Innovation Lab Uncovered

Innovation Lab High School is an NSD choice school that opened in 2020. Focused on nurturing leaders and innovators, the school offers a unique learning style that focuses on several skills — such as collaboration, communication and critical thinking — many of which are sought after in the 21st century. The school also provides a tight-knit community of just under 250 students, which is great for making connections and team building. Students are drawn to Innovation Lab’s small student population and educational style, which seem helpful in preparing for an ever-changing workforce. I had the opportunity to attend ILHS for a year, but I decided to switch back to my home high school after I realized ILHS isn’t what I imagined it would be. Registration for ILHS is coming soon, and many eighth graders have the potential to be led astray. The way NSD markets ILHS is very misleading, and it has caused many students, like me, to be led astray. Despite NSD promoting Innovation as a school that prepares students to be leaders in innovation and STEM careers, the school is only beneficial to students who prefer a flexible learning environment and a smaller community. It is crucial that NSD starts advertising in a different way. ILHS students have fewer academic opportunities than they would have at their home high schools. Innovation’s clubs and classes in fact, are still evolving and establishing themselves. In other words, due to the lack of resources, the clubs depend on students to pursue passion projects, which puts a big burden upon individuals who may want to seek leadership positions. In high school, students are supposed to explore their interests, which is hard to do at a school that doesn’t offer these opportunities to students. Moreover, it doesn’t help that the school’s name itself — “Innovation Lab” — is deceptive, as the science-related words suggest a STEM-focused rigor that differs from its emphasis on flexibility and collaboration. I was completely unprepared for ILHS’s lack of resources, since the photos and flyers for the school made it seem very well furnished. ILHS also doesn’t have typical high school clubs such as MUN, DECA or NHS, which limits extracurricular opportunities. They don’t offer many advanced courses either, with no AP or IB classes. There aren’t any school sports, and there isn’t a gym or other athletic facilities either. STEM schools such as Tesla STEM High School offer several academic opportunities, such as advanced tech, more hands-on learning and larger science labs, which makes ILHS’s lack of resources an unpleasant surprise. The building in reality is an old T-Mobile call-center turned into a school, with none of the classrooms containing actual doors. As a matter of fact, the school still has cubicle quadrants and whiteboards for their classroom walls. ILHS simply doesn’t have the resources to “innovate.” The unique grading system is something that baffles many freshmen as well. Innovation doesn’t focus on A’s, B’s and C’s; instead, they grade students based on their proficiency and effort. You may think that this is what the traditional grading system does, however the ILHS School Profile states that their system titled, the “Mastery Learning Record, (MLR)” specifically focuses on growing a student’s skills overall, rather than reducing them to a number with a GPA. The six skills that ILHS wants to establish in their learners are communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, agency (initiative to learn) and citizenship. Students embrace these values through student-led initiatives, which teachers grade upon rather than a traditional grading rubric. Although these are great skills to have, the focus on these skills felt much like another layer atop the fact that Innovation wasn’t the STEM school I thought it was. It was a huge shift from traditional school, and it took lots of getting used to. One key thing to consider when you apply to this school is if this is how you want to be graded, and if this curriculum is something you’re ready to shift in. Innovation’s dynamic learning system emphasizes student-led initiatives and project-based learning, modeled by their little-to-no-homework policy, and classes focusing on collaboration and communication. Most of the time, I was always on a big assignment with someone else. There is a strong focus on interdisciplinary work, where students will learn skills and information from various subjects and apply them to a project in another class. Teachers encourage students often to start their own passion projects. In fact, one of ILHS’s big traditions that every student gets to work on its Better World Day project, where groups of students will together work on a passion project throughout the year that improves their local environment and community around them. An additional aspect that contributes to ILHS’s flexible setting are their weekly Wednesday “Flex Days.” On these days, students go around to different clubs and complete schoolwork, where there are no classes scheduled. The highly flexible curriculum has its drawbacks. Some students said they feel disoriented or unproductive in the student-led setting. I know I often felt lost as I had nothing much to do, especially during the weekly Wednesday Flex Days. With the student-led atmosphere, it actually led to many feeling distracted as working on these days wasn’t necessarily enforced by staff. Furthermore, the little to no homework policy doesn’t really work out if they give students those Flex Days, because students end up sitting around with nothing else to do. Overall, ILHS is not the school for students who seek academic challenges or students who like exploring multiple extracurriculars. My overall experience with Innovation Lab is that I have lots of mixed emotions about the school. I made multiple new friends, met amazingly kind and understanding teachers, learned much about what I prefer as a student, as well as what I prefer in a school. However, I just cannot see the school in the completely positive light that I would like to, because I felt like I was tricked into thinking the school would give more than I actually got. The key component that needs to change is how the district is marketing ILHS. The school has the potential to be a place many students could thrive in, but I and many others found that it wasn’t the right fit due to us being misled. To incoming freshmen, it is imperative that you do extensive research on this school, to know if this is what you want.