If you want to see community members take off the boxing gloves and really come together, get them talking about their kids and education. Not curriculums, not what teachers are or aren’t doing, not the fiery politics within polarized school boards around the country. But what we want our children to learn, embody and take with them out into the world. Skills and competencies and dispositions they need to become fully formed grownups, happy and successful in their lives.
Durango School District 9-R is examining this with its Portrait of a Graduate plan, as reported in The Durango Herald on March 30. The plan originated with the nonprofit BatelleforKids, which collaborates with districts nationwide on realizing the potential for students by matching rigorous content with skills and mindsets for deeper learning. It brings focused attention to what’s missing in education. We all have opinions on this.
Some local feedback on ideal traits: Being empathetic, curious, lifelong learners, compassionate, communicative, collaborative, critical thinkers. Graduates unafraid to fail.
We would add self-regulation. And whatever else helps grow students into citizens who can do a better job than we are.
These traits are straight from parents’ dreams and playbooks. We’d say parents are ultimately responsible for getting these tools into students’ toolboxes. But if the state of the world is any inkling of the job we’re doing, we need all the help we can get. Especially after these lost years of COVID-19, when so many of our children have floundered and regressed.
The PoG plan is not a curriculum. It’s not a tacked-on program. This yet undeveloped, systemic plan is dynamic and dependent on input. This is when it all gets interesting because each preferred trait, each skill is unique to each parent, each industry leader, each student stepping into the conversation. Work ethic might outrank kindness to one parent, with the two switched for another. Certain skills deemed more important could leapfrog others. Ultimately, though, PoG will have a “unity of purpose,” according to School District Superintendent Karen Cheser.
Karla Sluis, public information officer for the school district, said, “It’s to be determined exactly how this will manifest; but the vision will be embedded in the district’s curriculum in practical and tangible ways.”
The idea, Sluis said, is to support our students to “do whatever is their calling.” Cheser is introducing the concept of ikigai as a foundation for PoG. Ikigai ("ee-key-guy") is the Japanese philosophy of finding the sweet spot with what you love, what the world needs, what you’re good at and what you can be paid to do.
Educational strategies sure have changed over the years and we’re glad for it. Back in the day, early engaged readers were seen as poised for academic success, leading to higher rungs on the socioeconomics ladder. The best indicators. Now, our idea of success has expanded. Education researchers Debbi Arseneaux and Liz Remington write that social-emotional learning drives literacy. Regulating emotions, sharing and compromising, for example, can’t be underestimated. They lay the groundwork for all the learning, including citizen-making.
The PoG plan has us reflecting on what school is actually for and how we model the competencies we so want our children to possess. How we check our own heightened emotional states and relate to our children. How we behave collectively as citizens who can’t seem to unite enough to make our own federal government work for us.
We appreciate 9-R’s interest in creating conditions for new territories in learning, and fertile ground for these ideas to take hold and mature. We support efforts to invest in well-rounded, compassionate and competent human beings, whether they join our local workforce or venture farther out. Human skills that turn out people who can work together and solve our collective problems.
Maybe they’ll be better at getting it right. Now that’s what we call an education.
