Instead of opening their notebooks on the first day of school after their grade-wide retreat, 16 Menlo juniors were crouched over tidepools in Monterey, Calif., kicking off the inaugural semester of Menlo’s Catalyst program. Catalyst is Menlo’s new semester-long experiential learning program for juniors, built around hands-on projects and real-world problem solving. This year, the program’s faculty chose to center the curriculum around climate change. In the future, Catalyst English teacher and Director of Academic Innovation Maren Wolf said the program plans to feature other focus themes. Throughout the fall, Catalyst students have taken many curriculumrelated field trips and met with experts, including CEO of Waymo Tekedra Mawakana and California State Senator Josh Becker. Catalyst has designed these experiences to directly connect classroom concepts to real-world examples and applications. According to Catalyst engineering teacher Dietrich Schuhl, off-campus field trips happen roughly once a week to places across the Bay Area. For example, Catalyst toured Redwood Landfill in Novato, Calif., where they met with a gas engineer who showed them how he created energy. “I can see the level of confidence and curiosity growing, especially when [students] talk to experts in the field,” Schuhl said.
“We support what the field trips are going to be with what we do in class and then bring what we learned on the field trips back into class afterward,” Catalyst history teacher Meade Klingensmith said.
Junior Eilir Bjorlin said that what makes Catalyst different from traditional school is the hands-on approach to assignments. Rather than conducting traditional research on a topic, she said students are encouraged to reach out to professionals and engage directly with experts.
Bjorlin said that her classes are deliberately intertwined to build a deeper understanding. “When I go through my day, it’s almost like the entire thing has been sculpted with one thing in mind,” she said. In English, for example, students analyzed the rhetoric used to communicate climate change, while in history, they studied how Americans’ perception of nature has evolved.
Wolf said she has begun to see students make connections across their classes in new ways. “The students are now starting to actively synthesize things,” she said. “When you learn in this way, it’s cumulative and additive. Once you start seeing how everything connects, it’s hard to stop seeing how everything connects.”
Catalyst’s interdisciplinary structure also relies on frequent collaboration between faculty. “I can’t just say I want to do this in my class. [I have to say] I want to do this so that it complements and plays off of what these other classes are doing,” Schuhl said.
Wolf said that the Catalyst program’s small size has created a strong classroom culture. “It can feel like there’s an increased trust and intimacy between faculty and students and between students and students,” she said. “What students have reported to me is that they feel an increased confidence in taking risks as a result.”
While Catalyst comes with many social advantages from its tight-knit classroom communities, students also have felt more distanced from the rest of the school community. “It’s a challenge to be in what feels like a bubble sometimes,” Klingensmith said. “But it’s also what’s allowing us to foster, I think, a really tight community that trusts each other.”
Junior Matthew Majalya said that the program sometimes makes him feel disconnected from his non-Catalyst peers. “Sometimes it can feel like you’re a little bit cut off from the rest of campus,” junior Matthew Majalya said. Despite this, Majalya believes the Catalyst directors have done a good job making sure Catalyst students are still active members of the Menlo community.
While Schuhl believes that every student can thrive in the alternative kind of learning environment Catalyst provides, he understands that the change from traditional learning may be harder for some students to acclimate to. “To learn in this way will be more challenging for some students than others,” Schuhl said. “For a student who needs structure and certainty, Catalyst might be an adjustment.” Schuhl added that any student willing to be flexible and lean into the discomfort that comes with less-structured learning would be a particularly good fit for Catalyst.
Wolf and the rest of the Catalyst team will welcome 18 new juniors into the program in January and have already begun promoting Catalyst to Menlo sophomores. “I’m eager to see if, with increased clarity, there’s increased demand or not,” Wolf said. “It’s certainly been the most rewarding experience of my entire career. I’m excited to keep growing it and seeing what it can become.” Wolf commends Catalyst students for the attitude they have brought to learning every day. “They have brought so much enthusiasm and curiosity and risktaking and open-mindedness and good-heartedness,” she said. “We [the teachers] can model that all we want, but [the students] have shown up so fully, so that the community and culture in the program is really strong.”
