At Eastside Prep, we would have mock classes for prospective students. They would join together and participate in a class environment. This served to advertise the way we teach at EPS, in addition, to allowing us to observe classroom behavior of students.

This system was fascinating as an educator. You would get an opportunity to teach the same lesson to a fresh group of students a dozen times in a row. You would get feedback on what worked, and what didn’t and be able to tease out whether it was your delivery, your material, the people in the room, or whether you set the right tone initially.

Initially, I taught mock classes on physics. Building a plastic cup speaker from wire, straws and a magnet or building motors. Later, I joined up with Matt Delaney to run content from Evolution of Society or addressed concepts such as the Tragedy of the Commons. Bringing co-teachers into that laboratory space furthered the amount of feedback we could pull from the experience (Paul Hagen also joined us 2021-2022).