Quest to Learn Keeps Its Goals,
Changes Its Rules

When “The School for Digital Kids” was founded, it stayed true to that slogan. However, in the 12 years since Quest to Learn’s opening day as a middle school and nine years since opening day for their high school, the consistent trend of change has made it hard for the school to stick to its original goals.

Quest to Learn was founded in 2009 by the Institute of Play with a series of goals in place to differentiate the individuals and communities involved from traditional middle schools. In a book written by the founding members of Institute of Play called “Quest to Learn-Developing the School for Digital Kids,” Katie Salen Tekinbaş, the non-profit design studio’s Executive Director, described the effects Quest to Learn aimed to have on kids, students, teachers, communities, schools, and the world.

“What if you could change school to be more like a game?” said Arana Shapiro, founding member of Institute of Play and Co-Director Of Quest to Learn from 2009-2015. “If you could place the student at the center and give them enough challenges that they had to grapple with where they had to make meaningful choices, then they could become different kinds of people than what schools normally spit out.”

While the content students learn is more or less the same as other middle schools, it is presented in a unique way. For example, math class is called Codeworlds, English class is called POV, social studies is called Being, Space & Place.

There are various themes or mascots in each class to help convey the information. Professor Pi is a cardboard Halloween-themed cutout in 6th-grade Codeworlds who is hiding a secret that students must use their math skills to uncover. In 7th grade Being, Space & Place, students must complete work to free six ghosts who represent American historical figures that are trapped in the basement of the American Museum of Natural History.

“[Quest to Learn] had a really, really amazing, dedicated group of teachers who worked really hard to create curriculum that was engaging for kids…. It was a fun place to be. And it was unique. And it was interesting,” Shapiro said. “You didn't have to only give teachers a textbook and say, ‘teach this way.’ You could actually put learning in the hands of teachers, and they could design things and make things and create things that were really good for kids.”

Something that was a significant focus in the development of the school was “Boss Level.” In any well-put-together game, there needs to be some sort of finale to keep the players motivated to continue on. Boss Level was created to accomplish that goal.

As a week-long event, Boss Level would occur two times per school year. It would feature students putting together everything they had learned that year at Quest to Learn to the test in order to solve problems. An iconic Boss Level at Quest to Learn features 6th-grade students competing against each other to create a Rube Goldberg machine to solve some sort of problem. Another Boss Level sees students create a physical education game to have other students play.

“Boss Level was the only real time I looked forward to walking into the doors of Quest To Learn from the first time to the last time,” said 2014 middle school graduate and 2018 high school graduate Michael Santiago. “I remember each one I was in and each time was an enjoyable experience.”

Despite the profound implementation of the goals, Quest to Learn has been hampered by its unfortunate trend of change since its conception. Boss level can be viewed as a prime example.

While Boss Level for the middle school is still similar to the original vision, the high school’s version has undergone changes, occurring only once per year and being more of a one-week long elective class with a random subject, such as building the concept for a Brooklyn baseball team, or taste-testing pizza around New York City. While those may be fun, they don’t follow the same goal of using the curriculum students have been taught to create something or solve a problem.

The implementation and development of Boss Level in Quest to Learn's high school exemplify the shift in the importance of their original goals—the school doesn’t seem to hold the original concepts to as high priority. That change can be explained by looking at many external factors.

Elisa Aragon became principal in October 2009, the second month of the school’s existence, but before she took over, Aaron Schwartz was trained as the founding principal for over a year. He left after just one month due to reasons that are not public.

The physical location of the school underwent change as well. After just one year at Quest to Learn’s original address, the school moved across town to an entirely new building.

Despite how much of a success the digital and game-oriented learning was in helping Quest to Learn apply their goals, a major issue prevented it from sticking in the high school curriculum.

“Part of the concern once students go into high school came from the parents. How do we make Quest to Learn legible to a college? My kid is going to apply to a college, how are they going to make sense of Being, Space & Place? They're not,” Salen Tekinbaş said. “So there was huge pressure to try to move the language around the naming of classes and the structures of things so that they looked more ordinary. There was a feeling that we were disadvantaging students at the level of the transcript.”

Another issue was that each new 9th-grade class would only feature roughly 60 percent of graduating students from their middle school. The approximately 40 percent of new Quest to Learn students had to figure out how to integrate into a unique environment, while the returning students had a three-year headstart.

“I think that a misstep of the team of people that were working on the school was that we sort of just thought like, oh and we'll just build ninth grade. And we didn't think about, well high school is different than middle school,” Shapiro said. “It really needed probably to be thought of as a separate school that kids were moving from middle school into, rather than just kind of adding another year on.”

While the high school’s first two years tried to stay similar enough to the middle school, the original vision had eventually been forced to change. The slogan, “The School for Digital Kids,” had been effectively wiped and the school had been rebranded by 2014.

“Pieces of it worked at the high school level, but there were just lots of sort of systemic elements at the high school level that really worked against not just our model, but any kind of model of trying to do something that doesn't look like kind of teach to the test,” Salen Tekinbaş said. “I don't think the goals were that different. I think the reality looked really different.”

Heading into the 2014-2015 school year, a clear change of direction had been put into place. Salen Tekinbaş, as well as the Institute of Play as a whole, had left the school. Elisa Aragon left as well and was replaced by Jen Rygalski.

“Because Jen was sort of there on her own, she just sort of did what she knew, which was like, oh we'll just revert back to what normal schools do,” Shapiro said.

The constantly shifting leadership has been a trend throughout the school’s history. After Schwartz lasted just one month and Aragon left in 2014, Rygalski was only principal for two years and was replaced by Nicholas Jurman in 2016. Jurman left in 2021 and was replaced by Amir Tusher, who was only principal for a few months until current principal Marina Galazidis took over in October of 2021.

“I don't think there's anything about Quest that's causing the changes in leadership. I think this is an endemic problem with leadership within the Department of Ed, this kind of turnover,” Salen Tekinbaş said. “When outside people keep coming in, and then there's turnover, it's practically impossible to keep the vision unless the community holds it. And that's where I think whatever is being retained is coming from the community. Leadership has nothing to do with it. Unless they're open to trying to respond to the culture and climate and community that is there.”