What is Big Picture Learning?

The Big Picture Learning Network centers around five guiding principles that provide the school’s foundation and framework: personalization, adult-world connection, common intellectual mission, supportive partnerships, and shared leadership and responsibility.

Bellevue Big Picture School is uniquely structured to guide students from middle school through high school graduation, building bridges across grades that lead to college and career success.

Big Picture Learning is a dynamic approach to learning, doing, and thinking that has been changing the lives of students, educators, and entire communities since 1995. The design components are based on three foundation principles: first, learning must be based on the interests and goals of each student; second, a student’s curriculum must be relevant to the people and places that exist in the real world; and finally, a student’s abilities must be authentically measured by the quality of her or his work. Nationally, Big Picture schools have a graduation rate of 92% and a college acceptance rate of 95% succeeding especially with students of color and students living in poverty.

For more information on the Big Picture model, go to www.bigpicture.org. In this video, community members from the past describe what Bellevue Big Picture means to them.