The Innovations Academy - Spotlight

Written by: Serra Elayda ('28)

“What do I want my future to look like?” is a question that many high school students ask themselves. Choices for career paths are endless, and getting to your goals may sometimes even seem impossible. For students who aspire to get into jobs under innovating and engineering, joining the Innovations Academy is a great opportunity to help highlight the many options that you have for your desired future. 

At Lawrence High School this year, the Innovations Academy is a program that allows us to engage in hands-on projects, explore our talents and interests, meet people with jobs that connect with those interests, and figure out what we want to have as a career. Led by English teacher, Mrs. Melissa Brunner, this academy will help you find a community of other students who you can relate and connect to with similar passions and dreams, and who are trying to figure out their futures. You work on goal setting and involve yourself into more experiences that correlate to your passions which in the end help further build your portfolio for colleges and jobs. 

Many of our members have different reasons on why they decided to join the academy but in my case, I wanted to learn more about myself and become certain if I truly wanted to follow engineering after my high school years. I have always enjoyed building, designing, and innovating so I wanted to figure out for myself if this interest should be one I should pursue in my future. So far, I really do see myself aiming for an engineering based career and am excited to see what else this academy has to offer and what other educational experiences I might earn from it later on. 

After asking other members about their own reasons for joining, I have realized that we all have some similarities and differences on why we are all here. Sophomore Analis Barona Linn commented on this by saying, “I don’t know what I wish to do as a career. I’m hoping to explore my options through the Innovation Academy.” Another sophomore member, Dylan Gonzalez Ramirez explained that “I joined the Innovations Academy to step out of my comfort zone and expand my knowledge on the engineering field. My goal is to gain experience in this kind of field to decide on my future, which is why I believe the Innovations Academy will serve as a stepping stone towards my goal.” 

For all of us, we decided to join the academy to decide on what course we want to take in our lives and what occupation we want to have later on.  The Innovations Academy is there for us to explore more about ourselves and the many paths we can take to follow our passions and dreams.