Learning
for real.
With a focus on well-being, curiosity, and creativity, we design and implement interdisciplinary, student-centered projects in public schools.
Our Vision
Equitable public education. Every young person attending their local public school will learn and grow in a caring environment that nourishes their well-being, curiosity, and creativity.
“I learned that school is a place to wonder why.””
Commitment to Public Education
In 2015, Project Lab St. Louis was launched in the Normandy Schools Collaborative located in North St. Louis County, Missouri. As in many Missouri districts, the students in Normandy were contending with systemic inequities, including food and housing insecurity, lack of employment opportunities in their community, inadequate access to health care, overmanagement of their movements, underenrichment of academic lessons, and other causes of toxic stress and trauma in and out of school. Drawing upon the strengths and talents of students, and alongside teachers and administrators, we began designing cross-curricular projects that would nourish students’ well-being, curiosity, and creativity. Post-pandemic, we remain deeply motivated to teach “for joy and justice”* across metropolitan St. Louis through a coalition-based approach to curriculum design.
*Phrase borrowed from Linda Christensen, teacher & writer
Annual Report & Appeal 2023
Thank you for having a look! Feel free to enlarge the report by clicking the button in the lower righthand corner for easier reading on your laptop. Please consider contributing to Project Lab St. Louis by clicking on our DONATION PAGE or sending a check payable to:
Project Lab St. Louis; 6232 McPherson Avenue; St. Louis, MO 63130
Thank you so much!
Areas of Learning & Development
Interrelated and overlapping projects are developed through ongoing dialogue with students and collegial collaboration. Students learn through observation, experience, practice, and deeply individualized feedback. Over time, our students discover how it feels when learning in school is personally and socially meaningful. Project Lab’s holistic, student-centered approach leads to 100% engagement and academic achievement. In two years, 91% of Normandy’s Project Lab 8th graders improved in reading. Of this group, 41% percent improved by at least two grade levels on a nationally normed test. The average reading improvement among these students was three grade levels over the course of two school years.
Self-Awareness and Inner Peace
A safe place to learn develops from the inside out and from the outside in. Students experiencing toxic stress benefit from exercises and thoughtful discussions that consider both internal and external sources of unease, worries, and pressures. Social-emotional exercises include mindful meditation, improvisation, bio-feedback, journaling, critical social analysis, and a variety of self-reflection and identity exercises.
Culturally Relevant Reading and Writing
Students create content for an award-winning middle and high-school newspaper–The Viking Times. For four years straight, Project Lab middle schoolers co-created a nationally recognized literary magazine with students at a nearby independent school. Ten Project Lab students will have their writing published in a forthcoming collection, The St. Louis Anthology. Readings that support these projects include poetry, journalism, memoir, drama, fiction, and other genres.
Constructive Communication
Throughout class meetings, small-group activities, and one-on-one conversations, we emphasize the quality of communication. How and why we say what we say (and don’t say) leads to high-level, metacognitive learning about sociolinguistics. Discussion topics include code switching, style shifting, dialect diversity, and the ways we communicate through gesture, expression, tone, and body position.
Cross-Community Experience
Normandy Crosscurrents empowers students to understand and address the harmful effects of segregation in metropolitan St. Louis. Through facilitated dialogues, exercises, and cooperative games, Project Lab students get together with students and adults who live, work, and attend school outside of their community. Guest presenters are regularly scheduled into our curriculum, and have included political leaders and community organizers, as well as visitors with expertise in mountain climbing, dance, circus arts, tree care, and performance art.
Publications from the 2018-19 school year, left to right: Project Lab students’ impressions on gun violence were accepted in an anthology; our approach to personally meaningful questions; exploring the egg; and collaborating with students at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts here at Washington University in St. Louis.
Projects 2022-23
Permaculture & Pollinators: Diversity & Interdependence from the Ground Up
We are delighted and inspired to be collaborating with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and St. Louis-area teachers and principals to plan, build, and maintain permaculture/regenerative gardens on the campuses of two schools in the Ferguson-Florrisant School District.
Our interrelated goals for this project are: 1) Empower youth in North St. Louis County as practicing naturalists and scientists; 2) Develop enriched, interdisciplinary project-related curriculum aligned with the content areas; 3) Collect and analyze incoming data on pollinators to be shared with other garden sites and the Smithsonian’s national data base; 4) Nurture intra-community and intercommunity relationships.
This project is driven by a shared sense of urgent moral purpose with regard to environmental and education justice, food security, and matters related to global climate-change. Locally, the project will strengthen the health of pollinators in North St. Louis County and nurture a new generation of gardeners, naturalists, and scientists. At the national level, the scientists at the Smithsonian are expecting this project to advance knowledge of urban pollinator-plant interactions in the metropolitan St. Louis region, pollinator distributions, and the environmental variables associated with species survival.
To lead this project locally, Project Lab St. Louis is delighted to have engaged Valaree Logan, an experienced gardener and co-founder of an area farm in St. Louis. Val also holds a master’s degree in school psychology.
Projects 2020-21
Living Questions, Round 2: Outdoors & Distanced
As public schools across St. Louis went virtual, Project Lab St. Louis designed an outdoors version of the humanities seminar that had resulted in Living Questions, a book of student essays published in 2019. Thanks to a a generous grant from the Missouri Humanities Council and with the support of the Naitonal Council for the Humanities, Project Lab was all set to go with lawn chairs, blankets, snacks, and a hot spot for connecting our Chromebooks to the Internet. Unfortunately, the different challenges of that school year made a second round of Living Questions impossible. We’re hoping we can make it possible in 2021-22!
Projects 2019-20
CurrentS: Summer 2020
A publishing opportunity for Missouri writers, artists, essayists, poets, and journalists between 13 and 18 years old! Project Lab St. Louis collaborated with Gateway Writing Project and OneCity Stories to launch our first issue of Currents, a magazine featuring the work of Missourians between 13 and 18. The inaugural issue was published in July 2020 and can be read here: Currents 2020
From Deer to Venison: November 2019
In a two-day, hands-on seminar, interested Normandy High School students were introduced to the art and craft of meat fabrication. How is the body of an animal transformed into consumer cuts and boned meat? In collaboration with Normandy’s Culinary Arts teacher and Science coordinator, students had a profound experience that ended with a shared buffet of delicious dishes featuring venison.
The Crosscurrents CrossTown Walk: April 2020
[This project was canceled due to COVID-19.] Only 12.6 miles separate Normandy High School and Kirkwood High School in St. Louis County. This day-long experience was designed to bring students from both schools together to walk and talk half the way, meeting up in the middle to celebrate all grassroots movements that are environmentally sustainable and socially diverse. Apart from having fun, our purpose will be to illuminate new understandings about ourselves, our neighborhoods, and the relationships we nurture close and (not all that) far from home.
Student-centered Approach to Academic Literacy
This project emerged out of a close collaboration with Normandy’s High School Principal and the district’s English Language Arts Coordinator. Our purpose was been twofold: to engage students in the editing and writing of academic, cross-curricular informational texts, and to scaffold secondary students toward becoming confident readers of academic texts at the secondary and post-secondary level. We have drafted 200 passages in Biology, Earth Science, United States History, and World History. Each passages is between 500 and 700 words, factually accurate and sourced, accessible when read independently, composed from a stance that embraces social justice and cultural relevance, and critically reviewed by students. This free resource is available upon request by writing us at contact@projectlabstlouis.org
Both Sides of the Invisible Line
Project Lab St Louis Board Member Ralph Ruffin shares his personal history
Since 2015, Project Lab St. Louis has facilitated space for students to think, talk, and write about their interactions with police. These experiences eventually led to our annual Day of Dialogue with local police, which we coordinated with Ralph Ruffin, then our School Resource Officer, now an educator and Project Lab St. Louis board member. “I feel a personal responsibility to advocate,” Ralph says. “And I feel that police officers have to speak publicly about inequity and racism so citizens understand that supporting police and standing up against police brutality are not mutually exclusive.”
Living Questions 2018-19
Seeking Understanding through discussion & reflection
With the support of Missouri Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in collaboration with Circus Harmony, ninth graders at Normandy High School spent the 2018-19 year contending with personally meaningful questions. At the close of the school year, we gathered for student-moderated public discussions.
Currents 2020
A magazine by MIssouri Youth For Youth
Project Lab St. Louis is delighted to welcome you to Currents, a magazine featuring the creative work of Missourians between the ages of 12 and 18. With the support of the Missouri Arts Council, and in collaboration with Gateway Writing Project and Onecity Stories, our inaugural issue features fiction, essays, poetry, and art produced and edited by students.
Additional Publications & Experiences
Student Perspective on Gun Violence
Al Salam Day School & Normandy
Partners
Missouri Arts Council
The Missouri Arts Council supports the arts that strengthen the cultural, educational, and economic vitality of our state. MAC was a key supporter of Currents: A Magazine by Missouri Youth for Youth in Summer 2020.
https://www.missouriartscouncil.org/
Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts
St. Louis Volunteer Lawyers and Accountants for the Arts (VLAA) connects artists and arts organizations of every discipline with accountants and lawyers who donate their time and expertise to help their appreciative clients navigate the complicated world of finance and law.
https://vlaa.org/
Missouri Humanities
Missouri Humanities is dedicated to enriching lives and strengthening communities by connecting Missourians with the people, places, and ideas that shape our society. Our vision is for a more thoughtful, informed, and civil society. Missouri Humanities was a vital supporter of Project Lab’s Living Questions curriculum in Spring 2019.
Normandy Schools Collaborative
Thanks to students, teachers, and administrators, Project Lab St. Louis was launched in 2015 as a pilot program in Normandy’s 7th and 8th Grade Center.
Washington University in St. Louis
We were delighted to work with students at professors at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts on Clothing in Context in Spring 2019.
john Burroughs School
John Burroughs School seeks to instill the joy of living through active learning, integrity and service to others. Our mission is to foster in our students academic, physical and creative fulfillment, together with strength of character, while helping them become productive members of our school community. In partnership with the John Burroughs English department, Project Lab St. Louis co-published three issues of an award-winning poetry journal, The View From Here.
Focus St. Lous: Improving equity and Inclusion
“Honorees have shown a commitment to promoting diversity, access, inclusion and opportunity for all.”
Quote Source / Read Full Article