At Marshall County Schools, the graduate profile — a collection of 21st-century skills and dispositions that today’s students need to be fully equipped to navigate the world beyond school — is one of the guiding forces behind the district’s transition to deeper learning in education. The profile reveals how skills such as critical thinking, innovation and communication should present themselves in a student graduating from, or preparing to graduate from, Marshall County High School.
But how should this complex and sophisticated set of skills present themselves in, say, a third grader?
That’s the question that elementary principals asked last Friday at a meeting at Central Elementary, where second- through fifth-grade teacher representatives from all six county elementary schools met with administrators to brainstorm and develop a graduate profile geared specifically toward elementary students.
But why break down the graduate profile at all? According to Benton Elementary principal Kevin Jackson, it’s like building a house: you need to do the groundwork early, and do it well, in order to produce the best possible results later.
“We see how students are supposed to look at the graduate level,” Jackson said. “So we need to ask: what can we do foundationally to support that?”
Central Elementary principal Tad Mott agreed.
“We may know that a fifth grader is there, but how do I quantify that? How do I let parents know that?”
That’s where the elementary profile comes in. The new profile is not a rating system — it’s a continuum of learning and skills that both students and educators can look to in order to identify where they are and where they need to be. In addition to more familiar core content knowledge standards, teachers will be able to use the profile to gauge the development of intangible attributes such as problem solving abilities or communication skills.
For example, on the new profile a student in second grade may be expected to simply show awareness of character traits such as perseverance and dependability; however, by the time that student reaches the fifth grade, he or she should be able not only to identify and define these traits, but also to honestly evaluate their own strengths and weaknesses through self-reflection.
It’s all about monitoring student growth and progression across all grade levels.
Short-term, the preliminary second- through fifth-grade profile will be given to first grade and kindergarten representatives, enabling them to break down those skills and competencies into an even more supportive foundation for elementary students. Long term, teachers will then be able to use the completed elementary profile as a guide for developing learning targets and a focused, purposeful curriculum that they can implement in their classrooms.
For more information on the Marshall County School District’s new deeper learning initiative and a look at the current graduate profile, visit the “Deeper Learning” tab on the district webpage, or follow the link here.