What Is A Portrait of a Graduate?
We believe that it’s not enough to be a college preparatory school. It’s not enough to make sure students are meeting state or school graduation requirements; it’s not enough to make sure we’re covering material on college entrance exams. At Stone, we believe that education is more than a list of credits and a carefully curated college activities list. We believe that it’s just as important for a student to graduate feeling a sense of intellectual identity and selfhood as it is to be prepared for the demands and authentic assessment of the job force and prepared to thrive in a college setting without the safety nets of early adolescence.
We believe in the importance of cultivating value systems. Not just our value systems, though we do believe deeply in equity, equality, and ecological stewardship and hope our students come to value those things, too. We believe that it is urgently important to an individual’s personal development to develop a set of personal tenets that, though malleable, offer a roadmap for an increasingly chaotic world. At Stone, we believe those personal values develop through rich research, nuanced conversation, writing to think, experimentation, and problem-solving alongside the acquisition of relevant content. And so, we do not just enter into an agreement with families when their children enroll at Stone that they will be ready for the rigors of college life, but that they will be ready for life. Imagine, instead, that our students’ experience at Stone is more like a quest, a great narrative written by the student, rather than six years spent listening to someone else’s story. Our Portrait of a Graduate organizes the types of challenges that our students will encounter and master along the way.
Everything — from our classroom experiences to our Mission — aligns vertically.
Our Mission governs our day-to-day interactions with one another and in its language lies the purpose of Stone; the Portrait of a Graduate tells the story of how we realize that purpose. The Portrait of a Graduate provides direction for our course development. From there, our faculty design Big Questions that anchor coursework. Our goal for all students is that they demonstrate evidence of proficiency or mastery in the core skills of each course they take; their proficiency is assessed through a culture of feedback as well as grades. All of it should align upward: the work our students do in their classrooms serves to help master the skills; the skills they practice enable them to respond to those Big Questions; those questions serve as trailheads on their journey through the competencies in our Portrait of a Graduate; the Portrait of a Graduate empowers each of us to serve and execute our Mission.
The language of Stone’s Portrait of a Graduate began with faculty describing the hopes and the dreams we had for young people: what would really prepare them for the world into which they’d be released? What would make them independent, well-read, empathetic, creative, and curious? What kind of competencies could ensure effective problem-solving and activate imagination? What would make them strong logical thinkers and confident contributors? How could we decenter the “self” whilst simultaneously cultivating selfhood?
This year, we will be returning to our Portrait of a Graduate as part of our Strategic Planning process, to update and refine the pillars of our educational experience as we both gaze forward and consider what we have already achieved. What will not change is a shared vision for our work. The Portrait of a Graduate is our guide for curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. From it, all our courses derive; from it, our teaching and learning frameworks (our thinking lenses) sharpen. More than a poster to hang on a wall, it reflects the values we place on creating experiences that educate the whole child.
In partnership,
Abby Kirchner, Assistant Head of School