The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center: "The Met" (Providence, Rhode Island) The Summary: Overview of the Strategy The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (the Met) is a state public high school in Providence, RI, and a laboratory for a statewide effort to improve secondary education. The Met prepares all kinds of students for careers, college, and citizenship. Our strategies capitalize on the knowledge that adolescents are powerfully motivated to learn in the context of real work, in areas of personal interest. To help students progress towards our graduation requirements through real work of personal relevance, the Met curriculum is developed one student at a time! Every student has a learning team -- him/herself, their parents or guardians, advisor-teacher, and a workplace mentor -- that meets regularly to build an individualized program. Central to every student's program is a long-term internship in a workplace with an adult mentor, called an LTI (Learning Through Internship). All Met students spend about two full school days per week at their LTI site, accomplishing real work that benefits the organization but that also promotes the learning of important general skills, such as reading, algebra, and empirical reasoning. LTIs are arranged for individual student based on their interests; we do not predetermine the sites to be offered. The duration is also individualized; students stay at a site as long as the experience is productive for them. Instead of predetermined, unrelated subject courses for permanent groups of students, our flexible program deepens students' learning from the LTI and responds to individual needs and paces. Each student develops an investigative project around the work he is producing for the workplace, to improve the quality of the product and motivate him to learn and practice academic skills. One-on-one with teachers and mentors, workshops, software, the Web, local libraries, and peers are among the work resources supporting students' investigations. We don't "track" students into static groups, steer them away from particular work sites, or otherwise restrict their opportunities because of their abilities. We don't grade students or compare them to others. Detailed narrative reports and frequent communication among student, advisor, parent, and mentor keep all informed about the student's progress along their learning program. Students make their work public each trimester in formal presentations to a panel of their parents, mentor, peers, teachers, and other community members. The Need The overarching goal for developing the Met is to provide the state and nation with a new vision of secondary education. The failures of today's high schools -- dropouts, low student achievement, poor career preparation, etc. -- are well documented. To combat these failings, the Met models new strategies for schooling: close relationships with adults, real work of consequence, and individualized education emanating from what's meaningful to students. Our daily mission is to prepare our 95 ninth and tenth grade students for responsible, productive adulthood (we will grow incrementally to 900 students, grades 9 - 12). Our strategies are proving effective for all kinds of students. 75% are Providence residents by state mandate; 25% come from 15 towns ranging from urban to rural. Beyond that requirement, admission is by lottery; we do not select our students. Our demographic statistics: White 38%, Latino 32%, African American 22%, Asian 2%, other 6%. 56% are female, 54% qualify for free lunch, and 13% have special education plans. 37% have parents for whom English is a second language. Previous academic success varies widely: students who'd failed 9th grade twice in their old schools are learning alongside ones who'd excelled and skipped 8th grade! Meeting the Need Led by the community of South Providence, the city's poorest section, Rhode Islanders passed a referendum in 1994 to build a new, state high school in that neighborhood. In 1995, the RI Board of Regents and the RI Department of Education contracted the Big Picture Company, a small nonprofit group, to design this new school as a model and catalyst for statewide educational reform. The RI Human Resource and Development Council (HRIC, formerly Workforce 2000) funded Big Picture for a planning year. Big Picture staff investigated school-to-career programs, research on learning, and state and national education standards, convening business leaders, community members, educators, parents, and students to help plan the Met. HRIC funding has allowed Big Picture to conduct "research and development" on the Met since it opened in 1996. The Met is funded through the RI state budget. Many partners now help the Met reach it's goals. Small businesses, large corporations, and community organizations welcome our students as interns and for job shadows and interviews. Parents participate on learning teams for their child. Big Picture staff work alongside Met teachers and mentors, studying and developing the Met's programs and documenting our work for broad dissemination. An AmeriCorps grant provides ten volunteers who support teachers and find opportunities for LTIs and service projects in our community. The Results Learning through real work has driven the activity of the Met for two years, spawning hundreds of real projects by Met students. Every teacher is necessarily involved in all main strategies of the Met, and every family plays a central role in developing learning programs for their child. Our current cadre of mentors draws 80 local businesses and organizations into the education of our students. Over 200 other professionals have hosted students for job shadow days and interviews. Our students, mentors report, blend right in at the worksite and impress everybody with their maturity, eagerness, and ability. When our students speak at conferences about their experiences, they are poised and articulate, usually fooling audiences into thinking they are older than they are. Since opening, we've made no changes beyond fine-tuning to the central features of our program. The range of learners using this Met strategy virtually mirrors the range of the state's students. We have not yet attracted physically disabled students, but we believe our highly individualized program can serve them well, and our recruiting has always specifically included them. Rhode Island received federal School-to-Work funds in 1996 and has built state and local partnerships to help carry out its school-to-career agenda. Big Picture staff are involved in these partnerships at all levels -- policy, program review, and program development. So they serve as knowledgeable liaisons to the Met to ensure its compliance with the School-to-Work Opportunities Act. Reflections on Our Strategy No one could be prepared for the difficulty of starting a school; the logistics were overwhelming! But the idea of workplace learning -- to motivate and contextualize learning important general skills, not for specific job training -- has really caught fire with teachers and mentors. One likely change: to start the 9th grade year with a structured group project to introduce the idea of "learning through real work," allow interest exploration, and model long-term project management. Truly implementing a strategy of personalized, real-world learning requires rethinking a school's design. These features seem fundamental to support such a strategy: Design the program around individual students. Establish workplace sites on the basis of student needs and interests, not beforehand. Let the realities of the work drive the schedule.   Grow curriculum from the work place experience. Replace standard "courses" with programs to develop the skills students need for their projects. Involve the people closest to the student in important decisions about their educational program. Then all parties -- parents, advisor, mentor, and the student -- are invested in making it work, it is ultimately personalized, and all have a "voice" in ensuring it meets the student's needs. Examples of Learners Three examples of successful learners are provided to demonstrate the impact The Met has had for all students. Example 1 Lea, a 10th grader from the Dominican Republic, came to the Met with very limited English proficiency. Her mentor in ambulatory surgery at RI Hospital asked Lea to produce an informational pamphlet about patient-controlled anesthetics for post-operative patients. With her advisor's and mentor's help, Lea is reading medical information about the uses, interactions, and side-effects of Demerol and morphine, and creating a mathematical function that models the relationship between "button presses" and amount of drug introduced into a patient' s system. This LTI project is "perfect for Lea," says her advisor, because the pamphlet should be written at a 7th grade reading level, allowing Lea to concentrate on perfecting the mechanics of writing English, and because Lea can hone her Spanish writing skills while creating a desperately needed Spanish version.   Example 2 If a traditional school knew 15-year-old Raysa as we do, they'd likely label her gifted. For this second-year intern at the Children's Crusade (a non-profit group supporting inner-city children through their school years), the expectations and responsibilities were stepped up. Raysa coordinates a team of adults planning a large conference for 8th graders on the transition to high school. She delegates tasks, researches sites and costs, develops content, and schedules presenters. For Raysa, the challenges include professional writing, complicated budgeting, leadership, and time management.   Example 3 Ryan, a student with dyslexia, came to the Met last year unable to read but with a passion for building. In his LTI at the zoo, he single-handedly created a scale model that contributed to the design of a larger exhibit, which he also worked on. Ryan's learning plan emphasized reading, handwriting, and organization. To produce blueprints, he had to master a universally used Gothic hand-lettering style. His mentor helped him read difficult text from his research for the exhibit and faxed vocabulary words to his teachers at school. When the zoo presented the exhibit at the RI Convention Center, Ryan was assigned the responsibility of scheduling the day, deciding when staff members covered, what materials were needed, and who'd transport them. The pay-off: the exhibit won first prize!   Recruitment The Met recruits students via presentations at all Providence public middle schools, some private schools, Boys and Girls Clubs, and community agencies, including the Departments of Mental Health and Human Services, and the Governor' s Commission on Disabilities. Announcements about family informational nights appear in newspapers statewide. After these general information nights, families come for personal interviews with Met staff members to help each family decide if The Met is an appropriate learning environment for their student. For more information on The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technology Center, contact: Dennis Littky The Met The Sheppard Building, Room 325 80 Washington Street Providence, Rhode Island 02903 (Phone) 401/277-5046 (Fax) 401/277-5049   Back to The Award page

	Funding for the All Means All School-to-Work Project has ended. We cannot guarantee the accuracy of contact information listed here. Additionally, awarded programs that we profile may no longer exist. We are publishing this information as it may be relevant to the current work of assisting youth with disabilities in the transition from school to post-school opportunities.
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