CASILLAS:We're doing something at North Hollywood High School. They have 1,100 incoming ninth-graders. This year, they're trying to break up that bigness into smallness, by creating what they're calling "dens" of 30 students. They have student tutors from the gifted magnet schools assigned to teach them, and two or three parents who are going to somewhat shepherd these kids. The faculty were in a retreat for four days, debating whether they should go this way or that way. And it took them three years to get to that point, to take that risk and say, "We're going to try something different."
Now, if we'd gone in there and said, "This is what you should do," it probably wouldn't have worked. But instead we facilitated a process where we brought information to them, we sent them out to visit and learn about small schools in New York. You have to expose people to possibilities so that they can envision that something different can happen.
LAPPIN:Making that big school small is something that you have to do. It makes a tremendous difference in how kids react to their schools if they feel a part of some smaller unit, even within the big, huge schools.
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