When Students Drive the Curriculum: A Vision for Teaching and Learning at RE

4/6/2026

Jess Merrick, Director of Teaching & Learning

Last fall, we did something that seems obvious but is surprisingly rare in schools: we surveyed students to gauge interest in what topics they wanted to learn.

Not what we thought they should learn, but what genuinely excited them. What questions kept them up at night? What skills do they need to help search for answers?

Seven hundred students across the middle and upper school responded. Under the direction of Head of School Rachel Rodriguez, faculty and administrators listened and learned. Our students’ responses have helped Ransom Everglades reimagine, expand and deepen the curriculum and classroom experience.

Students wanted courses that connected directly to the world they are entering. They wanted to understand how modern systems work. And they wanted opportunities to go deep.

The result is nine new courses launching next fall at the upper school – including Quantitative Finance and AI, and Research Seminar: Literature and AI – and an eighth-grade signature program called The Third Class Capstone, which will allow our students to explore their passions and carry out independent projects through new elective opportunities.

“We invest in teachers as the primary drivers of student success. We create pathways for both exploration and depth ... And we connect daily classroom work to long-term purpose.”

Mrs. Rodriguez recently announced new AI Innovation Fellowships for upperclass students that will be awarded this spring and serve as STEM-based partners to the Dan Leslie Bowden Fellowships in the Humanities. On top of that, faculty member Jenny Gragg Carson ’03 is leading a new externships program (see page 26).

It’s been an exciting few months at Ransom Everglades. These developments reflect RE’s dedication to its core values and academic vision: “Guided by The RE Way, we support students through an innovative curriculum that emphasizes skills-based mastery and authentic engagement. Students thrive in a school community grounded in both support and challenge, preparing them for current and future success.”

That vision isn’t abstract. It means treating students as partners in their education. It means building a curriculum that responds to real intellectual curiosity. And it means preparing students not just for college, but for the world they will inhabit.

Six months into my role as Director of Teaching & Learning, my work centers on three priorities: strengthening academic alignment across the school, using data to guide innovation based on what students actually need, and building curriculum coherence so learning develops meaningfully from grade to grade.

Enhancing our curriculum

Business courses, such as Quantitative Finance and AI, emerged as one of the highest-demand classes in the survey. In addition to learning about investing, students want to understand how machine learning is transforming financial markets, how algorithms influence trillion-dollar decisions, and how predictive models are built and evaluated.

The course delivers on that ambition. Students build and test machine learning models using real market data. They study portfolio theory and investment strategies, then apply neural networks and decision trees to analyze market behavior. They examine how AI is reshaping trading, risk management and financial decision-making.

We’re not just teaching students to use tools. We’re teaching them to understand the mathematics underneath, to recognize when a model’s assumptions break down, and to question what these systems can and can’t tell us. They’re learning to challenge the algorithm, not just trust it.

Exercise Science and Anatomy gives students the biological framework to understand human performance. Scuba Certification opens underwater ecosystems for direct study. History and Evolution of the Spanish Language allows students to trace how language changes across time and culture.

“It’s been an exciting few months at Ransom Everglades. These developments reflect RE’s dedication to its core values and academic vision.”

Others reflect emerging interests. Graphic Novels explores the complex interplay between text and image. Modern U.S. History connects past decisions to present realities. Mangrove and Forest Ecology grounds science learning in South Florida’s unique environment. Forensic Science applies chemistry and biology to real investigative problems.

And two courses explore the intersection of traditional disciplines and artificial intelligence because students told us they want to understand the systems reshaping nearly every field they may enter.

Understanding the systems that shape our world

Guest speakers and university partnerships connect classroom theory to current industry practice. Students leave prepared for advanced study in finance, economics, statistics or data science. More importantly, they leave with the ability to make thoughtful, ethical decisions in rapidly evolving fields. The Explorer Externship Program offers another meaningful way to link RE’s classroom experience to real-world exploration. From visits by outside speakers during informative “Lunch and Learn” events to meaningful summer work experiences crafted by RE alumni, our students are benefiting from new partnerships and powerful alumni connections.

Reading literature through new lenses

English Department Coordinator Matt Margini is launching a course that approaches technology through the humanities. Research Seminar: Literature and AI asks students to use computational tools while reading the texts that first imagined artificial intelligence.

“The class looks at AI in two ways,” Margini explains. “We’re using new quantitative methods to illuminate old texts, an approach called ‘distant reading’ in the digital humanities. It lets us identify patterns across large bodies of literature that would be invisible through close reading alone.”

Students might examine how often Charlotte Brontë uses bird imagery across her novels, or how T.S. Eliot’s allusions shift over the course of his career. These tools expand how students ask literary questions, rather than replacing traditional interpretation.

The course also utilizes texts that grapple directly with the creation of synthetic life. Frankenstein anchors the curriculum. Students use AI to study literature while reading the novel that first imagined the consequences of creating intelligent beings.

“I want students to confront the world we live in by reading the texts that imagined it before we built it,” Margini says.

Creating opportunities for deep work

New courses are one form of innovation. We are also creating structures for students who want to work at greater depth.

Our new AI Innovation Fellowships will support students working on mission-aligned projects that serve the school community. Fellows will partner with the mentors at the university and professional levels while working through an intensive spring-summer-fall cycle, and present their work at a public symposium with published digital artifacts.

The work is real. Fellows will build systems the school will actually use. RE has celebrated humanities scholarship through the Bowden Fellowships in the Humanities for years. This program creates a parallel pathway for students pursuing innovation in STEM fields.

Investing in teaching excellence

Student-centered learning depends on teacher expertise. New courses matter, but they only succeed when teachers have the support and time to do the work well.

This school year, 14 academic coordinators and department chairs are enrolled in Harvard’s instructional coaching certification program, a shared experience that reshapes how they mentor colleagues and lead departments.

“Every decision starts with the same question: what is in the best interest of our students to develop the skills, judgment and character to put more into this world than they take from it?”

We’ve also restructured monthly professional community meetings so our entire faculty engage in focused, practical work on assessment design, social-emotional learning and cultural competency. “As a science teacher that shared design time matters,” one faculty member noted. “We examine student work and analyze the enduring understandings necessary for student mastery.”

Putting students at the center

These initiatives are connected by shared principles.

We listen to students and take their curiosity seriously. We invest in teachers as the primary drivers of student success. We create pathways for both exploration and depth. We adjust when evidence tells us something isn’t serving students well. And we connect daily classroom work to long-term purpose.

This is what it means to support students through an innovative curriculum with authentic engagement. It’s about preparing students for the world as it is, equipping them with skills they will actually use and teaching them to approach new challenges with confidence and critical thinking.

When eighth graders analyze how citizens, policymakers and business leaders effectively influence one another through dialogue and negotiation to create positive community outcomes, when seniors build financial models and question their assumptions, when teachers collaborate on designing student assessments to promote consistency and confidence, and when we change course based on what we learn, we are living The RE Way.

The work isn’t finished. It never is. But every decision starts with the same question: what is in the best interest of our students to develop the skills, judgment and character to put more into this world than they take from it? The answers are shaping what RE becomes.

Want to learn more about these initiatives? Connect with Director of Teaching & Learning Jess Merrick at jmerrick@ransomeverglades.org.

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RE founder Paul Ransom, circa 1903

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