Met School a national model for hands-on learning

PHOTO COURTESY THE METROPOLITAN REGIONAL  CAREER & TECHNICAL CENTER
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DENNIS LITTKY, center left, meets with students at The Metropolitan Regional Career & Technical Center in Providence. Littky is co-director of the Met and co-founder of a nonprofit that develops other schools along the same lines.
PHOTO COURTESY THE METROPOLITAN REGIONAL CAREER & TECHNICAL CENTER
DENNIS LITTKY, center left, meets with students at The Metropolitan Regional Career & Technical Center in Providence. Littky is co-director of the Met and co-founder of a nonprofit that develops other schools along the same lines.

The Metropolitan Regional Career & Technical Center was founded a decade ago, with the idea of discarding many preconceived notions of education and simply focusing on what was best for the students.

Today, the school’s record of student satisfaction and success not only has allowed it to grow in Rhode Island, with six schools in Providence and a brand-new one in Newport, but also has inspired 35 similar schools in 16 U.S. cities.

“It’s been incredible,” said Dennis Littky, co-director of the Met and co-founder of The Big Picture Company, a nonprofit that focuses on designing new kinds of schools for the nation’s educational system.

“We went from 50 kids,” Littky said, “to being at full capacity, with more than 750 kids.”
Littky began designing the Met in 1993, with Elliot Washor, after being recruited by the founder and former CEO of CVS/pharmacy, Stanley Goldstein.

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At the time, Littky was the principal and Washor the assistant principal of an award-winning school in New Hampshire.

By 1995, the two men had formed The Big Picture Company.

The first school they created was the Met in Providence. They established a system that broke away from structured classes and tests and instead gave each student an individualized learning plan, based on his or her interests.

“The difference in our school is that we start from the child and build the curriculum around their interests and passions,” Littky said. “We put less emphasis on learning facts and more on learning how to think and how to do.”

Much of this learning is done through internships. Ben Castleman, director of curriculum and assessment, gave an example of how this works, using a former student of his.

“The student’s name was Dan, and from the age of 4 Dan loved sharks,” Castleman said. “Before coming here, Dan had gone to a parochial school for eight years and did OK, but wasn’t engaged.”

When Dan entered the Met, Castleman immediately tried to harness that interest. He got Dan an internship at a pet store, so he could begin learning more about interacting with animals.

Through the internship, Dan put together a pamphlet on ferrets for customers thinking of purchasing one of the animals. This opened up the door for him to work on reading and research skills, as well as organization and computer design.

His next internship was at a trout hatchery.

“It still wasn’t sharks, but he was moving in the right direction,” Castleman said.
During that internship, Dan did experiments that again helped him improve his skills in math, English and science, while still focusing on his interests. By his senior year, Dan was an intern at the New England Aquarium in Boston and had become involved with environmental programs at Brown University.

“I think our students grow through that kind of trajectory. They develop their interests and learn who they are and how to work with adults,” Castleman said. “They develop and refine their academic skills, much more than they would at many other schools.”

Littky said he believes that is because students work harder when the final product is something that affects others. “If a kid’s teaching in a class, he has to come in prepared, or if he has a manual due, he can’t just say, ‘I’m going to get a C minus’,” Littky said.

A study of graduation rates goes a long way toward supporting their theories. In 2005, 98 percent of Met students graduated, compared with 85 percent of students across the state and 73 percent of students in Providence.

Because of the Met’s success, many of its techniques have been utilized in public schools statewide – specifically, the Met’s focus on personalized advising and applied learning. For example, the Met has students write an autobiography and present a portfolio of their work, in order to graduate; the state now requires a portfolio for graduation as well.

The Met’s accomplishments also have caught the attention of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Since 2000, the foundation has donated $14 million to The Big Picture Company to create 54 schools based on the Met model. So far, 35 have been created.
Though Littky and his team are deeply involved with the creation of those schools, once they are self-sufficient, control is turned over to the state or the local school department.
“What’s exciting is that people took the model and managed to create good schools, across the country,” Littky said. “The Big Picture doesn’t own the schools, but they are all connected to us in a network of the philosophy.”

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