All academic learning by students takes place in the context of these two givens. Writing, mathematics, public speaking, and other competencies grow from the continual press to meet specific learning goals agreed upon by student, advisor, parent, and workplace mentor. To help guide this process, the school lays out clearly-stated goals and requirements toward which students must show progress.

The Met’s learning goals fall into five categories: personal qualities, communication, and empirical, quantitative, and social reasoning. Empirical reasoning, the school explains, means to “think like a scientist: to use empirical evidence and a logical process to make decisions and evaluate hypotheses.” Communication goals include: “to understand your audience; to write, read, speak, and listen well; to use technology and artistic expression to communicate; and to be exposed to another language.”

To these learning goals The Met adds annual requirements for all students that range from the general (follow your interests in the real world, show respect for others and yourself) to the concrete (schedule your Supercalendar each week, write in your journal three times a week). Grade-specific expectations, called Met 101, 201, 301 and 401, build from year to year. Among the 15 requirements for seniors, for instance, are writing a 75- to 100-page autobiography, completing an in-depth senior thesis project, and visiting and interviewing with at least four colleges. As students meet these goals and expectations, they wend their way through an intricate infrastructure, what some might say defines The Met: personal learning plans, “Learning Through Internships” (LTIs), advisories, exhibitions, senior institute, coursework at nearby colleges. The resulting products of what The Met calls these “learning journeys”— the Powerpoint presentations, papers, and other artifacts of completed internships, projects, and exhibitions, college course transcripts—fill student portfolios that grow quarterly. Predictably, all are stunningly unique.

Additional Resources School web site The Big Picture Company is founder of The Met and currently creating 20 new small schools in eight sites across the country as part of the Gates Foundation’s small schools initiative. As part of this effort, Big Picture has created an array of informational videos and printed guidebooks for students, advisors, and mentors. Eliot Levine’s book One Kid at a Time (Teachers College Press, 2001) is a comprehensive description of the Met’s philosophy, design, and practices. Adria Steinberg’s “Forty-Three Valedictorians: Graduates of The Met Talk About Their Learning” (Brown Lab, August 2000) gives a good look at the Met’s first graduating class.

Some results, however, neither fit neatly in a portfolio nor carry the label “finished.” These include the pushes and pulls, the personal stretches that figure heavily in these journeys: the moments when a student struggles with an advisor about keeping commitments, revises a paper for the tenth time in response to critical feedback, reads his poetry aloud for the first time at a “Pick-Me-Up” (the community meeting that starts each day at The Met). They include the day when a student tests her opinions in a heated advisory group discussion about racial reparations or begins a high-stakes internship at the state’s largest hospital, translating for doctors as they treat patients.

“We don’t tend to put these in the box called ‘student work,’” explains Met co-founder, Dennis Littky, “but in truth it’s some of the hardest work our students do.”

Four arenas, each reinforcing the others, mark the ground where Met students perform these stretches, reaching beyond what they or anyone else thought possible for them. In the sections below, we examine more closely what student learning looks like in these four arenas. For each, we identify key elements in the supporting structure and link them to concrete illustrations of student work—prizing examples that show the openness and persistence of Met students and not just the “best” work. We also offer related commentary from students and staff that show how these elements play out in practice.

Sustained Relationships

Real World Learning

Reflection and Accountability

Voice and Agency

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