From Columbia High School Principal Frank Sanchez:
Last year, Dr. Friedman and Dr. Taylor introduced a new District initiative called the Portrait of a Graduate. This was an opportunity for us to identify the key attributes we want our students to demonstrate upon graduating CHS (in addition to the course content they already have to pass as part of the NJ Learning Standards).
CHS teachers and students took a survey on what attributes they wanted to focus upon. Then for the last 7 months, a District committee of teachers, administrators, and community members met to continue the discussion. At the last meeting, they settled on the following list of indicators that will now be the SOMSD Portrait of a Graduate.
So where do we go from here? We will these indicators as the starting point when we do the Middle States self-study in March this year. (The Middle States is our school accreditation process that we do every five years.) We will also focus our school PD sessions around these indicators so that we find resources that are connected to these concepts. Finally, we invited students to do the art for the SOMSD Portrait of a Graduate as well. I sent them a video & handout with instructions last night, and we look forward to seeing what they produce!
