The Met School Celebrates its 20th Anniversary
GoLocalProv Lifestyle Team
The Met School Celebrates its 20th Anniversary
See the Slideshow Below
"The Met Schools are the kind of results you can get when you design a high school to prepare every student for college," said Bill Gates.
Since it opened in 1996, the Met School has now grown to six small public high schools in Providence and Newport and stands as the flagship school of Big Picture Learning.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST“Big Picture is the ‘iPhone’ of education to the ‘walkman’ of old...I’d be proud and eager to send my own kids to a Big Picture school," said Marc Ecko.
The schools Big Picture model has been used by 100 schools across the country and all over the world.
Big Picture Learning at The Met School
At The Met School, advisors work with mentors, parents and students in order to build a personalized curriculum based on students' interests, searching out professionals in the community to pursue those interests in the real-world.
Once students get to a site, students put together a project that the can work on with their mentor and their advisor.
These projects become the basis for the student's learning plan and provide opportunities for the student to explore and master content, skill and reasoning.
For more information on The Met School, click here.
For a further look at the history of the school, check out the slideshow below.
20 Years of The Met School
1996
Dennis Littky and Elliot Washor open the Met School with 52 freshmen at the Shepard Campus in Providence.
1997
The Met started partnering with local colleges to expose students to higher education
1998
The Met establishes FamilyNet, a family engagement program to help place computers and Internet connections in homes of all of the school’s families.
1999
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recognizes the Met for innovation in education and awards Big Picture Learning $4 million to create 12 Met-like schools nationally. Gates subsequently awarded the organization another $20 million to start a total of 54 Met schools.
2000
The Met expanded to a new facility on Peace Street in the West End of Providence.
2001
The Met broke ground on its Public Street Campus.
2002
Harvard researcher Eliot Levine publishes: One Kid at a Time: Big Lessons from a Small School, a book about his experiences at the Met.
2003
The Met celebrates its first full year at the Public Street Campus
2004
Every high school in RI is required to complete exhibitions and portfolios - these new requirements came directly from the Met and Big Picture Learning design.
2005
“Some problems call for unique solutions. [Big Picture] is an idea that works.”
- Newsweek; May 2005
2006
Bill Daugherty, an entrepreneur and former NBA VP, helped to design a program of study to give Met students a 360-degree look at business in its early stages.
2007
The East Bay Met School open its doors in Newport.
2008
53 schools in the US, based on the model from the Met, are operating in the Big Picture Learning network.
2009
College Unbound opens, an innovative real-world higher education program based on the Met and BPL philosophy.
2010
“We’ll follow the example of The Met Center in Providence, Rhode Island, that gives students that individual attention, while also preparing them through real-world, hands on training the possibility of succeeding.” - President Obama, America’s Promise Alliance, March 2, 2010
2011
Mark Cuban, President of the Dallas Mavericks and star of TV’s Shark Tank visits the Met’s Providence Campus.
2012
The Met was featured in the book Learning a Living published by the World Innovation Summit for Education. This book explored innovative education in diverse societies and economies that all promote social values, adaptability and enterprise. The Met was the only high school, and one of only two programs to be featured from the United States.
In May of 2012, the Met opened the first free standing Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the country on the Public Street Campus.
2013
Construction started on the $8.4-million Met school in Newport. The building was named in honor of Paul Crowley, the late state representative who helped bring the Met School to Newport and secure the building site from the city.
2014
Met senior, Ben Perry breaks the world record in the Guinness Book of Records for longest individual cooking marathon.
2015
The Met enrolls its first second generation student, Jodi Lombardi daughter of Mia Lombard, Class of 2000
2016
The Met is celebrating its 20th year of educating “one student at a time”
The Met design has been scaled up to a network of more that 65 Big Picture schools across 16 states, and more that 80 schools internationally.
