Visit to the Met
Posted in Uncategorized by Ellen - Nov 18, 2008
Blog Entry: Visit to the Met!
Today I woke up at 6:45am in order to go to the Met school in Providence, RI. I’ve been hearing about this school, which is an alternate type of high school, since Alyshia, Andy, Marco, and a few others went down for a visit last Spring as part of the ERC.
For a basic premise, the Met is basically what I would term “institutionalized un-school.” Rather than being the type of educational facility that has students follow standard courses and learn defined concepts, the school focuses on “what does this student want to learn.”
The campus we visited has four buildings (each a separate school) with about 120 students and 20 staff in each building- hovering right around the 150 number that’s frequently referenced as the breaking point for knowing an entire community.
So, a student enters as a 9th grader (after an application process for the lottery) and is placed within an “advisory” with one advisor that will be their effective teacher for the next four years. These advisories have about fifteen students. So, the advisor role is one of mentorship, advice, friendship, and supervision. The advisor helps the students work through the assignments the entire group does (this starts freshman year with assignments centered around finding themselves and their interests). They also serve as a resource for helping students learn what they determine that they want to.
The other major difference is that students almost continuously have internships. These internships serve to introduce them to people in the field, get them acquainted with what fields do, give them real-world experiences, and provide valuable bases for expanding knowledge. So students may take an internship in construction, and then work on learning the necessary skills in the classroom.
The school also has some of it’s own events that are separate from standard curricula. Each MWF students gather for a “Pick Me Up” talk to help keep them motivated and on track with their education. Although this sounds like a great idea it is one of the programs that schools struggle with it, and it seems as though it could use the most work of some of the elements. Students noted to us in conversation that if they had to eliminate one piece of the Met education to add time for other things, they would eliminate Pick-Me-Ups, especially as the year wore on and they knew all members of their community.
The most notable thing I saw as a result of this educational structure was the different skills that were developed. As we met with 9th-12th grade students, the skills were obviously very different. 12th graders were much more confident in their movements and dialog, knew about benefits of the Met, and were very forthcoming with information. 9th graders were less sure of the reasoning behind what they were doing. This was confirmed by the students themselves, who knew they’d learned a lot about themselves and their educational aspirations throughout their time at the Met. They did indicate that it can be a challenge to be entirely self motivating, but they’d learned how throughout the years.
Additionally to the changes in individuals over time, it was very clear that most of the developed skills were more towards the soft side. Students were very entrepreneurial in nature, planned events, learned to write documents and give presentations to communicate what they’d worked on, but still told us they felt like more concrete time in class (particularly in areas like math) would have benefitted them. Though the school cites that students can study any field they choose while there, I think the students struggled with learning math independently from the traditional course structure. Overall though, the students were gracious and clearly had developed well. There was definitely still a form of culture shock for me- even in this very poised environment. I think IA just biased me towards what I think high school students should be, and it’s definitely true that not every student will be like that. I’m curious to find out more about what the students were prepared with when they entered the Met.
So- that’s the background on what the school is like. More specifically, wet met with a variety of different people throughout the day to talk with them about their experiences with the school. They apparently only get 3-4 such visits each month, which seems low to me for such an incredible program. This is part of the Big Picture educational program, which I intend to look at, since it also has schools in Detroit.
Today we:
1) Watched Pick-Me-Up: About e! funding
2) Went to an Advisory: Focus on developing success skills
3) Talked to the Co-Director: focused on curriculum/org chart
4) Went on a tour with a student: focused on facilities/college/choosing a school
5) Met with a 9th and 10th grade student: focused a lot on initial curriculum and the transition to the met
6) Met the LTI (internship) coordinator: talked about internship placement and concerns
7) Had lunch with an advisor and one of his former students- a girl who graduated in 2007 who is now married, with a baby, and looking for a home. She continues to be very involved in the Met and the community surrounding it. focused on the roles of advisors in their students lives.
Briefly met with the Director, Dennis, about this and the new college he is looking to start. He was incredibly supportive of the concept of LOA, which is basically what his college centers around.
9) Met with Carlos who coordinates all the principles between the four schools in the area- discussed the strengths and differences of each particular school.
10) Met with the Principal of the Met- Jusice, and discussed with her both her experiences and how the Met interacts with other Big Picture School.
11) Met with a 11th and 12th grade student: talked a lot about pros/cons and internship experiences/lessons learned
12) Finished up with the host!
13) Went and bought the official soda from Jean- it’s called “The Big Picture” and is passionfruit flavoured. The profit from the soda goes to creating a fund for scholarships for Met graduates. We all love the soda, so we bought a case of it (great value, $20 for a case of 24, glass bottles, high quality soda). I highly suggest you try it- available at http://www.bigpicturesoda.org/ I like the nondiet soda best, but you can try whatever!
So- this is a bit lengthy of an entry. I will talk more at length later about both our talk with Dennis and possibly the role of NFTE/E! education earlier in the educational environment.
I think in particular this school appeals to me because I heavily believe in the idea of personal responsibility. I think that part of the downfall for the school is they lose the first year-ish to undoing what the educational system has fatally taught students: that school is boring, only certain skills are valuable, someone will tell them what to do, and it’s best to avoid work whenever possible. I think everything is a balance- and while I’m not convinced this entirely self-directed is what we need in K12, we’re definitely getting closer.
So- I highly recommend people consider this case study when looking at education.
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