Randy Testa

Randy Testa grew up watching drive-in theatre movies with his parents and brothers in a Ford Country Squire station wagon. In first grade he ran out of a movie theatre showing the cartoon PINNOCCHIO --Pinocchio told a lie and his nose started to grow. Testa lied to his mother about losing his green jacket. Testa has combined a love of movies with work as a teacher, and out of both came his work in cross-media. In his beginning years as a teacher working with dyslexic boys Testa saw that boys who had difficulty reading would persevere when they had the story schema in their heads, as a result of having seen a film of the book. In his 12 years at Walden Media Testa devised professional development activity for each film Walden produced, (including THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE) for teachers, which they could then use with students. Today he runs professional education programs at Harvard, using the occasion to make sure there’s an apt film for use with teachers.