Exchange District school opens doors on ‘big picture learning’

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This article was published 10/12/2021 (1635 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A group of 35 teenagers visited the Exchange District on Friday — not to do holiday shopping, grab lunch at a local restaurant or visit a downtown art gallery, but rather, to go to school.

The Grade 9, 10 and 11 students have been commuting to and from the Winnipeg core daily since the 2021-22 school year got underway in September.

The freshly-minted Met Centre for Arts and Technology, located on the fifth floor of a brick building at the corner of McDermot Avenue and Adelaide Street, is the newest alternative and hands-on learning campus in Winnipeg.

“On any given day, there’s dozens of learners from Seven Oaks School Division working with industry and not-for-profits and learning from mentors in this community, so it just made sense to open up a school on that doorstep — right at the heart of our city,” said principal Will Burton, during a speech he delivered during the Exchange Met School’s inaugural open house Friday.

Upwards of 50 guests, including community leaders, division staff and current students, gathered for the event in the open-concept facility, which has no shortage of windows and is equipped with breakout rooms for independent and collaborative study among learners.

The Met model, also known as “Big Picture Learning,” was born in 1995, when two educators based in Rhode Island decided they wanted to replace rote learning and standardized tests with an education that was individually-tailored and student-led.

The concept and what came of it, the Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center in Providence, sparked the interest of senior administrators at Seven Oaks.

In 2009, the division decided to pilot its own Met program in Garden City. Since then, it has opened a triad of project-based learning schools in Winnipeg — the only three of their kind in Canada.

Increased demand for the unique programming prompted the board of trustees to approve funding for a downtown location, a satellite campus of West Kildonan Collegiate, earlier this year.

Grade 11 student Mohini Machiraju said she applied to Exchange Met School because she wanted to learn more about what she is passionate about: social work.

“I just felt very out of place in my regular high school,” said the 16-year-old. “I had a lot of goals for myself and I thought that in regular school, with so many students, I wouldn’t be able to reach those goals.”

Mohini’s goals: pursue an internship (an option not available at the public school she attended at the start of her high school career), to work in the community and learn more about her desired profession. The high school student is currently in the process of setting up informational interviews with potential mentors.

Field work aside, project-based learning, relationship-building and public exhibitions — quarterly oral presentations during which students must outline the lessons they’ve learned throughout the year to their classmates, parents and mentors — are core elements of the Met program.

In a Met school, students participate in inquiry projects and experiential learning as they complete the standard credit requirements laid out in the Manitoba curriculum. “Advisories” (classes) are composed of around 15 students and typically stick together for four years under a single “adviser” (teacher) who goes by their first-name to build camaraderie.

“(So far), my highlight would be learning so much about myself and becoming more confident because everyone around me is holding me up,” said Taelyn Herselman, a Grade 10 student.

Only 35 students currently attend the Exchange District campus, but the principal said the school of three advisers will grow to accommodate 150 learners and more staff members in the coming years.

Ultimately, Burton said his goal is for the campus to embed itself in the Exchange District so place-based education can occur, meaning students can learn “in, with and for the community.”

Mohini will be one of the first two students to graduate from the downtown campus in 2023.

“That’s surreal to me,” she said, adding the last four months at her new school has been “the best experience of my life.”

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie