real world. Email jobs, spreadsheet jobs, those jobs are going to change quite dramatically with AI. A welder who shows up at a work site and builds a fresh set of stairs that are conforming to a historic building that they can’t touch, it’s going to be a very long time before we have humanoid robots capable of doing that without a tremendous amount of support.”
The film will be shown Thursday evening in Charlottesville, but the producers plan to hit the road.
“We are doing community screenings, so if you want a screening in your community, you can go to the WhatSchoolsCouldBe website or the MultipleChoiceFilm website.You can request a screening in your town, or you can just sign up to find out when a screening will be happening near you. We’re confident there will be more screenings throughout Virginia as we do community screenings with follow-up conversations about the things the film addresses.”
Kids at Handley still complete all academic requirements, and many will go on to college – perhaps gaining an edge when they apply for admission with skills that suggest they’re well-rounded students.I’m Sandy Hausman.
For more information copy and paste:
Multiplechoicefilm.com or
https://virginiafilmfestival.org/festival/2025/films/multiple-choice
