School district plan is to start preparing students from first day for final day
OCEAN CITY — The “Portrait of a Graduate” program in the Ocean City School District will set goals and policies starting when children first enter the district and follow through to that joyful day when they toss their mortarboards into the air at graduation.
Interim Superintendent of Schools Dr. Scott McCartney discussed the progress of “Portrait of a Graduate” at the Sept. 21 Board of Education meeting.
The portrait will drive strategic planning, setting the mission and vision of the district in getting students to their final day in school.
“It’s a strategic process to bring in stakeholders in the school system and in the community and then build goals as we move forward,” McCartney said. “It’s a way to organize your strategic plan.”
The process began last year and is being built upon this year, he said.
“The reason we try to paint a portrait of a graduate is like anything else,” he explained.
Essentially it is building a set of directions that will help guide students through their education.
Relating it to a lesson he used to get his students to give him directions to complete a task, McCartney said, “We have to use specific language, we have to use descriptive language and a picture helps us to do that. We have to talk about what do we want for our kids … The tighter the picture that we create, and the more easily it is to be replicated with all of the stakeholders, the better chance we have of meeting the objective.”
The “Portrait of a Graduate” will let the district focus on a core set of goals, skills and habits essential in school and beyond and create profiles that will help lay out a “roadmap” for what students need to master.
McCartney said the district stands behind its motto of “committed to excellence” and has expectations of improving the academic performance of all students, improving communication with the community and financial effectiveness.
He delivered a slide presentation about what the portrait entails with five specific outcomes: making students effective communicators, inspired leaders, career ready, global citizens and emotionally intelligent.
Being effective communicators means taking into consideration multiple viewpoints, speaking in a purposeful manner, critical thinking and active listening strategies.
To build students as inspired leaders, educators are encouraged to develop instructional tasks and offer feedback to develop a strong work ethic, find strength in differences, advocate for others and succeed despite difficulty.
“We want every student to be a leader in their own way,” he said. “We want them to be an inspiration to someone else.”
To make students ready for careers, educators will connect students to the outside world, develop plans and goals, embrace employment opportunities and participate in further education or training.
McCartney said thinking about being career-ready at graduation “is super important,” but has steps along the way. He drew laughs when he added, “As parents, you hope at some point your kids have a job and are not living in your basement.”
For students to become global citizens, they would be given tasks and feedback to display ethics and integrity perspectives, to respect and support differences of opinion, be civically responsible and engaged and learn to discern fact from fiction.
McCartney made a point to note the last part is important because students must be able to do research “because there are facts, there are fictions,” something difficult in today’s world with so many sources of information including social media.
The fifth outcome, to make students emotionally intelligent, is meant to help them be resilient in pursuing goals, able to connect with peers and trusted adults, understand their emotions and develop self-awareness, demonstrate empathy and develop critical thinking skills and be open to change.
That last outcome, he said, may be the most important of the five because there is so much anxiety in today’s world and students need help dealing with it.
McCartney said the process is to develop a grade-specific plan and timeline for students. The next step in building the portrait is to meet with staff in all of the grades, to figure out things such as what it would be like to think of careers in a kindergarten class.
The idea is to have all educators think of what is right for their specific class or department and to ask if they’re helping to achieve that portrait of a graduate.
This year, he said, is developing that part and from there to pull in students and parents and make it “a community approach.”
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff