Big Picture Main Text Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to the next lesson. This one is called "The Big Picture." And it comes again from a book called The Big Picture. And The Big Picture is by a man named

Big Picture Main Text

Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to the next lesson. This one is called "The Big Picture." And

it comes again from a book called The Big Picture. And The Big Picture is by a man

named Dennis Littky. Now Littky is spelled L-i-t-t-k-y, Dennis Littky. The name of the

book is The Big Picture. I love this book. This is a book about education and Mr. Littky

is an extremely interesting guy. He is just a fantastic teacher, a fantastic educator.

Mr. Littky used to be a teacher and then he became a principal of a middle school.

Actually I think he started as a principal of an elementary school and then later a middle

school, public school, just a normal public government school. Well, he created an

incredible school at his first school, just an amazing school. There were articles written

about his school. It just became so famous because this school had a lot of low income

students, students from poor families. So this was not in some rich neighborhood with a

lot of money. And before Mr. Littky became the principal, the school was having a lot of

problems.

But he came in and he changed everything. He changed the teachers. He hired only

passionate, excited, energetic teachers, but not only that. He changed the whole

system. He stopped focusing on testing. He stopped focusing on grades. He focused

on the students as human beings. He wanted his students to grow as people. Not just

to memorize a bunch of facts, but to really learn how to think. And even more

importantly how to use their thinking and use their knowledge. So for example, most of

his classes were project-based. In other words, the students did not study textbooks

and take tests, no, no, no. What they did is they created a project. And each project

was individual. Each student chose a project or projects based on their own interests.

And of course the teachers helped to guide these projects and structure them.

So for example, if one child really loved dinosaurs they would create a project about

dinosaurs. The teachers, the math teachers, the science teachers, etc., the English

teachers, would help that student learn math, learn science, learn English, learn history,

learn everything, all focused on dinosaurs because this kid loved dinosaurs. So they

would use dinosaurs to teach math, for example. Maybe they had to learn how to

calculate the size of a dinosaur's bones or something. I don't know exactly how they did

it, but they used the students' individual passions to teach. And the students had to do

these incredibly, amazing, huge, difficult projects. These were not easy. They were

really tough. But the kids were very passionate about what they were doing.

And another thing that Dennis Littky did, he involved the community. His school had

mentors, advisors, helpers, from the community...parents, especially parents, but also

experts. So for example, if a kid really loved dinosaurs or maybe a whole class was

really interested in dinosaurs, they brought experts from museums, from universities to

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