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NuVu is an innovation school for middle and high school students.
Instead of having year-long classes, like math or English or something,
we have 2-week long studios.
And so in these studios, these are projects where we're
presented with an open-ended problem.
And almost every project is created with a team,
which makes it so much more fun.
Our pedagogy is based on an architectural model
that is really about a design process.
It's teaching critical thinking.
It's teaching the ability to empower your own ideas
and go through an iterative creative process that is collaborative,
that it has a critical loop to it.
The first couple of days, we do a lot of introductory work
where the students get to learn deeply about the problems
that we're addressing.
And then we do a lot of brainstorming and ideation.
After that phase, after the students divide up into groups,
I’ll go around to different groups and help them
both by giving feedback about their designs and their ideas,
but also actually helping them technically.
So when I was at regular school, there was no chance for me
to be myself, really.
What's really great about NuVu is it's all what I want to do.
I'm very passionate about my projects I'm working on,
and I get very interested in them.
It's very open and independent.
And while most people would think that's a bad thing--
kids could just do whatever they want-- you're really
given a task here that's great.
And when you're into the task, you really want to just get it done.
I came to NuVu because I like building things,
and I thought that NuVu would be a best fit for me for building my ideas
and making them come to life.
And I love regular school, but I thought it would be very cool.
I'm really interested in the engineering and designing
aspect of building, and prototyping, and stuff, and all this cool software work.
So right now, I'm working on a hand drive wheelchair attachment.
And so what it does is it uses a rationing mechanism,
which means it has free resistance in one direction
and locks in the other direction.
But what we've done is we've stuck two on top of each other,
so when you switch the handle, it actually goes backwards.
And the super cool thing about this, which is like crazy to make,
was that this one actually has a gearing up ratio.
So it's faster than if you would just push the wheel 1 to 1.
So this is one of the projects that I recently created,
which is a music box that attaches to a bus pole.
So the need for it is that when you sit at a bus stop, obviously,
everyone's on their phones.
And in the winter, it's cold, and there's really nothing
to do while waiting for it.
So the purpose of this was to create an interactive piece of art that brings
people together in a communal way.
So this is a bus pole that everyone sees at the bus stop.
And what we created was a cylindrical music box that attaches to it.
This is the music box part.
There's a resonation system down here.
So these are the actual tongs that are tuned.
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At any given point, we just want to track where
the students are in their process.
We track their creative skills, and mostly for us, this
revolves around the critique process, how
the students are taking that critique and synthesizing it
into design decisions, how they are communicating their ideas,
and how they are collaborating with others.
I think the critique process is something that is definitely
an adjustment period for some kids.
And I think part of it is that when you're a creative person, when
you have creative ideas, it's really hard to separate them from yourself.
And so it's very common for students to get defensive,
or to just write off the critiques, just because it's so hard to really put
yourself out there.
And I've definitely had critiques that have gone really well,
and I've also had critiques where my eyes water a little bit.
But also, I know that these people are here to help me.
These people are my family at NuVu.
Our hope is that a student goes away from this experience
with the idea that what they believe in and what they think matters,
and that it's really about the process, not
about the thing that comes out the other end.
I think the most important piece is really
creating learning environments that engage the students.
And you don't engage the students by giving them problems
that you already know the answer for.
You engage them by giving problems that they
are excited about, that they feel that they
could change the world by solving them.
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