Portrait of a Graduate
Portsmouth School Department's Journey to a Portrait of a Graduate
The Portrait of a Graduate is the initial stage of the Portsmouth School Department Strategic Plan, a process that was started in July 2022. The Portrait of a Graduate represents Portsmouth's vision for the 21st century skills, character traits, and/or social-emotional competencies that students need to succeed in college, career, and life. In 2023, students, staff, teachers, community leaders, business leaders, and school administrators came together to create the portrait. These stakeholders met multiple times to discuss the responsibilities and goals of our public schools, as well as the traits and skills that students will need the most to be successful in adult life.
What is a Portrait of a Graduate?
A Portrait of a Graduate is a school or district’s collective vision for student success.
Also known as a Graduate Profile, Portrait of a Learner, Habits of Success, Lifelong Learning Standards, as well as other expressions, this vision describes the skills and competencies that a community agrees its young people need to thrive in learning, work, and life.
Our students today face an increasingly complex, rapidly changing world, and learning to navigate multiple intricacies all while growing up. Widening opportunity gaps and changing job markets demand far different skills and knowledge than have ever been required of our graduates. The college and career readiness that K-12 schools traditionally have provided is no longer enough to equitably prepare our youth for the extraordinary opportunities for learning, work, and life that this time of accelerating change offers.
Portsmouth believes in the power of our students, and is committed to building a strong, vibrant future for our students. The Portrait of a Graduate process enables the community to come together and realize this vision for all our students.
How is the Portrait of a Graduate related to the Strategic Plan?
The Portrait of a Graduate is akin to a vision, but rather than being a vision for what the district needs to do, it is a vision for who our students can be when they graduate. With a vision in place, we turn to making this vision a reality, and this is the process of creating a Strategic Plan.
The focus of the Strategic Plan will be based on what the committee and community learn from the process of developing the Portrait of a Graduate. What areas of concern come up in focus group conversations? What skills do community employers need their employees to have? What do families want their children to be able to do? What are students interested in doing to improve the world around them? All of these questions will generate responses that will be reviewed and grouped into categories around which to design a strategic plan that will bring the vision of the Portrait to life in our community and in our schools. Where the Portrait answers the question what do we want, the Strategic Plan answers the question how do we make it happen.