[Editor’s Note: Ms. Rodov is the founder, with Jessica Jacobs, of The Innovatory School for Professional Youth (ISPY), which is petitioning the Culver City Unified School District for a charter. Ms. Rodov holds a B.A. in English from Columbia University and an M.S. in Teaching from Fordham. A commercial casting director, she won a coveted New York City Teaching Fellowship and Americorps scholarship to teach high school English in Washington Heights, where the poverty rate is 100 percent. She dedicated four years to helping students score off the charts on high-stakes exams, gain entrée to prestigious universities like Columbia, Fordham and Skidmore on full scholarship, and become lifelong learners. Currently, she is an adjunct English professor at the Art Institute of California. Additionally, she is involved in entertainment projects as a writer/producer, including a major studio musical she is developing with Grammy-winning jazz legend, Patti Austin.]
[img]1444|left|||no_popup[/img]My family immigrated to New York from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg, in the former Soviet Union) when I was three years old. My supportive, hard-working and ambitious parents were thinking about the big picture: They wanted me to be a successful American, so an education was essential. I, in turn, excelled in grade school, attended an elite high school and then Columbia University. I never paid much attention to students who flunked out of school (I assumed they were dumb). Since I wasn’t interested in being an educator, I did not know or care about the “education crisis” or alternative education.
A Direction Switch
And then everything changed. I was living a glamorous life as a casting director but wasn’t feeling challenged or inspired anymore. On a whim I joined the NYC Teaching Fellows, which recruits high-performing young professionals and prepares them to become teachers in the most destitute schools. Before I could fully comprehend what I was doing, I was teaching high school English in Washington Heights, one of the worst drug neighborhoods in the country.
It was an eye opener. The students were flunking out. Yet they weren’t dumb. In fact, many were smart, some even brilliant. What they were, also, was less fortunate than me. They had neither educated parents who pushed them to succeed nor a stable home environment where they could do homework. Most didn’t know any successful people who could be role models. So they did not see the big picture of what was possible in life. In time I bonded with my students, helping them ace high-stakes exams, gain entrée to prestigious universities and become lifelong learners. I realized that certain methods work when dealing with at-risk youth:
Striking the Right Format
- Find out what their interests are and give them a choice about what they are learning. They have so little control in much of their life, at least give them a choice in school.
- Everything you teach them has to relate to the real world. If it doesn’t, it will go in one ear and out the other. If they don’t see a practical purpose for what they’re learning, they won’t learn it.
- Have high expectations. Give them a rigorous academic program and provide them with early college opportunities. They will rise to the occasion.
- Provide them with mentors and internships. They need interactions with and support from people who have “made it” so that they know that they can, too.
Imagine my surprise when I moved to Los Angeles and learned I wasn’t the only one who found these principles to work — Big Picture Learning, a highly successful organization in operation since 1995, functions on these basic principles. That is why Jessica Jacobs and I have decided to make ISPY a Big Picture Learning School. I would call Big Picture Learning an alternative approach to education. To me, though, it simply makes sense: Big Picture “gets” the big picture. The impressive results speak for themselves.
All across America, Big Picture’s high school on-time graduation rate is 90 percent (vs. 69.5 percent in regular high schools nationally). More than 95 percent of Big Picture graduates are accepted into college. Proof that all young people, including (and especially) under-served urban students, can succeed in high school, college, or any other post-secondary learning path or career. If ever there was a method devised to fix the education crisis, this is it.
Under the Big Picture Learning model, students’ learning is driven by their passion, which becomes the basis for a semester-long project. For instance, a student interested in architecture interns at an architectural firm (mentored by an architect), takes a drafting/design class at a community college, studies the history of architecture and creates a final interdisciplinary project. Because students are encouraged to be change leaders who improve the community, perhaps she will build a sustainable school building or low-income housing model. The A-G standard subject requirements are infused into her project (English, Math and Science are integrated via writing proposals, media relations, budget). Her project is presented with those of her peers at a celebratory exhibition attended by parents, philanthropists, board members and the community at large.
Among the projects that Big Picture students across the country have created in the past: They have organized a citywide event to educate teens about HIV, started a youth-driven newspaper, founded a soda business, and planted 150 fruit trees as part of an urban agriculture project in the Bronx.
World-changing, if you ask me.
Big Picture has been praised by President Obama and hired by James and Suzy Cameron to help develop their elementary school, muse.
That is because they understand that Big Picture creates lifelong learners, productive workers and engaged human beings.
Big Picture “gets” the big picture.
Ms. Rodov may be contacted at The Innovatory School for Professional Youth, ispycharter@gmail.com
