SENIOR PROFILE 2024: Trevor McDonald

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Trevor McDonald has lived in locales around the world, and when his family moved to Massachusetts, they were originally looking for Montessori schools or considering the homeschool route. It was through this search process that they found NuVu. “I came for the last trimester that first year,” he says, “and really just fell in love with the school and its way of teaching. I was here to stay.”

He has thrived in the self-driven, project-based environment, so much so that he’ll be graduating early (technically as a junior) as he’s crushed all of his requirements in the four years he’s been at NuVu.

Despite his accelerated learning curve, at one point he wasn’t sure NuVu was the right fit for him. Not having had a traditional public school experience, he wondered what he might miss out on. Yet when he started looking into colleges and talking with others about the college experience, he heard stories of students structuring their entire high school education around the college acceptance process. “I was like, Wow, I do not want that!”

“I'm really glad I'm at NuVu where I get to explore things that I'm passionate about and can learn new skills in this way,” he shares. “I think that's really what NuVu is all about. It's not necessarily preparing you for a specific next step, but it's preparing you for whatever your next step is, to be able to thrive in that environment.”

For his senior Capstone project, Trevor focused on the Montessori experience. “I’d been in Montessori from toddler age through sixth grade, and I really loved my time there. But I’m also very interested in technology and technological advancements,” he explains. Thinking about the physical environment offered in the Montessori education model, he considered innovating a way to bring science into the classroom in a more physical way. “I did a lot of research and ultimately decided on augmented reality,” he explains. “You still have the physical components that the teachers want in every lesson, but it allows you to do what technology does really well, which is to experience what's not possible in the classroom.” Using sea life in his augmented reality, he designed a way for educators to craft their lessonslesson around visuals of the ocean and its environment.

Now with a planned family move to Georgia after graduation, he says he’s in no rush to squander his “free” year before enrolling into college. “I'm very interested in the start-up industry—part of what I’m going to do next year is explore that a little,” he says.  With some investigation into community college courses, as well as tinkering in a makerspace to continue with his NuVu style learning, Trevor says he plans to take his time now that he knows he has the tools to succeed.  

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