Portrait of a Graduate: What? Why?
A Portrait of a Graduate is a vision that articulates the collective hopes and dreams that a community has for its students; and the skills and attributes that all students need in order to be prepared for college, career and life. The process meaningfully engages a diverse team that represents all stakeholders, ensuring an equitable and representative process that unites the community. The resulting Portrait of a Graduate is a compass that guides district-wide strategic and instructional decision-making and planning.
Co-Creating a Community Vision
The Portrait of a Graduate journey engages community members in crafting a vision for meaningful learning opportunities that matter in the local and global context. Schools that engage with their communities are better able to help students solve local problems, contribute to civic life, and respond to a changing economy. Equitable community engagement requires cultivating open dialogue and relationships with students, families, local businesses, faith organizations, nonprofits, and others, especially those stakeholders whose voices have been marginalized.
Providing a Compass for Teaching and Learning
The Portrait of a Graduate defines the qualities and attributes that students need to be lifelong learners and contributors to their communities. The process identifies important skills and concepts from which to build a framework that provides all students with regular opportunities to learn, practice, demonstrate, and reflect upon their emerging abilities. The Portrait of a Graduate is a compass that keeps instruction focused on what matters most. Wherever you are in this iterative process, communicating this vision more clearly will create coherence and momentum for educational excellence and equity.
Engaging in an Equitable Process
A Portrait of a Graduate journey engages the community in an ongoing, iterative process of building relationships, working collaboratively to support all students, and sharing power—resulting in transformative benefits for schools and their school communities. By engaging community voices that have been under-represented, we create a more robust and culturally responsive vision for our schools, one that represents the unique strengths and assets of the community.
This resource was produced by the Great Schools Partnership and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Interested In Learning More? Let's Talk.
Personalized, equitable, and student-centered education is too important to put aside. Together, we can improve learning for all your students.
Contact Us