Big Picture Learning’s Big Bang Celebration

Written By Beth White

Big Bang 2025 was more than a conference. It was a homecoming. For Big Picture Learning, it marked 30 years of transforming education “One Student at a Time” and a return to where it all began at The Met in Providence, Rhode Island. For us at Habitat for Aviation, it felt like bringing our aviation family back to its philosophical roots.

Big Picture Learning is a nonprofit that helps redesign schools so that each young person is known well, follows their interests, and learns in the real world—not just in classrooms. Its model centers on strong advisories, personalized learning plans, and Learning Through Interests, where students work with mentors in the community and show their growth through real work and public exhibitions. Habitat for Aviation is modeled directly after this framework: our WOMEN BUILD PLANES team is our advisory, airplanes are the curriculum, mentors are the teachers, and every hour of BUILDING, FLYING, and FIXING is meaningful, credited learning.

This year felt especially meaningful because Zoë and Miranda, both part of my original advisory, were there. Just days before Big Bang, Miranda passed her private pilot checkride and then FLEW herself to Providence to join us—a living, flying example of what happens when young people are trusted with real responsibility and supported by mentors. Throughout the week, they connected with educators and students from around the world who are building learning environments like ours, where hangars, theaters, farms, studios, and communities become classrooms. We closed the celebration all dressed up at a beautiful 30th anniversary gala, honoring the movement that shaped us and continues to light the runway for our work at Habitat for Aviation.

Beth White

Education Possibilitarian, Artist, Writer, Doula, Mentor, Aviatrix, Breast Cancer Survivor, Pilot-in-Command at Habitat for Aviation


In the spring of 2022, Beth White emerged from a 10-month battle with breast cancer with an idea: to create an apprenticeship program at Franklin County State Airport where youth work alongside adult mentors servicing conventional and electric aircraft. A pilot and airplane mechanic apprentice herself, and with family roots in the trades, Habitat for Aviation provides an taxilane for world learning opportunities for youth and adults who love to work with their hands to enter the FAA’s apprenticeship certification track. Each day she puts systems in place that make real John Dewey’s philosophy that we “learn best what we live” – a deep throughline from her time at Antioch University New England and as Regional Director for Big Picture Learning. Each learning experience is grounded in relationships, relevance, and practice. In October, 2023, Habitat for Aviation launched its Women Build Planes program, where an all-female team of Modern Day Rosies is building an airplane at Franklin County Airport, in northwestern Vermont, to show folks everywhere that despite the fact that only 2.6% of airplane mechanics are female, women BUILD, FLY, and FIX airplanes.

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