NuVu High School may not be for everyone. But sometimes, it is exactly what a student needs.

Take the case of Maddie Johnson-Harwitz. Maddie was a high achieving student, talented soccer player, and was hitting straight As at a public high school in Cambridge…but simply wasn’t enjoying herself. “I was working really, really hard and I was very stressed,” recalls Maddie. “I felt a lot of pressure around grades so I spent a lot of my time working on my schoolwork and sacrificing anything for those grades—it was an unhealthy kind of environment, but I didn’t know any other way.”

When her family heard about NuVu from a family friend, Maddie and her mom came by the Central Sq. school for a visit. At first, she says, NuVu looked so unfamiliar, she was unsure what to make of it. “ I'd never done robotics. I didn't think of myself as a good artist. I didn’t build cars on the side or I make beautiful paintings,” she remembers thinking.  “I played soccer and I did regular school.”

But Maddie’s mother saw something at NuVu that she felt her daughter needed at the time, so encouraged Maddie to try one semester. The deal was to give it a try, then she could return to public school.

Those first few weeks, Maddie says, were so unlike any schooling she had ever experienced. But as the weeks progressed, a wave of understanding came to her through the design studio work she had been doing. Suddenly, feedback from coaches became opportunities. Collaboration with teammates became learning moments. Plus, there was a new element of purpose behind the work she was producing.

“I really liked that I was doing projects that were for my community,” Maddie shares. “Early on we did a project with a nursing home in Central Square, and we went there and spoke with the residents, then came back and brainstormed ways that we could improve their quality of life. That was a level of learning I had never touched upon before.”

She says the shift from straining just to get a solid grade left, and suddenly the work  itself became the reward. Her hyper focus on doing only what will get her into college was replaced with the exciting discovery of new interests, talents and skills. Suddenly, school had become fun, and pushed her to think more creatively than she ever imagined.

“There were a lot of times where I was like, how am I going to learn how to do this? I'm never going to be able to learn how to 3D print or learn how to do any coding. But NuVu really pushed me to just try, and then they helped me to actually understand and DO it. It was like a whole new world was open to me.”

Suffice to say, Maddie stayed beyond that one semester trial— to graduate from NuVu. Not only that, she took a gap year after graduation to become a NuVu coach (during the pandemic, which she says was intense but gratifying) before entering Mass Art as an industrial design major, set to graduate this year. In addition, she was elevated to NuVu Summer Middle School Director last summer, after coaching the year before.

“I loved being a student and I felt like I wanted to give back,” she says. “I will always feel like I have a debt to NuVu, because it changed my life so significantly. Coaching felt like my way of helping other students see that they could find what worked for them, and that they didn't have to do exactly what everyone told them was the only way and path that you could go.”