Our Trip to Providence Rhode Island for the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES Fall Forum) was an amazing experience.  We spent two days completely immersed in workshops, guest speakers, hands-on training, and  presentations in order to further our knowledge of how Big Picture Schools and project based learning works. 

During our 2 day training, we were:

• Assembled in Small groups (Advisories).
• Given the choice of over 80 different workshops to attend.
• Encouraged to tour the campus of the Metropolitan regional career and technical center.

Immersed in hands on project based trainings.

After attending The Met Center, we learned about the core facets of a successful Advisory program:

First of all, our students all contribute to creating an environment conducive to a positive learning atmosphere. They became extremely excited about creating their own advisory and began to paint and decorate our room.

They also adopted the 3 main components of a successful advisory:

• The Advisory Program should serve as an individualized workspace for each student to achieve their goals.
• The Advisory Program should focus on the student's personal, academic, and career goals.
• The Advisory program should support the school-wide Expected Schoolwide Learning Results (ESLR's)