Training and Support for Principals and School Staffs

With a network of more than 60 Big Picture schools nationally and a growing number of international locations, one of our most significant challenges is to train and support our principals and staffs to implement our school, program, and curriculum designs. The Big Picture design poses significant implementation challenges – principals and school staffs need to do a significant amount of customization and adaptation in order to accommodate local circumstances while still staying faithful to the core Big Picture School principles.

 

We provide a variety of experiences to train our principals and teachers, utilizing the knowledge of our network, combined with trained coaches and content consultants. Like our schools, our training is personalized for the individual needs of the school and models the culture we are trying to teach. We expect principals and teachers to learn new ways of educating students, while at the same time un-learning the methods that have not proven successful in traditional schools.

As often as possible, we encourage our schools to reach out to one another for support in order to build the knowledge base within the network. We aim to build a cadre of trained principals and staff members within the Big Picture Network that can be utilized by any school that seeks additional coaching and support around specific topics.

Training and Support Services:

1. Customized on-site support for individual schools
2. National conferences for principals and staff members
3. An annual principal retreat
4. Regional convenings around specific content topics – college transition, quantitative reasoning, etc.
5. Additional services: printed materials, weekly newsletters, video conferencing connections, and a customized website (Big Picture Online) which provides a searchable database of materials and a variety of forums for support.

Growth

In the next ten years, we anticipate significantly expanding our professional development services for principals and staffs within our Big Picture Schools, AHSI-affiliated schools, as well as our partnerships with other school designs. We also anticipate working with career and technical education (CTE) schools to provide customized Big Picture training through a CTE lens.

For more information regarding Big Picture Learning’s program of support for Principals and Staffs, contact Kari Thierer.