Vail Mountain School/Courtesy photo
One of Vail Mountain School’s high school science classes has a different origin story from the others. Neuropsychology, which was proposed five years ago by a student looking for an alternative to the traditional science offerings, is a fan-favorite every year.
The class was the brainchild of 2022 Vail Mountain School graduate Will McLoota. In his junior year, as he started looking at course offerings for his final year of high school, McLoota was less enticed by the science offerings but knew he was interested in studying the brain.
“I feel like it filled a gap that didn’t exist in a lot of places. It’s another opportunity to learn something that might be different but still interesting,” McLoota said. “It’s not the typical biology or chemistry or ecology, but it’s actually another opportunity for people who want to learn something different.”
He went to the science department leadership, and the staff provided him with a series of tasks he would need to undertake to create a class, including finding other interested students and researching similar courses at other schools.
“I think they didn’t really expect me to do that,” McLoota said.
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But he delved into the research, returning to the school administration with the evidence they required, including finding a comparable class at another school.
“Will did his homework,” said Ross Sappenfield, Vail Mountain School’s science department head.
The science department took McLoota’s research and ran with it over the next several months, with Anatomy and Physiology teacher Steph Lewis jumping at the chance to teach the class.
“The brain is super complicated and there’s so much we don’t know,” Lewis said. “I’m trying to make science fun and interesting for everyone, even kids who aren’t normally interested in it, and trying to make it applicable to their everyday lives. That’s always a balance for me, is figuring out how to take the very complicated parts of neuroscience and make it accessible and make it fun.”
The next fall, McLoota was able to take the class he dreamed up.
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“It was really cool,” McLoota said. “It’s different when someone teaches you something versus trying to do the research yourself. I feel like you can pull a different grasp away, especially when you’re learning in a group setting versus just out of curiosity. It’s nice to have that extra level of learning possibilities.”
While he enjoyed taking the class himself, the most rewarding part, McLoota said, was getting to see his classmates delve into the science.
“I was really excited to also see other people enjoying that class. I think that was the best part,” McLoota said. “To see a classroom full of people also interested in it at the same time was really cool for me.”
The course is now in its fourth year, with full enrollment each year. “Every year, students say it is by far one of their favorite classes that they have taken at Vail Mountain School,” said Maggie Pavelik, the head of the upper school.
“I think it speaks volumes to what started with a student’s curiosity has grown to be incredibly impactful in our upper school,” Pavelik said.
“I think part of that is due to a dynamic curriculum that is constantly evolving, that we are looking to constantly improve what we’re teaching and how we’re teaching it,” Pavelik said. “Part of that is due to their peers who are also curious and really engage in the class. And part of that is due to a really dedicated teacher. Steph Lewis has given a lot of time and energy to the creation and continual development of this class.”
More than just a science class
The class is more than a science class. It’s a way for students to learn how to be more functional, effective — maybe even better — people.
“I do think there’s a lot of avenues for them to learn more that can help them outside of the classroom, not just in science class,” she said. “It’s science, but it’s also life.”
“One of the top issues among adolescents in America is mental health,” Sappenfield said. “For students to have the opportunity to understand how the brain works while they’re still in high school seemed extremely relevant to me.”
The yearlong science elective, which is open to juniors and seniors, consists of several units, including memory and sleep, sensation and perception, the developmental process and neurodiversity.
“It’s really a cellular biology-based course that looks at the nervous system at a cellular level and then connects it to behaviors, development, psychology in a way that adolescents can truly relate to it,” Sappenfield said.
All Vail Mountain School science classes must include a lab component, and Neuropsychology labs see students studying other students, sheep brains and themselves.
“Our brains are always available for us to do experiments on,” Lewis said.
In the memory unit, students test different ways of remembering things, comparing each other to who can remember certain things better over periods.
“We do a lot of self-testing, or do many experiments on ourselves, to illustrate different phenomena,” Lewis said.
During the developmental unit, students design and run experiments on other Vail Mountain School students of various ages to learn about the different ways the human brain changes as people age.
In the sleep unit, students track their sleep, analyzing variables like the amount of sleep they get each night, how much and when they exercise, and other factors interact. After the unit, students set and track their progress toward goals based on what they learned.
“It relates so well to being an 11th or 12th grader in high school, where we really do have to take care of ourselves and our sleep,” Pavelik said.
The same goes for the other units in the class — students can apply their classroom learning to their interactions and decisions in the outside world.
“Juniors and seniors … maybe they are seeing people using drugs and alcohol, and they can see those effects. And then actually knowing the science behind it is super helpful,” Lewis said.
“If you have a deeper understanding of how the brain works, you have the opportunity to develop more empathy for differences in how the brain works,” Sappenfield said. “And I think we have an incredible empathetic community here that may or may not be the result of students learning more about brain function.”
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