This is the second post in a series.

What if high school students could conduct methodical research on important questions like university students and researchers do? Well, as the students at Laguna Beach High School (LBHS) are demonstrating, they can.

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 researching their own big questions in fields of their choice. Shen’s explanation of how the AER program works, combined with students’ input through the rest of this interview series, lets us glimpse some of the different ways students can use the program to pursue individual passions, as well as how other educators can implement such a program.

LBHS student Aryana Mohajerian was the first to give us an account of her experience in AER and the findings that her AER research produced. Mohajerian’s answers follow each question below.

Jenny Grant Rankin: In short, what was your research study about?

Aryana Mohajerian: In short, my research was about marketing a membership program to different target demographics in a........

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