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Nestled in the science pod of Two Rivers High School is a science lab where you can find lab workers and scientists hard at work. This is Pivot Interactives, founded in 2012 at this very school by Peter Bohacek and Matt Vonk. It has grown to become a nationally renowned science-based learning tool, aiming to use technology and video to help students learn.
What is it: Pivot Interactives creates hundreds of video science lessons for students nationwide. At Two Rivers, it’s also a career and internship opportunity where students help with the actual production of the lessons and labs.
Student Experience With Pivot
“It’s hard to think of something I don’t enjoy—it’s definitely a class I look forward to going to,” said Quinn Keyes when enrolled in Pivot Interactives last year as an 11th grader. The program offers students a large variety of opportunities, including the design process, testing, or the actual recording or production of the videos.
Different every day: For Quinn, each day is not the same—he works on different projects throughout the year, and his days are mostly structured based on where he is in the video editing processes, which is the role he has taken up with the lab.
- “It’s definitely a guided process, but you eventually gain independence with it,” said Quinn.
Challenges: An unavoidable part of the day is challenges.
- These challenges tend to crop up at the start of a new project, but for Quinn, that’s what makes it fun—adapting and finding new ways to approach the material.
- This trial and error process is a large part of what students go through when actually completing the Pivot labs, but in this case, it’s the setup and creation of the labs.
Small group interaction: Science aside, a large draw for people joining the lab tends to be the small class size.
- Last year, Quinn had four people in his class in the fall and seven in the spring. That makes it much different than the 25-plus students class size for most Two Rivers classes.
- This small class size allows for students to work together at a more personal level. This class is very interesting because it is a mix of collaboration with peers yet also completing work on your own time. This is largely due to the many different stages in the design process and the wide variety of projects available.
Recommended: Quinn’s ultimate inspiration for joining Pivot Interactives as a student helper is Luke Reisig, who graduated in 2024. Luke had done it the year before and liked it so he recommended it to Quinn. After further thought, Quinn realized this was something he was interested in because he loves science and Pivot’s mission.
Engaged Students
“Doing something that is actually going to mean something is pretty exciting,” said Quinn. And that’s what Pivot wants—to engage students in both the creation and completion of labs within the science world.
(Originally published in the 2024 Quarter 3 Edition of the Two Rivers Tribune and updated for the West St. Paul Reader and reprinted with permission.)
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