Imaginarium Institute - A Think Tank for Teens - Intenational Learning Labs - Research Projects - Passion-based Learning - Peacemaking - Latin

These are just a taste of the sorts of large-scale “what for” questions we tackle in the Changizi Lab. Questions of this kind — as opposed to studying mechanistic “how” questions— are great for students for three reasons.

First, they’re simply more exciting! For example, there’s some super detailed story for how it is that your fingertips wrinkle when wet, and it involves your nervous system and peculiar skin properties and on and on. Yawn! What I am instead driven by is, What’s the reason for why your fingers get pruney in the first place? Why did THAT evolve?! And the answer to that is, The wrinkles are near-optimal channels for dispersing water when gripping in wet conditions. Pruney fingers are rain treads! Much more interesting and surprising, right? That’s what makes science worth doing!

Second, whereas studying mechanisms demands you physically be present in a lab, addressing hypotheses about the design and function of some biological or cultural entity is carried out via “experiments” that don’t even occur in a lab in the usual sense. For such questions, you can accumulate evidence even from your own home (and access to the internet of course). For example, consider the question, Are all words defined via some small set of primitive words, or are words a tangled web all defined by others, with no “bottom”? You can’t even approach that question with subjects and machines in a lab. But you can at home!

And, third, if you want to truly grasp the world around you, you must see the function and design behind everything, not simply see soups of mechanisms. Said another way, carrying out a project of this kind helps expand how you generally interpret the world around you. Things don’t just have shape and structure and color and so on, but are imbued with a “power” they were selected for. Studying mechanisms, on the other hand, can end up giving you expertise about the “billiard ball” interactions of a hair on a freckle of an arm of the Anastrepha ludens fruit fly.

I am a radical generalist, having undergrad degrees in physics and math, a PhD in math, and having taught at university in physics, computer science, neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology departments, and having worked on problems in dozens of areas. What holds them all together is (i) that they tend to be “what for” questions, and (ii) my expertise in building and testing rigorous grand unifying theories. Learn more about my research, books, TV appearances, TED talks and more at http://www.changizi.com

In the What For Lab, you can work on a tremendous range of topics. You are free to suggest something with affinity to one of my many research discoveries, or choose something completely different. Just make sure it’s a little crazy, or it’s not worth doing!

Empowering Students for Success with Imaginarium Institute College Admission Preparation and Coaching

At Imaginarium Institute College Admission Preparation and Coaching, we are passionate about empowering students to achieve their academic and personal goals. Our team of dedicated educators provides personalized instruction and support to help students build the skills and confidence they need to succeed. Whether you're looking to improve your grades, prepare for college, or develop new skills, we have the resources and expertise to help you reach your full potential. Explore our website to learn more about our programs and services.

About Us

Student-led Passion Projects

How it works: Students create learning plans for themselves with expert mentors. They create real world projects and write about them. Each study must be approached with three lenses:

1) Personal Growth of the Student

2) Service

3) Environmental Sustainability

The methodology is inspired by the Italian Reggio Emilia Approach, utilizing documentation of learning, and empowering anyone who wants to hone a vocation through the practical application of the theoretical framework of democracy in education, as taught by John Dewey, Carla Gandini, and Loris Malaguzzi. We combine this with SEL, Social Emotional Learning through coaching 'soft skills", curating meta cognition, life authorship, and personal agency. Our process is transformative.

MISSION

Helping students achieve confidence and practical advanced skills through student-lead, passion-based learning, so they can start vocational careers with experience and create portfolios for college admissions that will put them in a league of their own. Our pedagogy trains our fellows in multisystem design thinking and agency to solve the most complex problems facing our world. One way we do this is through international group project work.

Schools tend to be cookie cutter factories. Molly wanted to create an individualized, bespoke method wherein students could do real world hands on projects in service to their communities while exploring vocational interests with the spirit of scholarship. Our fellows begin with a thesis question and build a bibliography and portfolio plan. This is combined with international group work, as our fellows are all around the world. Therefore, our fellows analyze their passion areas by mapping system designs of their topic in multiple countries around the world. After the analysis, they use backward design to plans for a better world. They write plans for service projects thereof, implement them, and document them.

COMMITMENT

Students meet with their mentors twice per week for 30 minutes each time. The remainder of the students time is engaged in real world projects, research, writing papers, and documentation of learning through video, photography, and other art media. Each semester is three months long.

Does my child have to be home-educated?

Mentees do not have to be home educated. Any teen or young adult that knows what they want to do with their life and has a strong drive and work ethic is welcome to join. They can complete their work on evenings, weekends, and summer and holiday breaks as an extracurricular. Also, young adults do Imaginarium during their gap years.

Expert Mentors

Students may choose mentors for their studies who are experts in their fields, including the following: Business, Permaculture, Ecological Urban Planning, Psychology, Sustainability, Film, Food Science, Impact Investing and Fine Arts. If you would like to study a different area, we will do our very best to find an expert mentor in your area of interest. Expert Mentors hold Master's Degrees or PhDs. If not, they have achieved acclaims in their respective fields. Mentors and students communicate with Zoom, email, and phone.

Grades. Yeah, seriously. No.

Students will write a five to ten page paper every two weeks in their passion areas. They will utilize photography and film to document their learning. The students may want to start a business and write about it, or create a community garden, or create an online cooking show. Personal transformation is the goal, as well as positioning mentees within leaderships capacities for change while in their vocations. Concurrently, the mentees will develop critical thinking skills, self-efficacy and real world problem solving capacities through project based learning and rigorous scholarship. The Expert Mentors will respond with letters to their mentees giving them heartfelt, thorough, detailed feedback.

Gold Standard Accelerator Program

In the three month program, students' learning will be accelerated. It will be transformative. For many students, they will go from 10 miles an hour to 125 miles an hour. Imaginarium Fellows will have both tacit experience and a scaffolding of the theoretical framework of their fields. They will be granted a certificate which they can present to employers, colleges, and homeschooling authorities.

Imaginarium is process oriented. Mentees will meet with their Mentor for two one hour sessions their first week of the three month semester. Subsequently, the mentees will meet via zoom with their mentor twice per week for 30 minutes per sessions. The mentor is also available via email and phone to answer questions, so the learner will not ever feel alone. The mentor guides the student in their research methods, provides critical thinking prompts, and gives detailed guidance as needed. At the beginning of each semester a learning plan is constructed by each mentee with the guidance of the mentor. It includes a robust bibliography. Every two weeks a packet is due from the student documenting their project work. The mentor will respond with a three to five page letter reflecting upon the mentee's work and process. Packets can involve video, photography, artwork, and writing. Mentees will cultivate theoretical knowledge while training in the practical vocational artistry of their chosen fields.

College and Vocational Portfolio

When a child graduates from Imaginarium, they will leave with a portfolio they can present to colleges and potential employers. Good grades are not enough for college admissions. Colleges want to see community service and passion. The project-based service learning and passion demonstrated in the Imaginarium portfolio gives college applicants a competitive edge.

Our team of experts provide the curation of bespoke transformative learning while building portfolios. Social and emotional learning, life authorship, goal setting, and agency are embedded in each curiculum we curate builds soft skills, including:

The ability to write and think critically. Self reflection, Research skills. Networking skills. Design thinking. Multi-system and meta-system thinking. Interdisciplinary approaches. International teamwork. Informational interviews. Handwritten thank you notes. Public speaking. Negotiation. Self-awareness. Emotional intelligence. Time management. Organization. Work ethic, Budgeting, Project management, Decision-making. Creativity. Active listening, Adaptability, International groupwork, Entrepreneurship.

Students write a thesis on their topics which is a unique selling point to Universities. The fellows

state a question in the beginning of the first semester. They drill deeply into it through research and praxis following it up with self reflective papers from their service learning and rigorous scholarship. Since the students design their own curricula, their level of work ethic far exceeds typical student-level work. College are extremely impressed by fellows' portfolios.

Welcome

A Think Tank for Adolescents

THE “WHAT FOR?” LAB Dr. Mark Changizi