A graduate or learner profile is a public, aspirational commitment of how the school defines success for its students. The work supports employability or career-readiness. It provides additional evidence of learning as aligned to grades, scores, and learning. It should influence teacher lesson planning and delivery in terms of PK-12 student experiences around a district’s identified competencies.
What is a "Portrait of a Learner" or "PoL?" |
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A Portrait of a Learner is an agreed-upon set of school or district-level aspirations for what every learner will know and be able to do when they leave school. That exit may happen at the end of elementary school, middle school, high school graduation or at any other checkpoint along the way. The Sigourney Community School identifies the skills students need to be prepared for an ever-changing world that is driven by technology, human interaction, and innovation. This portrait gives school leaders and teachers the framework to design instruction in a way that promotes real-world competencies and job readiness.
Why create a POL for Sigourney CSD? |
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Now, more than ever, learning experiences must not be just about mastering challenging academic content. They also must be more intentional about fostering teamwork and collaboration, responsibility, adaptability, communication, critical thinking other skills our students need to thrive.
School districts across the country are challenged to improve their accountability system to provide a more comprehensive picture of what student success means. The Sigourney Community School District Portrait of a Learner will help do this by serving as a more balanced measure, demonstrating a student’s growth and achievement, and ensuring their readiness for civic life, career or college.
Sigourney's Portrait of a Learner
The five competencies of Sigourney’s Portrait of a Learner show us that student academic success matters, but so does a student’s ability to collaborate and work on a team, be responsible for themselves and others, be adaptable and learn and relearn to be able to handle change, effectively communicate and think critically. Our goal is to empowered our learners, improve their productivity and become engaged citizens and creative contributors. By the time they graduate, a student should be:
TEAMWORK:
Work on teams and collaborate in small group settings
To have experiences in leadership and goal-setting.
RESPONSIBILITY:
Be responsible, hardworking, productive citizens.
ADAPTABILITY:
Be able to adjust, adapt, learn to learn, unlearn and relearn
To leave us ready
to meet the needs of an ever-changing world, economy and workforce.
COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY:
An effective communicator
engages diverse audiences r
espectfully by exchanging ideas and information responsibly, listens actively, speaks and writes clearly, and uses print and digital media appropriately.
CRITICAL THINKING:
A critical thinker thinks deeply and makes informed decisions to create
solutions or new understanding supported by relevant and reliable evidence.
“Through my work with the POL team, I have come to understand how quickly things are changing for the students that we are sending out into the world. Technology is changing things - sometimes creating new jobs or changing the jobs that currently exist. With the competencies that the team have identified, our students will be ready for that ever-changing world because they will have the skills and qualities, they will need to be successful.”
Terri Glandon, 4th Grade Teacher
Sigourney Elementary School
As an educator, I continually find ways that I can grow and get better in my profession and as a person. Being a part of the POL team has not only done that for me, but it will be a way for me to teach my students, in our everyday work, to do the same. We have great things already going on at Sigourney Schools. The 5 Competencies that we have chosen for Sigourney’s POL will only help us to strengthen that."
Jenny Gay, Kindergarten
Sigourney Elementary School
"Great Prairie AEA is excited to partner with SCSD in building their Portrait of a Learner. We look forward to being a part of the professional learning for teachers and seeing the impact that learning will have on student success."
Jaci Jarmes, Administrator
Great Prairie AEA
