EXL Lab Initiatives
“The best way for students to learn concepts is not through lectures and tests, but through memorable learning experiences together. Rigorous but not academic; therapeutic but not clinical. This is the EXL Lab’s innovative approach to human transformation. This is exactly what students need.”
-Varun Soni, Ph.D. Dean of Religious & Spiritual Life, USC
Learning for Life
Our programmatic emphasis is on durable / SEL skills, visual ideation, reading and media literacy, communication, collaboration, co-creation, intergenerational learning, emotional self-management, and community contribution. EXL Lab students develop an internalized understanding of their Identity and Agency in who they are and what they believe.
At the EXL Lab, we believe our responsibility to students goes beyond the delivery of data and content; It includes the constant practice and reinforcement of core learning behaviors and skills within real world environments, so these methods become internalized and accessible on demand in the mind and body of the student. Through experienced and “making based,” real-time engagement with the world during and after their academic years, we prepare students to assess and navigate opportunities, communicate, and co-create affectively with others and understand the value and rewards of community service. In all Exl Lab programs, students learn to activate curiosity and discovery, methods of inquiry, patterns and relationships, action and consequences, communication, collaboration, visual ideation, and co-creation, navigation of and engagement with opportunities, and especially, the dynamics and benefits of relationships, personal, social, local, and global.
Transformation Series
SEVEN ACTIVATING FORCES THAT TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE
Venue – Ednovate Hybrid High, South Los Angeles
A quality or experience that is truly transformative is no mere transactional exchange. It is an activating force that, when fully embodied, enables profound personal and communal growth.
Based on the exceptional success of this series @ USC the EXL Lab will curate a distinctive itinerary of immersive experiences that empower high school students to explore, activate, and integrate one of the following transformative qualities. ↓
Exploring Transformative Qualities Through Real-World Experiences
It is one thing to contemplate the nature of these qualities; it is quite another to experience them as real forces impacting our lives. Together, we will test the transformative potential of these qualities by experiencing them as essential and powerful tools of personal and professional growth.
The experiences we share range from stories, field trips and in-class activities, to interviews with authors, chefs, and community thought leaders, with making-focused readings, discussions, and assignments that all serve as material and inspiration for a final making project.
When students can see for themselves how gratitude or compassion in motion and action transforms their lives and the lives of others, they access a deeper level of equilibrium with the quality and can commune with it as if it were a friend, family member, or trusted guide.
“What the Humility Lab did was give us a small group setting where serious intellectual content was discussed, however, it was also APPLIED and taught in a way so that it can be LIVED beyond the end date of the course. Even more important than this, it was done IN COMMUNITY WITH OTHERS! In DIALOGUE with others! Powerful. We do not get that in the normal university setting these days. Thank you for giving us this experience!”
-Patrick Connors, USC Student
Balance & Performance in Life and Sports
A Body, Mind Health Fitness Program in partnership with the Create Cures Foundation and Dr. Valter Longo
Our family table workshop series has been extremely helpful and helping the EXL Lab and the Create Cures Foundation understand what the students at Ednovate need and how to best serve them. We learned that there is a high interest in nutrition, health and mind / body fitness issues and that sports are what many of the students have in common.
The deep cultural and familial connection that youth feel to sport becomes the common access point, threshold, and foundation for meaningful learning about health and fitness that students enthusiastically engage with and sustain with passion and enthusiasm. The EXL Lab, Create Cures Foundation, and the Office of Experiential & applied learning come together to create Peak Performance Sports, a weekly program that will originate at innovate hybrid high, and will be connected to other no bad high schools through shared learning technology. In addition to the support of nutritionists and health specialists from the Create Cures foundation, and Dr. Valter Longo, the program will be supported by undergrads in Dornsife’s Joint Education Project and those in the Department of Physical Education in Mind-Body Health. The Experiential Learning component of PPS extends learning beyond the classroom into the surrounding community, demonstrating that rich opportunities to learn are all around you. Interaction and engagement with higher education venues and faculty stimulate a desire for continuing education and provide essential role models for disadvantaged youth to “See One / Be One.”
Balance
& Performance in Life and Sports
“The EXL Lab’s model of creating an experimental space where students can try on and test out the materials of transformation is the key to making experiential learning work at the university level.”
-Marcos Briano, Ph.D. Director of Physical Education & Mind Body Health, USC
Digital Creative Network
Connecting Students through Experiential Learning
Using state of the art hybrid learning technology, EXL LAB Digital Creative Network allows undergraduates, high school students and faculty to research, develop, design, co-create, present and exhibit projects though shared, making-based, interdisciplinary experiential learning experience.
The 2021 USC Understanding America Study – an ongoing panel of 13,000 respondents representing the entire United States - found that 65% of American families wanted some form of remote learning for their children. Students from lower-income, marginalized communities are disproportionately impacted by the digital divide and can often fall behind if they don’t have the digital tools to be able to complete internet-based homework assignments. Informed by its institutional, corporate, and academic partners, the EXL DCN provides, installs, and activates a regional and national network of state of the art, virtual learning technology i.e., DTEN video conferencing systems, integrated ZOOM software, teacher training and unique experience / making-based programs in locations within partner schools in underserved, Title One communities in South and East Los Angeles.
INTERSESSION
Essential Tools, Methods & Practices for Lifetime Learning
We recognize critical applied knowledge and skills “gaps” between middle-school and high-school, high-school and college, and college to career. Our goal is to develop experiential learning physical and virtual destinations that serve key transition periods that prepare students to think critically, collaborate and co-create with diverse disciplines, and produce, present, & defend.
In addition to these fundamental life skills (that are not taught in traditional education), Intersession will focus on self-awareness and emotional self-management as transformational elements necessary for life. We do this by supporting students in identifying and embracing who they are, what they believe, why they believe, and how those beliefs are expressed in their choices, actions, and consequences. Intersession is an experiential learning virtual and physical destination that serves key transition periods between middle-school and high-school, high-school and college, and college to career that activates Durable Skills to prepare students to think critically, collaborate and co-create with diverse disciplines, produce, present, and defend. Intersession will focus on self-awareness and emotional self-management as transformational elements necessary for life. We do this by supporting students in identifying and embracing who they are, what they believe, why they believe, and how those beliefs are expressed in their choices, actions, and consequences.
Varun Soni
USC Dean of Religious Life Subtitle
The best way for students to learn moral concepts is not through lectures and tests, but through experiencing them together. Literary but not academic; therapeutic but not clinical. This is the EXL Lab’s integrated approach to human transformation. This is exactly what students need.”
Marcos Briano
USC Director, PE & MBH
The EXL Lab’s model of creating an experimental space where students can try on and test out the materials of transformation is the key to making experiential learning work at the university level.”
Patrick Connors
USC Student
What the Humility Lab did was give us a small group setting where serious intellectual content was discussed, however, it was also APPLIED and taught in a way so that it can be LIVED beyond the end date of the course. Even more important than this, it was done IN COMMUNITY WITH OTHERS! In DIALOGUE with others! Powerful. We do not get that in the normal university setting these days. Thank you for giving us this experience!”
Mind, Body, Health
Yoga and Mindfulness
In response to student requests at Ednovate, the EXL Lab is happy to support a weekly yoga and mindfulness to be taught by USC staff and undergrads from Physical Education, Mind-Body Health and our Academic Curator, USC Adjunct Professor Kiel Shaub
