When I first imagined what today is NOVA Lab, my vision was based on years of reading and collecting of research, both quantitative and qualitative, in the fields of Project and Design-Based Learning. (Here’s a document, recently updated but by no means complete that captures a good deal of that research.)
When the class launched 2019, it was based on a prototype, semester-long class I ran in 2017 and the learning we gained from that class. Nevertheless, in its first, year-long form, we (the students and I) were still searching for a way to get our feet on the ground and bring ourselves down from the rarefied air that accompanies the excitement of all new and adventurous undertakings.
Students needed a syllabus…I provided a map (see below), and later a syllafesto.
Students needed to know the work we were doing was meaningful. So I provided Project Wayfinder.
Students needed to see how the work we were studying (design thinking, entrepreneurial mindsets, innovation) played out in the real world. We found the BPHL Innovation Festival and Corbett Inc’s amazing “Fluxspace.“
Students needed the space to transform so they could live out the truth of our startup motto: “A space for inspiration, aspiration, respiration, and creation.” So I let go and provided the scaffolds and agile methods to, roughly at first (and still!), help them monitor and document their own learning.
Were it not for the interruption of our first year by the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve no doubt we would have had the biggest party to celebrate that first year and the amazing learning (and failure!) students engaged in.
Recovering professionally (for me) and personally (for every child) from the pandemic has not been easy, whether we realize it or not, and in the years since, NOVA Lab has had to find the sustaining energy and authentic motivation to keep it moving forward after the startup excitement was extinguished by the darkness of disease. That we have survived is a testament to the importance that students find in the work. Each year, we have been one of the few electives in our building to regularly roster two year-long classes per year. Until this coming year….
In March of 2023, I discovered that the upcoming school year would find us with a class size of 11. That’s down from an average of close to 40 students per year since our inception. I imagine several factors played into the drastic decline: Huge turnover in our counseling center, a shift in the date by which students had to choose classes, and the attending ignorance of the teacher (me!) to recognize the change in that date and push for student word-of-mouth advertising.
In response to the drastic decline in enrollment, I organized several events.
The first was a class discussion about what current students felt might be the cause for the downturn in enrollment. Their insights mirrored my own observations, but also included the fact that my messaging in terms of the purpose and meaning of the class were geared more for other teachers than for students starting their lives. This was a key finding, especially for an English teacher who prided himself on recognizing the importance of audience in shaping writing.
The second event was an evening meeting, with pizza!, at Fluxspace. I envisioned this meeting as a way to “reach back in order to move forward” and it involved gathering students from the first year of NOVA Lab and students currently in the class and then putting them into intergenerational, conversational pairs to engage in meaningful dialogue around particular questions. The questions were shaped around different quadrants of the Hero’s Journey and sought to discover the value students gained from their participation in the class as well as the problems they encountered. (See slideshow below.)
The insights students provided are invaluable. (Again, see below.) I will be using those insights this coming week as I dive into a revision of the class. Not a wholesale revision, just a rethinking of how I’ve approached developing backgrounds in entrepreneurial mindsets, design thinking, and a few other understandings. As well, I’ll be tightening up the assessment procedures, offering more scaffolding at the level of agile project management and rethinking the inclusion of certain curricular documents.
But in addition to the insights student provided, I realized something else. The fact that six busy former students and six busy current students were willing to spend 3 hours of a Wednesday evening working together to help make a single class better spoke volumes about the value they found in the class. Beyond the post-it notes, beyond the pizza, beyond the venue, something about the class was meaningful enough for them to expend the time and effort to gather and make the class better.
That “something” was revealed in the final two posters above: “The Special Power” and “The Gift” they took with them and shared to others. From a deeper understanding of empathy and why it is so important, to a better practice of leadership, or a better practice of project management, these gifts/powers were not simply discrete bits of information. They were skills and dispositions, things that took time to develop and which were lasting…transformative even. But even more, it was the recognition that the experiential nature of the class had allowed them to develop these skills and to transfer them to their lives and current work.
I admit that I was proud and that listening to their conversations was listening to a future I’d hoped for from the day I took the first step towards this kind of class. There’s little more a teacher could ask for from his or her students than the living proof of lives changed.
In the end, these 12 students, these six conversations are all the navigational assistance I require. Due to their insights, the methods for our journey in this class will shift; however our ends will be the same. And while the waters we enter will always be new, the heroes on this learning journey will always be new, we know where we are headed. Our North Star is bright and true.
Innovation Lab 