Coach Nada Elsonni, newly minted Creative Director for NuVu, has been with the innovative school for almost 4 years. In that time, she’s watched the evolution of project based learning at the high school level, as each year coaches develop and iterate the heart of the NuVu curriculum—the design studio.

With 3 studios per semester and a total of 9 throughout the year, these projects are at the heart of learning at NuVu. Each summer the coaches gather to workshop the coming year’s learning modules. Within this two-part planning process, the staff iterate successful studios of the past, adding new relevance or insight, then brainstorm a whole new segment to dive into for the coming school year.

“We do a retrospective with previous studios to determine what elements were successful,” shares Elsonni. “Maybe it's a client that was really great, and we think ‘how can we continue to build this client relationship?’ Maybe the topic itself was really interesting and we'd love to do this again. Maybe it was the technical element that we want to continue. Maybe it's all of that together.”

So how does the staff take a fresh idea and translate that into a new design studio? According to Elsonni, it's interdisciplinary. “One way we approach a topic is to ask what's happening in the world right now, and what do we want the students to learn from it? Then we ask what is the impact of that learning? Another concerns our client partners and the problems they are looking to solve. The third element is the expertise that we have in-house.” Elsonni explains that the team thinks strategically about the skill set of each coach, and what technical aspects they can contribute to the learning process within a specific design studio.

At the end of a workshop, the team could have 20-30 possible topics, which they then refine and bring their top choices to the students themselves through a poll before making their final decisions. “Getting the student’s feedback is key to discovering what they are interested in, and what will excite them to want to learn,” she shares.

Creating the design studio curriculum is a process that many of NuVu’s coaches feel the most excited about, because it is here, as Elsonni explains, that the staff’s knowledge shines. “We are not just teaching a curriculum from a shallow level. We bring our unique expertise into play. If we see a student that is hungry for knowledge, we have the ability to help the student push further and dig deeper in an agile way. This is how unique and exciting it is to teach at NuVu.”

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