This is the sixth (and final installment) in a series.

For many, today marks the start of a new school year. It is a time when teachers adjust their instruction to be even better than the year before and when students hope each class will be exciting and relevant. One avenue for such success is experiential learning, a form of active instruction where students explore real-world challenges in a hands-on way and reflect on the experiences. Such active learning has repeatedly been found to be superior to lecture-based instruction (Deslauriers et al., 2019). When a rich research experience leads to (and informs) a multifaceted action project, you get what recent Laguna Beach High School (LBHS) graduate Logan Teeple calls, “a real and full learning experience.” In other words, you get what both teachers and students most want a classroom to render.

In Part I of this series, I interviewed Jun Shen, the passionate teacher and edtech coordinator who runs LBHS’s Authentic Exploratory Research (AER) Program. AER is an independent research course inspired by Palo Alto Unified School District’s Advanced Authentic Research program. The program pairs students with adult mentors (such as LBUSD staff, industry experts, and academics) who assist the teens in research and/or projects aligned with their own big questions in fields of their choice. Shen’s explanation of how the AER program works, combined with students’ input through........

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