Click here to listen to this week’s JAM – Be Convinced.
Last Thursday we hosted a panel of students and parents who were founding members of the Nueva School’s high school a little over ten years ago. Hillbrook Upper School Head Mike Peller, who was a founding faculty member at Nueva, facilitated the wide-ranging Q&A that offered broad insight into the experience. It was inspiring and affirming, and provided tangible evidence of the extraordinary opportunity that lies in front of our founding faculty, students, and families.
What were some of the takeaways?
- “It’s a giant wave of people who are enthusiastic about starting something new,” shared one of the students. She added that it felt like a fresh slate for these students, as they were given the opportunity to start traditions and clubs. Another added that she “loved the process of creation,” describing how she was able to co-create a neuroscience course with her teacher and classmates during her senior year.” She went on to add that “learning how to build things from nothing has turned into this experience of building a company,” a process she is now undergoing as a young adult at a start-up.
- Another student, who had been part of Nueva since Kindergarten, shared that she had been worried that the new high school would feel anti-climatic for the lifers who had been at the school since elementary school. The reality, however, was that the experience was anything but that. She mentioned the new more urban campus, with a whole new area to explore. And, she highlighted the founding faculty. “The founding faculty was different in a fundamental way,” she said, pointing out that there was a self-selection process and that “every teacher was at the top of their game.”
- Several of the participants spoke about the incredible advantage they felt when they arrived at college having gone through this experience. “I felt like I went into college ahead of the game,” said one student, remarking on the problem solving skills she gained not only in the classroom but as the founder of multiple clubs. In high school she was not “joining anything, she was creating everything.” The college advantage was borne out over and over, as people remarked about how these founding students had placed at top schools across the country.
- One of the students, Alex Nickel, graduated from both Hillbrook and Nueva. He noted that our core values – be kind, be curious, take risks, be your best – are the values you want in any trailblazer. His mother, Tammy, added, “We didn’t feel like it was a risk, but rather an adventure.” She noted that Hillbrook, like Nueva, “is being guided by these amazing exceptional passionate educators. It’s not like you are just building a school out of nowhere. Years and years of solid educational foundation.”
- Toward the end, one of the parents commented, “hopefully at this point and time people realize that there is zero risk.” She went on to say that these students were disrupters, pioneers, innovators, creators, builders, adding that the skills they gained as founders and as students at a school that prioritizes real-world learning and engagement, not rote learning, just like Hillbrook will do, were exactly the skills students need in today’s world. “Global 1000 companies face big hairy problems – climate change, water, disease, racism, education, wildfires – we need human beings who are able to take things that are ambiguous, things that we don’t have an answer for and bring a completely new way of thinking; I’m not hiring people who come out of traditional schools; I don’t want more kids who can fill out a scantron, take a standardized test; I’m looking for anyone who has that characteristic, that desire to be a pioneer, to make a difference.”
Shortly after, one of the students said as a final comment, “Leaving Nueva and looking back I realized it was the single greatest thing ever; a small school where all the folks know everyone, every single person on this call is someone I am excited to see.” And, for good measure, she added, “Be convinced.”