Brooklyn LAB intentionally creates a “college-ready” culture that blends academic rigor with social-emotional learning, explicitly preparing all students for the demands and opportunities of college. From naming rooms after colleges and engaging students in collaborative research projects as 9th graders to building “AP-for-all” into the course sequence, the consistent message to students from day one is all of them are going to college. Scholars are encouraged to look ahead to their short-term and long-term futures through a daily advisory meeting and a foundations of leadership course. On a regular basis, teachers and counselors explain need-based financial aid, address student misconceptions that college acceptance means a college scholarship, and describe the importance of college accreditation.

This component of the school’s guiding vision permeates deeply into their team’s thinking. When COVID-19 hit and school leaders foresaw the disproportionate burden that school closures would pose to already-disadvantaged students, they launched a series of design charrettes (a short collaborative project between education and design experts) to support a new Equity by Design initiative to understand how to best serve their students during the pandemic, and have gone on to share the resources with countless schools across the nation.

At Brooklyn LAB, scholars are required to “show what they know” before moving on. Teachers work to form personal relationships with students to provide stability, gain a better understanding of how to serve their students’ needs, and ensure students feel well-known. Cortex, a digital learning platform created by school co-founder Erin Mote, provides teachers and students with a day-to-day data dashboard and a cumulative “Mastery Progress Report” that shows what competencies, skills, and academic content each student has mastered. This enables teachers (two of whom are in most classrooms, moving fluidly from large-group to small-group to one-on-one instruction) to customize student learning to meet students’ unique needs while empowering students to better understand themselves as learners. Further, every student at Brooklyn LAB has a personal and individualized success coach, who fosters and maintains high expectations and employs strength-based and culturally relevant approaches in their support.

Brooklyn LAB students are leaders and decision-makers. During daily advisory periods, students work with advisors on things like leadership skills and understanding themselves as learners. Students design their own clubs—from debate to robotics—and serve as coaches and leaders in paid after-school positions. The school’s foundations of leadership program ensures that incoming freshmen are challenged to think both short-term and long-term about their future, including college acceptance, scholarships, and financial aid. Brooklyn LAB also connects students with learning opportunities such as internships, mentoring, and work-based projects outside traditional school walls through partnerships with groups and initiatives such as the Amazon Future Engineers Program, a comprehensive childhood-to-career program aimed at increasing access to computer science education for children and young adults from underserved and underrepresented communities. The goal is to close opportunity gaps for young people in their changing neighborhood by connecting low-income students with thriving local businesses.

Teacher development is built into every aspect of Brooklyn LAB—from its hiring process to its master schedule. Because educators at Brooklyn LAB are committed to hiring a diverse teaching staff that mirrors their student population, they recruit from the surrounding neighborhood and offer one-year paid fellowships through programs like a residency partnership with New York University and a pathway-focused partnership for teachers graduating from the Relay School of Education. Residents then co-teach with experienced teachers, provide high-dose tutoring for all students, and enroll in graduate courses, earning dual certification in a specific subject and special education. Once hired, teachers work with specialists to develop individual professional learning plans. The school provides teachers with the professional learning needed to become success coaches and is establishing professional learning communities (PLCs) to conduct reviews and end of unit assessments collaboratively. There are shared leadership opportunities between the various instructional and administrative roles. This broad-based approach to professional learning allows all adults on campus to support each other in better serving Brooklyn LAB’s students.