The Methow Valley School District Board of Directors has been selected to receive the first annual Vito Perrone Award from the Puget Sound Consortium for School Innovation, an initiative of Big Picture Learning.
This award recognizes an educational partner for its visionary leadership toward transforming the educational experience of students in Washington State. Vito Perrone wrote,
The task of teachers is to become knowledgeable enough about their students’ particular interests to build a substantial part of the curriculum around them.
He was a relentless advocate of attending to the “larger purposes” of public education, including the role of the community at large, not just schools, in stewarding a healthy society through our interactions with students.
Big Picture Learning is dedicated to a fundamental redesign of education in the United States, largely through generating and sustaining interest-driven learning environments supportive of and supported by their communities. At the core of BPL’s mission is a commitment to equity for all students, especially underserved students, with the expectation that these students can achieve success in their careers and their lives.
Over the past few years, the Methow Valley Board of Directors has supported Vito’s and BPL’s vision through its support of the transformation of the Independent Leaning Center from a packet-based program to a student-centered school embedded in the work and life of the surrounding community; its outspoken advocacy on behalf of underserved students; its openness to sharing practice with other leaders and districts; and its leadership of other rural districts in developing innovative programs to better serve students left behind by traditional programs.
Please join us as we celebrate the visionary work of the MVSD School Board and ILC staff members making it happen in support of our students!