As schools opened across North America over the last few weeks, one wonders how many saw what Trace Pickering witnessed at Cedar Rapids’ new Iowa BIG School in its first days: High school students pouring in the doors to eagerly engage in conversation with their teachers and peers about the year ahead.

Trace compares this to scenes he’s observed in other high school settings where students drift in, taking their time, demonstrating that they would much rather be somewhere else.

What is it about Iowa BIG that is generating such enthusiasm? Now in its second year, the school has jumped from about 20 students last year to more than 60 at this point, with more on a waiting list. College Community School District and Cedar Rapids Community School District are now partnering to support the school’s expansion.

Trace, who acts in a principal type role with the school, describes a “professional yet creative environment” that is the hallmark of Iowa BIG.

Is it this environment that’s generating such enthusiasm?

Students are given a creative license and esteemed in a way that they might not in other education scenarios.

The simple fact that the school is housed in a co-working space would be part of what helps to create this environment. Students have professionals as their daily peers now.

Both the creative licence and esteem would also be sensed in what students are invited to do. For example, one of their first activities as a group this year was brainstorming about community problems the students might help create solutions to as their project for the year.

BIG has a partnership with a growing number of businesses in the community, many of which have already identified projects the students could undertake.

But Trace and his BIG colleagues also wanted to see students thinking deeply about the place where they live, what they want to see changed and how they can be involved in creating that change.

After the brainstorming, the students visited places in the community to see if their ideas have some validity.

There is now a pool of about 80 projects from which students are selecting three to focus on for the year.

Part of the BIG teachers’ work with the students is helping them understand that the original projects will likely require some pivoting and that others could very well become dead ends – just like projects in the professional realm.

So the energy at BIG could be generated by the mindset school leadership has towards the students, the physical space and the nature of the work students are invited to do.

But one wonders if, perhaps even more importantly, there’s something to be said for the relationship that the school pioneers – Trace and Shawn Cornally – have with each other.

For example, when asked about one issue that’s “kept him up at night” Trace mentions the school’s significant scaling in such a short time and angst about managing that effectively. He points to the camaraderie with Shawn as integral to responding to such fears.

“The relationship that Shawn and I have built over the last two years is ironclad. We can be really direct with each other and share our best and worst assumptions about stuff – we don’t take that personally,” Trace says.

“We see that the only way we learn and grow together is by being really open about our assumptions of what we see happening.”

In their article, Social Innovation from the Inside Out, authors Warren Nilsson and Tana Paddock propose that what enables a social-purpose organization to excel is not so much how the changemakers within the organization connect with the external social landscape as how they connect with each other.

Looking ahead to this new year, BIG will, of course, do well to continue providing the kind of environment in which its students can flourish. Part of that work, we anticipate, will be growing the understanding between Trace, Shawn and the rest of teaching crew. What ideas and intuitions, aspirations and fears, values and memories are there to be surfaced amongst them? And how will doing so create more enthusiasm, sense of purpose and flourishing for both themselves and their students?

You can comment on this story below, or e-mail michelle(at)axiomnews.com.

A version of this article was originally written for the Our Voice news service. To learn more about generative newsroom options for your organization or community, please contact peter(at)axiomnews.com.