I want to tell you about a high school in the Bronx that feels radically different from most schools—but operates within the same public school system as everyone else.

It’s called Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School, and it’s a Big Picture Learning school.

I spent two days there observing classes, talking with students and teachers, and seeing firsthand what happens when a school prioritizes student agency, relationships, and real-world learning over compliance and test scores.

What I saw challenged a lot of assumptions about what’s possible within the constraints of public education.

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I want to pull out some of those insights for you in this email, because I think they might help you reflect on the changes—big or small—you can make in your own classroom or school.

What if school was built around how students actually learn?

Fannie Lou is a public school choice—not a lottery, not a charter, not private. Any student in the community can opt in. But what they’re opting into looks and feels completely different from a traditional high school experience.

For starters, there are no standardized tests. Instead, students build portfolios of their work and defend them in front of a panel. They don’t just complete assignments for a grade and move on—they revise, reflect, and refine their work until it meets a high standard.

Students loop with their teachers for two years, meaning they have the same teachers in 9th and 10th grade, and then again in 11th and 12th. They also spend part of their day in advisory, where they meet with the same small group of peers and an advisor over multiple years. One student told me, “My advisor is like my school mom, and the other kids in my advisory are like my siblings.”

Advisory isn’t a glorified homeroom or study hall—it’s a structured time for academic support, social-emotional learning, post-high school planning, and just building community together. Every adult in the building knows the students well, and students know they’re seen and cared for.

Classes are long—at least 75 minutes. There are no bells. No one is shouting at kids to move from one room to another. The entire building feels calm, respectful, and regulated—something that’s almost unheard of in a high school with nearly 500 teenagers.

One of the most powerful things I saw at Fannie Lou was how they integrate real-world experiences into students’ schedules:

• 9th and 10th graders participate in Extended Learning Opportunities (ELOs) twice a week, leaving campus to work in the community—helping at local schools, doing environmental research at the Bronx River, engaging in the arts, and more.
• 11th and 12th graders take on internships in the middle of the school day, gaining hands-on experience in professional settings.
• Every student who wants a summer job is guaranteed one, with 100$ summer employment.

This means that by the time students graduate, they have real-world experience, professional connections, and a clear sense of how their learning applies beyond school.

The overlap between what's best for students and what's best for teachers

While students are out in the community on ELO days, teachers get three hours of uninterrupted planning time.

Half the 9th/10th grade students are gone on Tuesdays, and the other half are gone on Thursdays. The teachers who don’t accompany them get dedicated, structured time to collaborate, plan, and prepare lessons—without squeezing it into early mornings, lunch breaks, or evenings.

This setup benefits everyone—students are engaged in meaningful, hands-on learning, and teachers actually get the time they need to do their jobs well.

What else might be possible in YOUR school?

Fannie Lou doesn’t have a huge budget. It doesn’t have state-of-the-art facilities. It’s not a wealthy school. The classrooms have green chalkboards and white chalk. The walls have student work, not expensive bulletin board sets.

And the best part? This school is not an anomaly.

It’s part of a network of 160 Big Picture Learning schools across 37 states, all operating within the public education system.

So if this is possible there… what’s possible in your school?

Maybe you can’t eliminate standardized tests. Maybe you can’t send kids out into the community during the school day. Maybe you can’t revamp your entire advisory structure.

But you can think about how to integrate student choice, interdisciplinary learning, relationship-building, and real-world relevance into your teaching in ways that work within your setting.

I share more about everything I saw and learned at Fannie Lou in the latest episode of Truth for Teachers:

Whether or not you take the deep dive into my article/podcast episode, I hope this email has given you something to think about and be optimistic about.

Change IS possible—even within the constraints of the system.

Angela

P.S. Big news--I'm going to be offering a live professional development cohort this fall with Rocket PD! It's called Unlocking Teacher Productivity.

I'll share more about it in a few weeks, but wanted you to have the heads up, since this is the time of year folks often begin planning PD for the following school year. Let your admin know now if you want to get school funding for this program (or one of the other courses offered by RocketPD with Jennifer Gonzalez, AJ Juliani, John Spencer, and more incredible folks you've heard on my podcast). This is top quality, highly relevant and practical professional development, all conducted virtually and at an affordable price. Please join us!

Angela Watson Stay connected on social media: ​​​​​​

P.O. Box 175, Bushkill, PA 18324
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