Big Picture Main Text Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to the next lesson. This one is called "The Big Picture." And it comes again from a book called The Big Picture. And The Big Picture is by a man named

<p><br></p> <p>Big Picture Main Text</p> <p>Hello, this is AJ. Welcome to the next lesson. This one is called "The Big Picture." And</p> <p>it comes again from a book called The Big Picture. And The Big Picture is by a man</p> <p>named Dennis Littky. Now Littky is spelled L-i-t-t-k-y, Dennis Littky. The name of the</p> <p>book is The Big Picture. I love this book. This is a book about education and Mr. Littky</p> <p>is an extremely interesting guy. He is just a fantastic teacher, a fantastic educator.</p> <p>Mr. Littky used to be a teacher and then he became a principal of a middle school.</p> <p>Actually I think he started as a principal of an elementary school and then later a middle</p> <p>school, public school, just a normal public government school. Well, he created an</p> <p>incredible school at his first school, just an amazing school. There were articles written</p> <p>about his school. It just became so famous because this school had a lot of low income</p> <p>students, students from poor families. So this was not in some rich neighborhood with a</p> <p>lot of money. And before Mr. Littky became the principal, the school was having a lot of</p> <p>problems.</p> <p>But he came in and he changed everything. He changed the teachers. He hired only</p> <p>passionate, excited, energetic teachers, but not only that. He changed the whole</p> <p>system. He stopped focusing on testing. He stopped focusing on grades. He focused</p> <p>on the students as human beings. He wanted his students to grow as people. Not just</p> <p>to memorize a bunch of facts, but to really learn how to think. And even more</p> <p>importantly how to use their thinking and use their knowledge. So for example, most of</p> <p>his classes were project-based. In other words, the students did not study textbooks</p> <p>and take tests, no, no, no. What they did is they created a project. And each project</p> <p>was individual. Each student chose a project or projects based on their own interests.</p> <p>And of course the teachers helped to guide