Living Portraits: Competencies can help you bring your vision for learners to life

In another life

Before I joined reDesign, I was director of curriculum and instruction at an independent K-12 school. In that role, I took any opportunity to get up close and personal with teaching and learning: watching an inspiring kindergarten math lesson or brainstorming meaningful project-based learning opportunities with an Upper School history teacher. These were the experiences that best informed my work mapping, strengthening, and communicating an academic program that affected 750 young people and supporting the professional growth and development of 100+ teachers. My role also allowed me to contribute to schoolwide, admin-level initiatives such as curriculum and block schedule restructuring, reaccreditation, composing our Portrait of a Graduate, and the recurring strategic planning process. And yet, I often felt that the two parts of my job were out of sync.

Classroom vs. Boardroom?

My work was informed primarily by two touchstone documents: our Portrait of a Graduate, which expressed (in somewhat aspirational, poetic terms) the promise we made to learners, their families, and our community, and our Strategic Plan, which identified specific, actionable, time-bound priorities. Both of these were created with some faculty input, and yet it wasn’t clear what they meant for the day-to-day work of teaching and learning. The portrait was posted in every classroom, but conversations with teachers about its implications for curriculum design, lesson planning, and pedagogical practices were scarce. Likewise the strategic plan, which invoked phrases like academic fundamentals, creativity, deep thinking, and experiential learning (all great things!): how were my teacher colleagues, with the customary creative and intellectual freedom so many independent school teachers enjoy, supposed to make that happen?

Strategic Plan + Portrait of a Graduate = [x, y, z curricular designs and pedagogical practices that needed to be taught, practiced, and sustained at scale] 

I found that to be an endlessly fascinating question. But, like my counterparts at other independent schools, I was a team of one. Trying to solve this equation was certainly nothing one person could pull off. As daunted and alone as I sometimes felt, I know now there’s a whole community of people out there who can relate. 

If I knew then …

In my Senior Educational Consultant role at reDesign, I have the great pleasure of keeping one foot in that independent school world I know so well. One of my proudest and most beloved roles is consulting with Lindsay Hershenhorn, Director of Curriculum and Program Innovation at Children’s Day School (San Francisco, CA). When I joined reDesign (and the project team), CDS was at a spot I knew well. They had a beautiful Learner Profile that expressed the promise the school made to all learners – the core skills and dispositions that a CDS education would cultivate. They were also at the beginning of a five-year strategic vision that drilled down into a few key learning goals: to implement the Learner Profile; to define and elevate their signature programs and align them with the Profile and school values; and to make learning outcomes visible and easily understood. To CDS’s profound and enduring credit, they were determined to make sure that these two touchstone documents not only “spoke” to each other but that the promises and goals within them were truly and meaningfully enacted: not in the boardroom, but in every classroom, at every age level. And in every theater space and playing field. Even in the farm and garden. 

Competencies are the missing variable

First of all, even with a rock-solid mission, a compelling Learner Profile, and a crystal-clear Strategic Vision, there is no quick, easy way to lead an enterprise as complex and … human … as a school. But at CDS, in a very short time frame, great strides have been made to make the Learner Profile actionable and accomplish the goals of the Strategic Vision. At the heart of CDS’s work – and what I know would have helped me in my former role – is a shift to Competency-Based Learning. CDS partnered with reDesign to design and implement the CDS Learner Competency framework, a student- and teacher-facing tool to bridge those touchstone documents and the real, lived experiences of teaching and learning. 

CDS and reDesign partnership worked together to identify the broad, overarching competencies that crossed disciplines and contexts and which, if nurtured in learners, would help CDS “make good” on the promise in the Learner Profile. Each of these competencies was further unpacked into a developmental continuum of specific, observable skills and behaviors that could be named, practiced, and assessed in consistent, equitable ways across the PK-8 program. The CDS Learner Competencies are a context-specific, research-informed tool that teachers can easily use to design curriculum, learning experiences, assessments, and feedback for learners – and which learners at any age can use to reflect on, discuss, and participate in their learning. 

Now, CDS is scaling up their Learner Competencies by ensuring that every teacher knows how to design and implement competency-aligned learning experiences and assessments. In addition, the faculty body and leadership team have engaged in its own deep learning around the mindset shifts and essential pedagogical practices key to supporting competency-based learning. At CDS, the Competency Framework allows the whole community – from classroom to boardroom and beyond – to use a shared vocabulary to design for and describe the signature learning experience that brings the Learner Profile to life. 

We’re (all) in this together

Like CDS, most independent schools have both a strategic plan/vision and a school mission/vision. Some have, as CDS does and my school did, a graduate profile/portrait as well. And inevitably in all these places, there are passionate, hardworking curriculum directors, academic deans, division heads, and faculty leaders trying to use those touchstone documents to solve that same equation. Some, I fear, feel as if they are going it alone (as I often felt). If I could go back and tell my former “director of curriculum and instruction” self something, I would point to schools like CDS doing this work in thoughtful, strategic, creative ways. And I would say that there are people out there, like my whole team at reDesign, who love nothing more than to partner with a school to simplify (and amplify) this crucial work. There’s no reason for anyone to go it alone at their independent school – and there’s no reason for independent schools to go it alone, either.

Want to hear more about the Children’s Day School & reDesign partnership and the role of competencies in bringing the Learner Profile to life? Come see us together at “Un-Siloing Equity with Competencies” at the NAIS Conference in St. Louis, MO, Feb. 28-March 1, 2024.