What Does a Graduate Look Like?

At the end of every school year, the Senior homeroom teachers sit and go through the cumulative folders of every graduate from our school and triple-check that everything is right and accounted for. One of those steps involves checking over each student's final transcript. It was a habit many years ago to shout out the class rank if it was exceptionally low or high. The first time I heard it, it quickly became one of those little idiosyncracies that turned me off. (In full disclosure, I am aware that administrators have strange quirks about our schools. We are not always right or wrong on these, but it doesn't take long to find them. I am no exception!) I guess the thing that rubbed me wrong was that I didn't see the point. I have two daughters that work hard to be among the top of their class, and I'm exceptionally proud of them. But if I'm being honest, their class rank doesn't define anything about how successful they will or will not be as an adult. Class rank is about academic success (which is really awesome) but I've never been in a job interview that asked me for my 11th-grade test scores nor have those scores ever helped me in the difficult moments of being a parent. Life isn't about scores, it's about navigating people and situations.

Near the end of last school year, I had the opportunity to participate in a statewide think tank of students, teachers, administrators, higher education leaders, business owners, and parents. Our goal was to define what exactly we wanted a graduate from North Carolina to look like. Several, multi-hour Zoom meetings allowed us to talk with one another to express frustrations and celebrations of what the modern workforce and society need from students today. We started with 50 competencies and by the end, we narrowed it down to 7. This week, I had the privilege of sitting on the media panel to unveil those seven competencies to the world. As a part of the announcement, they also filmed a video (you can watch it here and see several of our classes). 

So how did we do? I think we did pretty well to wrap up what a successful adult looks like today. Hopefully, the idea of teaching these skills to students isn't foreign to you. Many of these have been a part of our STEM initiative and even our curriculum maps for years. But whether they are new to you or something that you've been trying to practice for a long time, this week was important. It was a reminder from the very top of our school system that teaching students to be competent adults has a lot more to do with skills than test scores. And if you're a caring teacher, I know you can appreciate that.