Big Picture Boosts BOCES Alternative School
New York Teacher, a Publication of the New York Union of Teachers
by Breea C. Willingham
June 16, 2010
Michael Weber thought he was destined to drop out of high school. As a freshman at Cuba-Rushford High School, Weber had trouble keeping up with his work and wasn’t communicating well with his teachers. The harder the work became, the more he “messed around” in class. By age 17, Weber was worried he wouldn’t pass his Regents exams. “I wasn’t going to get through it and wasn’t going to make it to graduation,” he said.
Weber’s life changed for the better once he transferred to Elm Street Academy in Cuba, Allegany County. Last school year, the alternative school implemented the national Big Picture Learning program, which emphasizes educating one student at a time and helping students build learning plans. It means students like Weber, who’s a junior now, receive more one-on-one attention from teachers and the opportunity to work on projects based on their interests.
More than 60 Big Picture schools are located across the United States, including six in New York. Elm Street Academy is one of three sites in the Cattaraugus-Allegany BOCES; the others are in Olean and Ellicottville. The LaFayette Big Picture school in Onondaga County, the Bronx Guild High School and the Frances Perkins Academy in Brooklyn also use the program.
The program’s creators describe their method as “Students assessed on their performance, on exhibitions and demonstrations of achievement, on motivation, and on habits of hand, mind, heart and behavior — reflecting the real-world evaluations and assessments we all face in everyday life.”
At Elm Street, the goal is to build relationships with the students, said Chris Gagliardo, an Elm Street Big Picture adviser and member of the United BOCES Teachers Association, led by Jim Schifley. “To see a student go from where Mike was and now seeing a kid who’s expecting to go to college at the end of his senior year, it feels great,” Gagliardo said. Gagliardo began teaching at Elm Street in the 2006-07 school year, but was deployed to Afghanistan and missed the next school year. He learned of the plans to transition to Big Picture Learning when he returned in June 2008.
His first impression? “How is this small school going to implement such a big program?” But he and the other advisers rose to the challenge because “it requires everybody to come together.” Although teaching under the Big Picture model has been challenging, Gagliardo said it’s worthwhile. “It’s good that I can grow in different ways,” he said. “This type of program allows for a lot of cross-curriculum programming.”
Michelle Smith, a special education teacher and union member at Elm Street for seven years, said special education classes have either six or eight students to one teacher and an aide. These ratios allow for more hands-on, one-on-one teaching and learning, all part of Big Picture’s goals, Smith said. Big Picture has simply opened more doors, she said.”It gave me an opportunity to help other advisers build that long-term relationship with their students,” Smith said.
Advisers play a big role in how Big Picture is run, and not just in the classroom. They meet with parents in their homes four times a year to design a learning plan for their son or daughter. Parents are asked what they’d like their child to do, and students are asked what they’d like to accomplish, Smith said. The home visits not only help advisers, parents and students “create a realistic plan,” said Smith, they also “bridge the gap between parents and education.”
The success of Big Picture is not necessarily measured by numbers, but by student accomplishment and performance. For Gagliardo, small steps can lead to important gains. “If he or she was failing and is now actually coming to class and taking notes and raises his or her hand, asks a couple of questions, and makes a learning plan, those are huge accomplishments for a kid who never brought a pencil to class,” Gagliardo said. Success is also determined by the number of students who graduate or return to their home school, an increase in attendance, or reduction in the number of suspensions.
Each senior at Elm Street is required to apply and get accepted to some form of higher education, said Principal Chris McNell. All six of this year’s seniors have been accepted to college, the military, or a trade school, McNell said. Overall, Big Picture has “done wonders” for students at Elm Street Academy, according to McNell. “Some of these kids come from a different home life,” he said, “and to see them thinking about having a future, it’s pretty cool.”
NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira, who oversees the union’s Research and Educational Services, said alternative schools create a pathway for students to experience success. “Involving parents and students in developing and getting buy-in on their plans for the future is critical,” Neira said.