One student at a time

Details: Category: About

One Student at a Time: A Deeply Personalized Public High School

by Big Picture Founders Elliot Washor and Dennis Littky

Perhaps more than any public school in America, the Met School insists on educating "one student at a time." Each student develops a unique curriculum based on strong personal interests and the school's demanding academic learning goals. Every student in the Met's first two graduating classes has been accepted to college and/or vocational school.

Met students spend two days per week at internships that they select based on their interests. Across four years, one student interned with an engineer, a judge, a choreographer, and a marine biologist. He completed many personalized projects such as co-directing a musical and developing water quality systems in Narragansett Bay.

The Met is not a vocational school. The goal is to create motivated learners--not specialists in specific fields. We emphasize internships because students learn best when they are deeply engaged in real world projects, and because their lifelong success as workers and citizens depends on developing a passion for learning.

The Met is strikingly different from most schools. Students study fewer topics but in far more depth, and they work closely with adults inside and outside the school. Instead of taking tests, they give public exhibitions of what they've learned. And instead of grades, they receive detailed narratives written by teachers. Each student's learning team--teacher, parents, and internship mentor--meets with the student quarterly to assess progress and plan upcoming learning activities.

Relationships are the Met's foundation. An advisor and 18 students form a tightly knit group that stays together for four years. Teachers know each student deeply and have time to help with even the toughest academic and personal problems. Despite these advantages, the Met costs no more than other high schools.

The Met enrolls the whole family, not just the individual student. Parents attend quarterly learning-team meetings where they help determine their child's curriculum for the following quarter or year. They also attend quarterly exhibitions, where their child demonstrates his or her learning progress. Based on the exhibition, parents have a voice in determining whether their child has "passed" for the quarter or needs to do makeup work. In addition to their involvement in academic affairs, parents are members of all the committees that guide school policy and decision-making. Met parent involvement goes far beyond the bake sale.

Today's schools face apathy, dropout, violence, and more. The Met fights these trends, with one-third the dropout rate, one-third the absentee rate, and one-eighteenth the suspension rate of other high schools.

To explain the Met fully, it is also necessary to introduce The Big Picture Company, the nonprofit organization in Providence that designed the Met and has provided intensive support to the school since the beginning. But our work at The Big Picture Company extends far beyond the Met. Our mission is to promote a philosophy of education grounded in creating a personalized education that is unique for every student. We believe that learning works best when each student is an active participant in his or her education; when his course of study is personalized by teachers, parents and mentors who know him well; and when school-based learning is blended with outside experiences that heighten that student’s interest.

In pursuit of this goal, the Big Picture Company designs innovative public schools, researches and replicates new models for education, trains educators to serve as leaders in their schools and communities, and actively engages the public as participants in the education of youth. We have developed a national network for training principals of small schools, and we designed a K-8 charter school in Providence, Rhode Island based on our learning principles. Finally, funded by a $3.5 million grant from the Gates Foundation, we will be supporting the development of over 50 schools by 2009.

More information about the Met School and The Big Picture Company can be found at our websites. In addition, Harvard University researcher Eliot Levine has written an engaging book about the Met. The book is entitled One Kid at a Time: Big Lessons from a Small School (order from Amazon.com and support New Horizons!), and it was published in November 2001 by Teachers College Press at Columbia University, 800-575-6566.

Revised by Allen Young in 2008.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Authors:

Elliot Washor co-directs the Met School and The Big Picture Company with Dennis Littky. He has been involved in school reform for more than 25 years as a teacher, administrator, and video producer. He has taught all levels from kindergarten through college, in urban and rural settings, across all disciplines. He has served as a consultant to schools throughout the U.S. and Europe. At Thayer High School, his professional development programs won an Innovations in State and Local Government Award from the Ford Foundation and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Elliot has a M.A. in education from Harvard University and is currently finishing his doctoral work on school facilities design. E-mail Elliot at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Dennis Littky co-directs the Big Picture Company with Elliot Washor. He is nationally known for his 25 years of work in secondary education in urban, suburban, and rural settings. He has been a community organizer, curriculum coordinator, and principal of three innovative schools. His work in New Hampshire was featured in the NBC movie A Town Torn Apart, based on the book Doc: The Story of Dennis Littky and His Fight for a Better School. He has a Ph.D. in psychology and education from the University of Michigan. E-mail Dennis at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

fax: 206.726.0218
http://www.newhorizons.org
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.