This summer, Civic City partnered with the St. Louis Public Schools Learn & Earn Program to pilot F7 — a platform built so schools can run real project-based learning, and so students can manage a project, build career-ready skills, and leave with a portfolio instead of a worksheet.
Eleven St. Louis high school students enrolled. Nobody handed them a topic. They chose challenges they cared about, interviewed the people living those challenges, researched what already existed, and then built working digital products using AI as a research, design, and development tool.
The shape of the six weeks
Week one was virtual onboarding: meet the team, learn the human-centered design process, and understand what it means to design for a person instead of a grade. Weeks two through six were independent builds, supported by instructor-led labs, open coworking, and mentorship focused on college and career readiness.
Every Wednesday the cohort met in person at The Post Building in downtown St. Louis, surrounded by local entrepreneurs and employers. Those Wednesdays became the anchor of the whole internship — feedback, critique, a room that expected you to show your work.
Rather than completing identical assignments on the same schedule, students moved through the design process at their own pace — understanding people first, then research, ideation, prototyping, testing, and refinement.
What the numbers meant in the room
Nine of eleven students moved through the early-stage innovation work that entrepreneurship actually requires: identify a challenge, interview users, research, build. All nine practiced the parts of the job that never show up on a transcript — responding to critique, changing your mind, and shipping anyway.
“I feel so much better about the future because of you.”
The goal was never to teach students how to use technology. It was to help them think critically, solve problems that mattered to them, and gain the confidence to turn an idea into something real.
