Portrait of a Graduate: CHSD117
By Karen Ritter
Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum & Instruction
This year, D117 created a new Strategic Plan with goals to raise student achievement levels, but also to be intentional about making sure our graduates leave high school with six key traits that will help them navigate the world around them.
Some departments naturally teach these skills, but have committed to scaling up and expanding their curriculum to include more. For example, the Fine Arts and English Departments already teach high level “Communication” skills, but they are exploring where they can incorporate more skills, such as “Embraces Diversity” in the novels they read or the plays they rehearse to further allow students to examine diverse perspectives and develop empathy. World Languages explores different cultures and relates them back to students and their own identities, but a way they can scale up “Embraces Diversity” is to encourage students to identify their biases as they learn about things that are often stranger or foreign to them, and teach them ways to build bridges toward other cultures. The Physical Education and Math Departments allow plenty of opportunity for students to “Be Courageous” by learning new activities that are outside of their comfort zone, but a way to improve upon that is to allow students to stand up for themselves and understand that mistakes are a natural part of learning.
We are helping students become adults who can live, work, and communicate in a global society.
