Buddy Berry: Seven years ago, the destiny of an Eminence student, it was pretty bleak. We were only having about 20% of our students persist to a post-secondary degree, so that left the other 80% honestly in one of our factories in town. Our school was run down, enrollment was declining, our test scores had dropped. We needed to do something drastic in order to transform the school, which really ended up transforming the town. At Eminence schools, we were doing 21st century learning in a 19th century building. It was really paramount that we create a facility that matched our philosophy. I am a 4th generation alumni of Eminence schools. I know probably better than anybody how little money there is to go around. I wasn’t an outsider coming in, passing attacks on people that I didn’t understand. It was no small thing to ask the town to give up a little bit more to pull of this vision for these kids. The Edhub only exists because the Eminence community invested in the future of every kid that will ever walk through it. They were willing to invest in us to pull off something unbelievable.

Kerri Holder: They see what’s happening with their kids, they see the excitement and the skillset they’re beginning to come home with.

Students: Whoa.

Buddy Berry: The EDhub stands for the Experimental Davinci Hybrid Ultra Biblotheca, so it’s kind of a fancy newfangled library.

Kerri Holder: This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I mean students don’t just check out books, they check out tools, they use laser cutters to create the thing they actually drew in their notebook one day.

Student: It looks awesome.

Kerri Holder: It’s amazing to watch kids just flourish in an environment where there aren’t any barriers.

Buddy Berry: The Edhub was designed to be the new heart of the school. We literally took the traditional hallway space, the same amount of square footage, and just made it a circular building, so that all the rooms flow around the center of that space, the Core, where all students, kindergarten through 12th grade, could use and utilize.

Teacher: Okay, one more drop-off, simultaneous, go.

Buddy Berry: This building has about 30,000 square feet. It has eight maker labs. They range from robotics, to bio lab, to a design thinking lab. It has a TV stuido lab.

Teacher: Quiet on the set. In five, four, three.

Buddy Berry: And then it has a traditional power tool lab.

Teacher: Let’s double-check that measurement.

Kerri Holder: I mean the space itself is so open. Everything from just having windows, the ability to see in all areas at the same time, it gives that sense of community.

Buddy Berry: We wanted to be 100% functional. Lots of the walls are moveable magnet and writable surfaces.

Student: So 18 and 30 is divided by two.

Buddy Berry: You know, the building’s awesome, but it’s the learning that’s happening inside the EDhub that makes it really special.

Student: Now let’s see.

Student: Okay, there we go, we got it.

Sherry Curtsinger: It’s transforming learning because of the collaboration skills that they learn. They’re building, creating, designing, constructing. All the skills that you would use in the workplace.

Buddy Berry: We want them to feel like they’re working in Silicon Valley, or at a startup company.

Students: Hi, hello.

Buddy Berry: A lot of the ideas that we’ve developed were from the business sector that schools had never used.

Kerri Holder: I can remember the first time we utilized the giant screen, and it was just amazing to watch them kind of take ownership of such a large space. They felt like experts. In the EDhub, we see kids walk out knowing there are a lot more possibilities than they maybe knew about before.

Student: Wow. Whoa.

Teacher: What do you see now?

Student: Penguin, ooh.

Buddy Berry: There’s something powerful about setting a goal so big that there’s no way you could pull it off. That’s what our town did in the building of the EDhub. To watch a group of people come together and rally towards the impossible. And our kids have been a part of this change, as well. And so it’ll be exciting to see what their futures look like as a result of what they’ve watched happen here.

Schools That Work

Eminence Independent Schools