Community, to me, means a group of people that are able to work collaboratively together in order to be successful- and that is what Innovation Lab has taught me. I’ve learned so much in such a short period of time while being in the program, but aside from the mandatory curricular information that we need to know, I’ve learned things about myself and the people I spend most of my days with.
My teachers are some of the greatest role-models I’ve ever met and I look up to each of them for different reasons.
Mr. Belanger, an incredibly talented writer and teacher, encourages me to continue writing and share my poems, he makes everyone feel welcome in his class. Ms. Hawes encourages me to share my ideas more in class and guides us to be more imaginative and analytical with the texts we read. She’s made me want to look back into every book I’ve read so far and see what I may have missed. Doc, or Dr. Goldin, makes the entire class excited to explore the world of science and personally makes me more interested in chemistry than I had been prior to Innovation Lab, she’s always willing to explain the most complex scientific processes no matter how long it may take. Mr. Walach truly makes math class more fun and gives us more freedom, he makes us feel as though we can always go to him if we need help for any reason.
Innovation Lab teachers are all great role-models and have made me realize that learning doesn’t have to be something you do on your own, as a quote in our Design Studio states,
“If you’re the smartest person in the room, then you’re in the wrong room.”
Being in this educational system my whole life and always feeling as though I needed to work harder to be the smartest, the best, the fastest person in my grade, when I saw this quote it made me think,
“If we were all the best at everything, the world would be incredibly boring.”
Later on, I realized not only would it be boring, but we would all be stuck at a certain standard of intelligence.
We, as people, should always been willing to learn and grow. Innovation Lab challenges me to stop being my stubborn self and to listen to what my peers have to say when working in a group or asking for help. It’s taught me that I should be open to new ideas even if I don’t exactly agree with them, an example of this is when we were planning our first STEM project. I was very hesitant to change our original idea but once my group members began discussing why it wouldn’t work, I finally agreed to change the plans. Innovation Lab has also made me realize how beneficial my bossy and sassy attitude can be when working in a group environment. If my group members aren’t doing their work, I’ll let them know very quickly what needs to get done and by when. Working in groups is something that Innovation Lab students have to get used to when first joining the program, and many of us, including myself, are still trying to figure out how to balance out all of the work. It is a skill that we all know we will need in the ‘real world’ so personally, I’m glad to be developing these skills now. The program, to me, feels as though it’s simulating how life would be like when we’re out of school. There’s never just one task that we have to focus on, and although this may seem overwhelming, it’s also realistic and forces us to learn time management skills.
It’s a program I am glad I joined because it allows me to apply my interests and the things I care about to the information we’re learning in class. It gives a purpose to what used to seem like busy work in regular classes and it makes me want to put in the extra effort.
Isabella Sampedro Innovation Lab Blog 