When Cesar was in the 9th grade, his ambition was to become an assassin.His credentials were impressive: urban gang member, hardened street fighter,handgun aficionado. Dozens of his friends and family members were eitherdead or imprisoned or on their way to one or the other fate. Even his motherwas resigned to his downfall. Three years later, he was writing captivatingpoetry and had a scholarship to a private college.
Julia was an honor roll student who started high school a year early andquickly proved herself to be a budding scientist. By age 16, she had assistedin liver cancer research at a teaching hospital, helped to develop genetherapy products with a biotech start-up company, and studied immunology atBrown University. Now she's at college working toward becoming apediatrician.
Cesar and Julia are graduates of the Met School, a small, urban, publichigh school in Providence, Rhode Island, which is being replicated nationwidethrough funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. With closeguidance from adults, each Met student develops a personalized curriculumbased on the student's interests, the school's common learninggoals, and extensive projects in real-world settings. At the Met, theindividual student is the primary focus of learning and teaching. Frequentcollaboration among small groups of students complements the school'sfocus on the individual.
The Met has one-third the absentee rate, one-third the dropout rate, andone-eighteenth the suspension rate of other Providence public high schools.Every Met graduate has been accepted to college, even though more than halfof them will be the first in their families to attend college.
The Met's per pupil expenditure is similar to that of other Providencepublic high schools, and the school's admissions are based on a lotterythat gives all applicants an equal chance of admission. The school has adiverse student body—40 percent Latino, 40 percent white, 17 percent AfricanAmerican, and 3 percent Asian American—that spans a wider range of academicand economic backgrounds than those of most urban schools. Several staffmembers send their own children to the school.
In overseeing the school's design, Met cofounders Dennis Littky andElliot Washor focused on an idea in education that is both widely acceptedand widely ignored: Students learn best when they are deeply engaged. A classfilled with furrowed brows and ardent debate is the mission of most teachers,but few can create and sustain such a classroom climate day after day. Whatis the Met's successful formula for student engagement? Powerfulrelationships and high standards and expectations provide the context forlearning that occurs through pursuit of student interests and real work.
Powerful Relationships
“Even though Solana has been a stellar student,” her teachersaid at a graduation event, “my favorite part has been our personalrelationship. She helped everyone in our advisory, myself included, to gainthe wonderful personal qualities that she already has in such abundance. Shehas been my friend, my sister, my student, and sometimes my daughter—mihija. Solana, you were always there for me if I had a tough day, not just theother way around. I want to thank you for being someone I can be so proud of.I will miss sharing my days with you.”
Research has consistently shown the social and educational benefits ofsurrounding children with caring adults who spend quality time with them(Herrera, Sipe, & McClanahan, 2000). At the Met, each studentparticipates in an advisory, a group of 14 students anda teacher (called an advisor) who work closely togetherthroughout all four years of high school. The advisory is a small, supportivegroup—an extended family—in which all students are known well.Advisories meet for an hour in the morning and a half-hour in the afternoon.They frequently go on educational outings as a group, and once or twice ayear they take outdoor trips together to build group spirit.
Advisors are state-certified in specific content areas, but they work asgeneralists to facilitate student learning across all subject areas. Theytouch base with every student daily and schedule frequent one-on-one meetingsto plan, implement, and evaluate each student's learning. Over time,advisors become deeply familiar with each student's abilities, needs,and interests, which allows them to help each student learn. Cesar, who hadreached high school never having read a full-length book, was finally drawninto reading when his advisor suggested books such as TheAutobiography of Malcolm X and The Rape ofNanking, which connected with the danger and intrigue of Cesar'sworld. Those readings then became the foundation for Cesar'sinvestigations of broader social and historical issues.
Advisors also come to know their students' families through frequentphone conversations, school events, and quarterly meetings during whichparents help plan their children's curriculum and assess their progress.By contrast, the structure of traditional schools, where each teacher isresponsible for more than 100 students, makes it nearly impossible to havemore than brief, superficial contacts with most parents. In a recent surveyby the Rhode Island Department of Education (1999), 98 percent of Met parentsstrongly agreed that “this school views parents as importantpartners,” compared with 35 percent of parents statewide. The strongties that Met teachers forge with students' families help prevent studentdropout and gang involvement, allow teachers to mediate family problems thatdisrupt students' learning, and encourage the development of a powerfulschool community in which teachers and parents work together to promotestudent achievement.
The benefits of the Met's smallness and intimacy extend beyondgraduation. Advisors provide support with college-related problems rangingfrom financial aid and course selection to depression. Often this supportinvolves visiting graduates at their respective colleges. The Met also hostsfrequent alumni reunions and even “empty nest” nights, duringwhich parents of graduates can share concerns and receive help filling outfinancial aid forms.
High Standards and Expectations
Met students earn their diplomas after completing an individualized seriesof internships, projects, exhibitions, portfolios, and other learningexperiences. To bridge the vast differences among students, the Met hasdeveloped schoolwide learning goals and requirements, personalized learningplans to fulfill those requirements, and exhibitions to assess studentprogress.
The Met's five common learning goals do not dictate specific contentthat students must learn; instead, student projects incorporate elements ofmultiple learning goals.
- Empirical reasoning. The goal is to think like a scientist—touse empirical evidence and a logical process to make decisions and toevaluate hypotheses.
- Quantitative reasoning. The goal is to think like amathematician—to understand numbers, to analyze uncertainty, tocomprehend the properties of shapes, and to study how things change overtime.
- Communication. The goal is to be a great communicator—tounderstand your audience; to write, read, speak, and listen well; to usetechnology and artistic expression to communicate; and to be exposed toanother language.
- Social reasoning. The goal is to think like a historian oranthropologist—to see diverse perspectives, to understand socialissues, to explore ethics, and to look at issues historically.
- Personal qualities. The goal is to be the best you can be—todemonstrate respect, responsibility, organization, and leadership; to reflecton your abilities; and to strive for improvement.
Each learning goal is accompanied by questions that guide student work,such as the following questions for the social reasoning learning goal: Towhom is this issue important? What is its history? Who benefits and who isharmed? How do diverse communities view this issue? What social systems arein place around it? What are the ethical questions behind it? What do I thinkshould be done about it? What can I do about it?
The Met has also established common requirements for each student'sactivities. For example, students in each grade must participate in aninternship during the first semester, write in their journals three timeseach week, make productive summer plans, and have a positive impact on thecommunity. Additional requirements are specific to each grade level. Tenthgraders must, among other requirements, complete two research projects, readfive books, prepare for the state language arts and math assessments, andinvestigate college admissions requirements. In addition to other requiredtasks, 12th graders must play a leadership role in the school, complete asenior thesis project and a college portfolio, write a 75-page autobiography,demonstrate improved personal qualities and depth of work, and create apostgraduation plan.
Each Met student has a learning team—student, advisor, internshipmentor, and parents—that meets quarterly to create a learning plan thatspecifies how the student will achieve the school's learningrequirements. Met students also complete quarterly exhibitions to demonstratetheir understanding of what they've learned and to reflect publicly ontheir growth, their plans, and the problems they need to overcome to besuccessful.
Student Interests and Real Work
“At first, Tamika was always losing things and struggled to get herpoint across,” internship mentor Joyce Golden says. “Now she hasdirected a complex event attended by 90 people. After deciding on atheme—the impact of African American culture on our society—shedid a timeline, booked performers, managed publicity and rehearsals, andsupervised six youth assistants. The next year, for her senior project at theMet, she created an intensive support group for at-risk middle school girls.Her work has been phenomenal.”
Fundamental to the Met's curriculum is learning through real work.Starting in 9th grade, students spend two days each week at internships thatthey select according to their interests. Students have completed internshipsin social work and software design, astronomy and auto repair, politics andpuppetry, and hundreds of other disciplines from architecture to zoology. Thegoal is not to prepare students for a specific career but to createmotivated, lifelong learners. One student interned with a computerprogrammer, a judge, and a dance instructor.
With help from their advisors and the Met's internship coordinator,students find adults in real-world settings who share their interests and arewilling to become mentors. The student, mentor, and advisor design projectsthat build the student's academic and personal skills while alsobenefitting the internship site. Most internships last for several months andtake place during school hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but the Met'sflexible schedule is designed to accommodate the ebb and flow of real-worldprojects.
In addition to formal internships, Met students engage in many other formsof authentic learning such as public speaking, schoolwide town meetings,service learning projects, and educational summer projects. Every senior mustcomplete an extensive real-world project that develops his or her personaland academic skills while also benefitting the school, city, or some othercommunity. Recent projects have included writing and directing anautobiographical play, creating a girls' math group for aspiringscientists, and organizing a citywide hunger action event.
The Met's approach eliminates the artificial rift between knowing anddoing that often exists in conventional schools. No one would propose keepingbasketball players off the court until they had studied the game in aclassroom for 12 years—yet that same logic permeates our educationsystem. Met educators recognize the need to acquire knowledge in traditionalcontent areas, but they believe that students must also spend some timedoing to be able to understand how to apply that knowledge.
The Met's innovative strategies—rich relationships, personalizedlearning, real-world projects, exhibitions, and more—have yieldedstrong outcomes with a wide range of students. The Met School provides apowerful example and a wealth of possibilities for the many educators,parents, and policymakers who are striving to make education more engaging,personalized, relevant, and enduring.
