FOE-2 Big Picture Learning Schools personalize has the experience of each student by using a personal learning plan developed with a parent

Procedures
1. Looping, the same teacher for 4 years with the teacher advising the students in all subjects. The teacher is called an advisor.

2.  The advisor eats in the home of each student at least once each quarter.

3. The school sends a request for information to each student who has graduated, asking the students to evaluate their education so far. One of the key questions is "what do you wish you had learned while you were at Big Picture learning High School?"

4. Each student has a personal learning plan. The learning plan is built with the parent student and advisor.

Article
There are at least three ways to get to know more about big picture learning schools.

A... tinyurl.com/Littkyradio the interview on National Public Radio in April 2005.

B... tinyurl.com/littkychapter1  the first chapter of big picture

PLEASE COMMENT BELOW
What procedures could a school adopt to put this reading into action?


LINK TO BBC video


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Transcript from a BBC program

Imagine this:

a school with no standard curriculum 
no formal lessons 
no teaches 

instead every student has an individual curriculum 
a personal research schedule 
an advisor 

Its supporters say it could be the answer to the crisis in the United States High School System when one in three students now jumps out before graduating


Dennis Littky came up with the idea of what's called metschools and is now trying to set up more than 50 of these schools across the United States 


FIRST 
we have very small schools 
we have broken down our schools into about 125 kids so that the staff and kids really get to know each other well 

the families are involved, you get to know the families, and when you know the child well, then you can help that child really learn 

so that's a main difference 

SECOND
we're not about memorizing facts 
we're about learning to learn 
we're about learning how to be a scientist rather than lots of facts from science 
we're learning how to be a historian and then everything comes rather than from a textbook where somebody else designs ...t comes the curriculum comes from the child's own interest and passion 

when I say child we have high school kids from 15 years to about 18 years so a student finds their interest then find somebody in the community will use the whole Community to work with and do real projects where they can then 

learn to be a scientist 

learn to be a storyteller and learn to read and write through their interests and 

that's why we've been so successful 

our kids are not dropping 


when you ask kids in high school 
"describe your high school in one word"

 the word was boring 

so we're losing great potential and so Elliot washer my co director and myself the co-founder we said "What's really best for students? how did they learn?"

 and that's how we design this and how we get these schools up and running 



VOICE OF A STUDENT
my name is Valerie Nieves I'm 17 years old I've been at the Met for 2 years now and today I will be 

VOICE OF A STUDENT
I'm Jillian Bell from southern Rhode Island and I've been here two years I'm going to be your second tour guide today we're going to turn off the media arts center  so this is the black box theater in the back we have this control room for all of the technical stuff and we also have a radio broadcasting room which is someone for their senior thesis project put the radio station together last year and graduated so they had to train kids to do it and then when they graduate the last train kids and kind of Bring It On the state has to fundraise also before graduate that way they can leave of taking a tour of the Met School in Rhode Island with Jenny and I'm finally 

you have to disregard everything you thought you knew about education 
Blue Bell signals the start and end of classes they explain students are expected to complete is an exam like a typical School clams stop sessions where they discuss that projects and give each other advice and rather than having humor's teaches the math English and history Hoops of 15 sir signed a single advisor who acts as that counselor chucha a mental he was really get the help they need amazing leader you know when it went on the basketball court or that you know that they do this volunteer work and then there's an amazing kid just happens to hate math there's a wise guy in The Mask we get to see the whole thing lunch with a few of the students hair we bought a very nice lunch invest time and what time how old is is not the traditional lunch at school that sent me better than I used to have and I'm doing by the students Max Justine Colleen very Anissa and Albert Thai Festival ask you how does this differ to your standard school it's just so much better than teachers are there for you Willie arises are there for you all the time I'm calling like at night time or whatever time you need them and they'll help you out with whatever your problem is whether it's with schooler personal or whatever seventh grade I had this meeting with my parents and all my teachers in my principal and they kind of looked at my Mom they're like well you know can't really do anything with him you know Bob lies good kids some kids have better off dropping out of school and 16 pumping gas so she was just like it's not going to be a good thing for you to sit in that school and Valley Goodbye by the stain your teeth when I can come too do you like the met in flourish and do exactly what I want to do and you don't pursue my interest like they say  let's go there because you're aware and you'll casual is it the moment you don't actually have the traditional classes of 45 minutes of French math Singlish I mean people worry that you're not at getting education here through this this and this and follow the instructions and we don't see it anymore as a textbook subject it's more like this is real world this is how I can apply it to the real world and when I go off and leave the med I can still who's this later on in life you really get to work on stuff that you love to do like if it's music or whatever like I had traveled to Minnesota and went to the recording studio and record CD and everything and you get to choose what you want to work on so it's something that you know you want to do you go out and internships you do independent projects different things you learn the math science the history of the communication skills that relates to that you might not be able to list all the different skills that you're learning for that would be learning a normal high school but I think Anna learning the ones that apply to what you want to do is to say the students of traditional high schools learn so much more than we do I think it's misleading because I even have friends in mind a Traditional School who said I can't remember what I learned in Biology class 2 weeks ago occasionally on a tour of the premises you do come across Traditional High School seems like this whole kitchen are the children here again choosing to learn the rules of the school because they want to is this relaxing play this one of the reasons the school can boast of one of the lowest Dropout rates and highest college placement levels in the state competition testing is the norm many will continue to question what a satisfaction during school can be translated into true success and future life Johnny bull Met School in Rhode Island's and still on the line as the school's director Dennis lifty play some Janet just indicated turnouts round-the-clock that's a teaching job it is  it's 24 hours around the clock is more the attitude than actually there were give me available you when I should be cold at 3 in the morning teachers come in today the kids come in at 9 they work during the day till about 3 from 3 to 5 teachers work together to try get better at planning and learning more how to do this job and then people do go home and when the kids say that though it's what's beautiful about it is adolescents feel that somebody's there for them when they need it shut up  no this is a regular public school since free free education it's a free education like every other public school in the United States what we do is we just use our people differently we get the same amount of money per child that the rest of Providence Rhode Island does you can decide how to use it and we put all our money into keeping that 15 to 1 ratio very small so we might we don't have a system Prince house we don't have librarians  there's a lot we don't have Department Chairman's there's a lot of jobs we don't have it's a matter of taking the money and saying how do you use it the best way to help our kids I'm 15 year old puppy love doing certain things and when they arrive they many of them no doubt say I want to do this and many of them public stay the same subject whatever it might be I'm how do you steal the mean in a different direction absolutely do play one even if it may seem a little inappropriate you can imagine the kids calm and they might say I want to be a rapper I want to be a basketball star but if it's the job of the advisor to sit with the can you really try to go in-depth on what are they interested in and there's only so many places to work in the music field and kids chain once I really start thinking of it they say you know I've always loved animals well let's try working at the vet I've always played with blocks and Designs things well let's go work in an architect so it's it's it's very hard that first year to help a kid really find what they're interested I do because it generates interest within them how do they locate a varied idea of what's out there in the world is that by talking to each other sometimes the criticism sang if they just go by their interest but in the real world we don't break down science math English whatever the kids do those is there a combined every morning we have speakers coming in on Monday Wednesday and Friday to help broaden the kids they speak the lots and lots of adults out there and so and they don't just have it's not just I want to study architecture it may say that and then they say all I may want to do dance and so there currently moving around and exploring but in terms of learning we want the kids the way you really learn is to go in depth when you're learning to do something very deep I had a kid you asked about things that there's one I was just going to tell a story about a kid that was interesting the Vietnam War and study that deeply and the reason he studied his father was in the I wouldn't talk to him about it