seek to ensure that at the conclusion of their eighth grade year ACDS graduates are:
Independent Learners: The ACDS Graduate actively engages in the acquisition of academic, athletic, and artistic skills. He or she seeks opportunities to learn and exhibits the abilities, knowledge, confidence, and creativity to complete a given task independently….
Effective Communicators: The ACDS Graduate effectively exchanges ideas, experiences, and knowledge confidently and appropriately in person and using a variety of media….
Community Minded: The ACDS Graduate demonstrates an awareness of his or her impact on the community, values diversity, and has the skills to understand, cooperate, and empathize with others. The ACDS Graduate exhibits moral courage and takes an active role in the betterment of the greater community….
Balanced: The ACDS Graduate demonstrates a healthy understanding of the work/life balance, attends to his or her physical and mental health, and is willing to take prudent risks in pursuit of his or her goals.
Having a portrait like these enables you to communicate something more concrete that illustrates the type of student you want to collectively create. It is accessible and compelling to the broader community while establishing a focal point for directing ensuing decisions and actions.
If you’d like to learn more, EdLeader21 is a leading organization promoting the cultivation of 21st century skills and the new basics of modern education (Kay & Greenhill, 2013). The organization hosts an excellent website that offers many examples of graduate profiles along with a detailed protocol that districts and schools can use to engage stakeholders in developing their own Portrait of a Graduate (https://portraitofagraduate.org).
Communicating Futures Research With Key Stakeholders
You need to clearly communicate the understandings and implications of your futures research, along with the resulting Portrait of a Graduate, to the parents, students, community connections, and educators within the broader community. A variety of communication channels exist, including print and online newsletters, articles in local papers, district and school-based websites, social media like Facebook and Twitter, and informational videos posted on YouTube. We also recommend offering in-person sessions, such as information meetings, workshops, and informal coffees where people can actively explore and discuss. You cannot simply tell people that your leadership group’s interpretations are true; you need to help them to arrive at similar conclusions and understand your responses to those conclusions. The importance of building a collective understanding is crucial to gaining the support necessary for the acceptance of subsequent work and the challenges of change. Failure to plan and execute an effective communication plan can hinder subsequent efforts that arise from your desire to do better for your students.
Notes From the Field
The process of transforming a learning community toward meaningful modern learning is a long one, comparable to a relay race. It is not a race, per se, but it is a long and complex process that needs proper staging. To build the proper conditions for success at the next stage, effective change leaders must recognize that various stages of the race require various participants to be involved. The validity of this process is earned through the trust that it is both representative of the community and focused on what is best for our students (not the adults or the organization). Accordingly, community involvement and voice are essential. The word we must echo through everything.
Moving From Vision to Mission
When you have a vision, the next question to ask is: “How do we concretize our vision for modern learning into an actionable mission?”
By acting on the ideas presented in this chapter, you have collaboratively developed an informed, futures-oriented vision for your educational organization. You may also have imagined or created other components, such as a Portrait of a Graduate, to support communication and understanding. In this next stage, you move to transform your vision into a clearly articulated and actionable mission to guide the work at any level—district, school, or department.
A vision is aspirational; it is a projection of what a district, school, or department wants to become. Think of the mission as the organization’s core business; that is, what it is committed to achieving for its clients—the students it serves. An educational mission should thus serve to operationalize your vision in terms of the main outcomes of student learning based on the school’s vision of its desired future.
Unfortunately, schools do not always properly craft their mission statements. Some missions reflect a mixture of vague catchphrases and jargon. Consider the following examples.
• The XYZ School District believes that all students can learn and strives to help all learners reach their full potential.
• We will fully prepare our graduates for college or a career.
• In the ABC School’s social studies department, we nurture future citizens to be ready to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
Mission statements such as these are ambiguous and trite. They lack the specificity necessary to guide actions. They leave us asking: “What does it mean for students to reach their full potential?” “What does it mean to be fully prepared for college or a career?” “What exactly would we expect a future citizen to do?” “What learning outcomes will make it more likely that students will be able to succeed in a rapidly changing world?”
Another common characteristic of poorly constructed mission statements is a focus on what the educational institution or program will provide for its students rather than on student accomplishments. The following are examples.
• The QRS School District is committed to providing a warm and nurturing environment in partnership with parents to support all our learners.
• The TYG International School offers the rigorous International Baccalaureate Program along with a wide range of electives to prepare students for future success.
• All faculty in the mathematics department at NOP Prep have advanced degrees and many years of teaching experience.
Such descriptions may sound appealing, but notice that being warm, nurturing, and rigorous are descriptions of means, not ends. They state what the district, school, or department will offer rather than specifying the long-term learning outcomes for students. Indeed, we find that organizations often confuse the environment, program, teachers’ credentials, and facilities—all means for achieving a goal—with the goal itself.
So, how do you move from a vision of what you believe is most important for your students to achieve to an articulation of a mission that truly guides your actions? Our recommendation is straightforward: an educational mission statement should expressly state the desired outcomes in terms of student learning. More specifically, we contend that the outcomes for a modern education should have several distinguishing characteristics.
• They are long-term in nature; for example, they specify exit outcomes to be developed over time in school.
• They are performance based and involve transfer; for example, they specify what learners will be able to do with their learning when confronted with new situations.
• They call for autonomous performance; for example, they establish independent performance by the learner without coaching or prompting as the goal.
• They reflect the most important outcomes of schooling for a
