SUFFOLK, VA — What happens when immersive learning becomes an investment in the future of education?
You get moments like this.
Last Thursday, STEM Academy teacher Judy Stull climbed into the cockpit of a Civil Air Patrol aircraft and took off—literally. On the ground, Instructional Lead Rachele Hirsch-Brooks stood ready on the runway, serving as air traffic director, guiding the flight team in real time.
This wasn’t a field trip. It was a forward-focused professional learning experience—designed not just to inspire teachers, but to transform how we prepare students for the world ahead.
“This was not a simulation. It was the real world,” said Rachele Hirsch-Brooks, STEM Instructional Lead. “We’re building a culture where educators lead through action—so that students learn by example, not just instruction.”
The flight was part of the CEIO Design Studio, a statewide initiative powered by the Center for Educational Innovation and Opportunity (CEIO). The Studio gives educators from Virginia’s College Partnership Lab Schools the chance to step into the very industries they are preparing students to enter—engineering, aviation, computer science, and beyond.
“This isn’t a field trip—it’s a training ground for innovation,” said Gary Skeen, Associate Director of CEIO. “When you invest in teachers, you invest in students. And when you invest in students, you invest in Virginia.”
At the STEM Academy at Booker T. Washington Elementary, experiences like this aren’t the exception—they are the expectation. Focused on hands-on STEM learning from the very start, the Academy is part of a statewide movement to rethink education from the inside out.
“These kinds of opportunities open up new pathways for how we think about teaching,” said Kristen Dupree, Program Manager for the STEM Academy. “They give teachers the freedom to step outside the traditional classroom model and explore bold, creative ways to meet the evolving needs of student learning. That’s where real transformation begins.”
With the doors opening soon at Virginia’s newest lab schools, the training season is over—and the real work of transforming public education is underway. Across the Commonwealth, lab schools are becoming public incubators of innovation—places where the walls between school and the real world collapse, and career-connected learning begins on day one.
“We’re not just preparing students for jobs—we’re preparing them to lead, to create, and to thrive in a world that doesn’t exist yet,” added Skeen. “That requires us to think differently about how we train and support educators.”
As Virginia positions itself as the innovation capital of the East Coast, its lab schools are setting the pace—transforming classrooms into launchpads, and teachers into the architects of what’s next.
