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Changing the world, one student at a time: An interview with Dennis Littky

Educator works to redefine what schooling should look like in America

By Dennis Sparks

JSD, Summer 2005 Volume 26, Number 3

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2005. All rights reserved.

JSD: Because the most powerful forms of professional development are tightly linked to the type of learning expected of students, I'd like to know more about the learning that's valued at The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in Providence, R.I., and how you promote it with students.

Littky: Each student has his or her own individualized learning plan. While we have no formal classes, we do have five general goals: empirical reasoning (science skills), quantitative reasoning (math skills), social reasoning (history/humanities), communication (writing, speaking), and personal qualities (leadership, etc.). Empirical reasoning relates to how we prove things. Quantitative reasoning focuses on measuring and representing things. Social reasoning has to do with what other people have to say about the subject at hand. Communication has to do with taking in and expressing information. Personal qualities addresses what students bring to these processes. Students can achieve those goals lots of different ways, with their parents involved in designing the learning plan. Every quarter, students do an hour-long presentation showing what they've learned.

Our teachers work with 15 kids for four years. Their job is to do whatever's necessary to help those students grow and be educated. Their goal is to find what the kids get excited about and to place them with interesting adult mentors in the community.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, students are out in community settings with mentors. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, students and teachers get together in various groups. So while their learning plans focus on them as individuals, they also are engaged with others within and around the school in different ways.

The work students do in our school is real. I was determined that students would only do work that made sense. A student who worked in a hospital, for instance, developed a manual in Spanish for Spanish-speaking patients. A student who worked for CVS Pharmacy did a presentation for regional managers. That's real work. We try always to find tasks that are valued by the organization in which students work and also are important to the kid. It's a win-win. Every three weeks, the adviser visits with the mentor and the student to check on progress and consider new learning and responsibilities. For example, the teacher may say that he'd like the student to learn to take notes, and the mentor would assign the student to take notes in meetings.

Interest and passion come first

JSD: In a foreword to your book, The Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business (ASCD, 2004), Deborah Meier expresses a simple but profound desire: "Let kids learn in settings where adults are doing interesting work." I'm curious about your views on the attributes of interesting adult work and the link you make between adults' interest in their work and students' engagement in their learning.

Littky: I want kids to be interested in and passionate about what they are doing. That's why our students are in the community with mentors two days a week doing real work. Sometimes it's the work itself that engages the student; at other times, it's the person.

Because we are a public school, our teachers have to be certified. But we don't confuse certified with qualified. So we also want teachers who love to learn, who get excited about lots of things. That excitement is part of the teacher's personality, and it helps kids find what they are excited about. Our mantra is one student at a time. I want to employ teachers who understand that philosophy, who love to learn, who can run 15 different programs for 15 different students. That takes a lot of organizational skill. We ask candidates for teaching jobs to tell us about when they worked on a successful team because success at The Met requires working with others in the school, with parents, with mentors.

Avoid slow death

JSD: More than 3 million educators work in public schools. Most of them, of course, don't work in the kind of environment that exists in your school. Some prefer it that way, others do not. Some of those teachers and administrators experience a "slow death spiral," a term used by Robert Quinn to describe work environments that stifle the human spirit. I'm curious what you have to say to people who may be working in those situations about creating work in which they would thrive.

Littky: I ask them to come to grips with what's really important to the students they are teaching. I push people to be honest about the discrepancy between what they believe in and what they are actually doing.

I also push people to find ways to make things real within their own classrooms, to have students exhibit their work to show that they really understand what they are learning, and to team with other teachers to create more time with students and to have real colleagues. If none of those things seem possible, I encourage them to start a school rather than become a dull, dead person.

Becoming great

JSD: You also believe in the power of structures to shape behavior. In The Big Picture, you wrote, "If you put good people in an environment that allows them to continue learning and that reinforces their risk taking, their passion, and their commitment, then you can make good people great."

Littky: Certain structures present a ceiling on how good things can get. For example, teachers are limited in what they can do when they see five groups of 25 or more students a day. Good teachers can become amazing teachers with the right supports around them.

Attitudes shape behavior

JSD: "The teachers' and the principal's attitudes about their jobs and their school have a huge effect on the students' everyday experiences," you wrote in your book. "Educators need to view their role not only as developing skills but also as modeling a way of looking at life." You are describing teaching as a way of being, not simply a set of techniques.

Littky: My students tell me that who I am gives them a sense that they can accomplish anything. That's because students are most affected by what they see around them. We want students to see teachers working together and working hard and late, to experience teachers caring about them, to see teachers getting excited about their work. Misty Wilson, a 2000 graduate of The Met who is now at Brown University, expressed it this way in the preface for The Big Picture: "I know that the values and spirit behind 'my school' will always be with me because they're in me. Yes, they're in me, and I have to continue to do something with them. They'll guide me when I'm in college and then maybe I'll start my own Met somewhere. Who knows? Anything is possible."

Teachers at The Met know they are in an organization that is always on the edge. It's a vibrant place. If teachers are vibrant, their kids will be vibrant. We want kids to see our energy, our respect for them and each other, and our love of learning.

Our students and teachers live in an organization that asks them to use the world as a place in which to learn. Because teachers have kids working in areas that the teacher may know little about, they are learning alongside their students. As a result, our teachers feel that they are learning incredible amounts each day.

Coaching trumps content

JSD: A great deal of staff development work these days is informed by a strong belief in the value of deep content knowledge on the part of teachers. And yet you are putting a positive spin on teachers not possessing that knowledge in areas in which students are learning.

Littky: I appreciate the importance of content knowledge in most schools. But at The Met, I look for the Renaissance person who just loves to gain knowledge in lots of areas and doesn't think of himself or herself as only a science person or a history person. Our teachers are motivators, coaches, guides. We don't have to be disciplinarians because we don't have many discipline problems in the school because everyone is working on something they like. Teachers ask questions, push, give feedback.

Start with a new question

JSD: In The Big Picture, you cite General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner, who said of GM, "We started with the premise, 'What if we were inventing the automobile today rather than a century ago? What might we do differently?'" You add that this "is a powerful question to ask ourselves as we set out to design and open new schools."

Littky: The starting point is to ask, "What's best for kids?" Our answer was that they should be engaged in real work. Another part of our answer was that it's better for kids when parents are committed and in the school. We also decided that it's good for kids when teachers really know them. From these ideas, we built the structures of the school rather than having an already existing structure determine what was possible. Anyone can do this.

Reform is a conversation

JSD: In your book you observe that "frequent, forthright, and humane conversation is the lifeblood of school reform."

Littky: Ted Sizer says that school reform is one big conversation. Because no one has all the answers, we always are learning from each other. The more conversations we have, the more ideas people have to solve problems. Our school is one giant conversation through which kids, parents, and teachers learn.

Shared belief essential

JSD: You also stress the importance of a shared philosophy, which means, as you say in The Big Picture, that you "figure out what you stand for and try to make it a part of everything you do."

Littky: It's critical that everyone in the school believes in the same thing. Without a shared philosophy, you can't focus a school's efforts. At The Met, we are clear that we educate one student at a time, and that there are no easy answers. Our answer to many questions is, "It just depends." The adults know our philosophy. So do the kids. It's very powerful when people are working from the same set of ideas.

We often use stories to help communicate our philosophy. For instance, there's a story about an adviser who took her entire advisory group to a student's house to rouse a student who wasn't getting up in the morning. That type of story says who we are as a school more effectively than a mission statement.

Rid old ideas

JSD: In The Big Picture, you quote Visa founder Dee Hock, who said, "The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out."

Littky: That's incredibly important. We hire teachers who say they believe in our school's philosophy, but when they start teaching they sometimes only remember how they've been taught. Although their hearts are in the right place, they have to get those old ideas and methods out of their heads. The way to address this problem is by continuous conversation. There are no magical answers; it's a constant discussion about why we're here and how we do things.

JSD: You argue in The Big Picture that the habit of reflection is a way of promoting flexibility and innovation within strong structures. "As a school community," you write, "we're always thinking about what we're doing and our successes or struggles - writing in journals, having long group and one-on-one discussions, and writing our weekly staff TGIF newsletter." That culture of reflection is pretty rare in American schools.

Littky: That's pretty sad. I try to create as many different ways for staff members to communicate as possible. Each provides a unique means for teachers to reflect and to reveal themselves.

One way we promote reflection is by asking all teachers to write. They can write about what's going on in their classrooms or at home or whatever. I watch teachers struggle in doing this at the beginning. They don't believe they have anything to say, but they learn through their writing and our conversations that they do have worthwhile things to say. Honest to God, I cry two or three times each Friday evening as I read what teachers have written.

No more sacred cows

JSD: Recognizing that it is painful to look at weaknesses when work is approached earnestly, you note in your book that "the key is to find the balance. To feel good about what we are doing, yet comfortable enough to critique our work and move forward." I'd like to know more about how leaders create conditions that engender both excitement and thoughtful critique.

Littky: If we are to keep moving forward, we have to support people in their work and yet never think we have arrived. We've developed a culture that continuously questions everything in a positive enough way that it doesn't destroy what we have. There are no sacred cows.

Teachers' professional learning is a big part of that culture. Teachers learn in lots of ways - through their writing and our conversations, by visiting other teachers, and even in workshops. Teachers spend a month working and learning together in the summer. We also are together a full day every month. We have two staff meetings a week. At one meeting, the principal meets with the entire staff. At the other, teachers get together to talk about kids and to learn from one another in that process.

Just as every kid has a learning plan, so does every teacher. And the school itself has a learning plan. It describes how we want to get better and what we are going to learn so we can do so. But at its heart, it's always about doing whatever is necessary for all of our students to succeed.

The Big Picture Company

What: A national nonprofit organization dedicated to a fundamental redesign of public schooling in America.

Founded: 1995

Mission: To catalyze vital changes in public education by generating and sustaining innovative, personalized schools that work in concert with the real world of their greater community.

Schools: The Big Picture has started 24 schools in urban, traditionally underserved areas nationwide, including Providence, Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, and San Diego, Eldorado, Oakland, and Sacramento, Calif., with 30 more slated to open by 2008.

The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center (The Met)

What: A network of six personalized public high schools in Providence, R.I.

Founded: 1996

Features: Its groundbreaking design redefines what schooling should look like in America. The Met defies dropout trends and achieves a 98% college acceptance rate, "one student at a time."

Hallmarks: Individualized curricula, academically integrated internships, and small-group advisories. method: By asking, "What is best for the child?" The Met develops each student's curriculum around his or her individual needs and interests and the school's rigorous learning goals.

DENNIS LITTKY

Position: Dennis Littky is co-founder and co-director with Elliot Washor of The Big Picture Company, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to a fundamental redesign of public schooling in America. Littky also is director of The Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in Providence, R.I., a network of six personalized public high schools that develop each student's curriculum around his or her individual needs and interests and the school's rigorous learning goals.

Education: Littky has a bachelor's degree in psychology and Ph.D. degrees in psychology and in education from the University of Michigan.

Professional history: Littky is nationally known for his more than 35 years in secondary education in urban, suburban, and rural settings. His work as a principal at Thayer Junior/Senior High School in Winchester, N.H., was featured in an NBC movie, "A Town Torn Apart," based on the book, Doc: The Story of Dennis Littky and His Fight for a Better School (Contemporary Books, 1989).

Honors and awards: In 1993, Littky received New Hampshire's Principal of the Year Award and was runner-up for the National Principal of the Year. In 2003, he was recognized as a leader in the movement to create smaller, more personalized schools and awarded the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education.

Publications: Most recently, Littky and Samantha Grabelle published a book on The Big Picture's philosophy titled The Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business (ASCD, 2004).

To continue this conversation with Dennis Littky, contact him at The Big Picture, c/o The Met Center, 325 Public St., Providence, RI 02905, (401) 781-1873.

About the author

DENNIS SPARKS is executive director of the National Staff Development Council.