REDI Lab Year 3 is about to begin! This year, around twenty juniors have applied to participate in a program that originated in 2016. REDI stands for Research-Entrepreneurialism-Design-Inquiry and is a trimester-long opportunity for interested juniors to “disrupt” their usual educational process. Rather than attend English or history classes, students go to the REDI Lab on the first floor of the Ponzio Art Center and begin working on a long-term project of interest to them. They work as a cohort, supporting each other and giving each other feedback, under the supervision of the REDI Lab coordinators, Paul Kim and Tom Thorpe.

 

Many of the students also pull out of other academic courses, depending on their topic of interest and their existing junior-year schedules. Those decisions are handled on a case by case basis. The idea is to free up enough blocks during their school day so that these students can really devote a significant amount of their third trimester time and energy to the lab.

 

It’s important to emphasize that this way of learning is not necessarily better, but it is different than anything they have done before at CA. REDI Lab reconfigures time and space in a way that allows students to dive deeply into an area of interest, while they simultaneously take stock of what they value as learners and what education means to them. This sort of disruption really benefits certain students who are looking for an alternative mode of education, and the REDI Lab instructors spend a lot of time asking students to consider the how and why of learning as much as the what.

 

Of course, such a change of pace can be a real jolt for CA students who have been successful in the dynamic, rigorous educational model we have previously put in front of them. Faced with a greater level of autonomy and agency, some need time to get adjusted to the new reality and to figure out it really means for their learning process. I recall talking to one student who said she soon realized that Mr. Kim and Mr. Thorpe were going to keep turning her questions back on her. Instead of being told what she was supposed to do, she was now being consistently asked “What do you want to do?” That level of independence and self-direction can almost be overwhelming at first. She quickly learned to embrace the freedom.

 

Still, by the end of the trimester, the students adapt and become more accustomed to being in the driver’s seat. I have been impressed with what they have been able to plan and execute. Among the various REDI Lab projects from the first two years of the program: two students wrote lengthy novels or collections of stories and poems, one designed a business plan for a new private jet company (Uber for planes!), one created a non-profit agency for helping under-resourced communities with swim lessons, one designed a swimming facility for the CA campus, another turned his passion for woodworking into several beautiful new functional and artistic pieces, and on and on it goes.

 

What also has stood out for me is that students have not always been successful going straight ahead on their original concept. Many have had to adjust or even scrap their original plan once they hit an unforeseen real-world obstacle. The student who designed the CA natatorium originally wanted to create an adaptive skiing device for disabled athletes, for instance, but she shifted gears once certain complicating factors presented themselves. That’s authentic learning!

 

We are proud of this innovative program that allows students and faculty alike to try out new ideas and concepts, to grow as thinkers and learners, and to find a new group of students willing to collaborate with them and encourage them as they tackle a big project. I wish this next cohort of students success in REDI Lab 2018-2019.