Elliot Washer
2006
If you focus on learning, teaching comes.
I co-founded the Big Picture Company, a non-profit based in Rhode Island, to generate and sustain small innovative highly personalized high schools in the US and abroad.
We focus on the learning, not the teaching, and start by developing a learning plan with each and every student. We don’t have classes, but we do have advisers and teachers who work with the same 15 students throughout their entire high school career and provide knowledge and guidance for their projects. We have an extremely low drop-out rate compared to the average in the states where we work, and many of our students wind up forming their own non-profits.
80 to 90% of our students are in the US high poverty range and they are almost exclusively students of color. In America, equity means “the same”, or “one size fits all,” but that’s not how we’re wired. Equity to us means that all of our students are different, and that we have to individualize schools for each and every student’s passion.
I co-founded the Big Picture Company, a non-profit based in Rhode Island, to generate and sustain small innovative highly personalized high schools in the US and abroad.
We focus on the learning, not the teaching, and start by developing a learning plan with each and every student. We don’t have classes, but we do have advisers and teachers who work with the same 15 students throughout their entire high school career and provide knowledge and guidance for their projects. We have an extremely low drop-out rate compared to the average in the states where we work, and many of our students wind up forming their own non-profits.
80 to 90% of our students are in the US high poverty range and they are almost exclusively students of color. In America, equity means “the same”, or “one size fits all,” but that’s not how we’re wired. Equity to us means that all of our students are different, and that we have to individualize schools for each and every student’s passion.
