From Understanding to Ownership: When Students Tell Their Story through the Portrait of a Graduate

This blog post is the fifth in a series documenting Norwalk Public Schools’ journey to create, implement and be formed by a living Portrait of a Graduate (PoG). Abby & Kimberly met through a PoG workshop in May of 2025, and are documenting how their intersecting work is supporting the PoG coming to life in Norwalk.

• Post 1: Norwalk Public Schools: Levers for Living the Portrait of a Graduate (a 7-part series)
• Post 2: Norwalk Public Schools: Unpacking the Levers for Deeper PoG Implementation
• Post 3: Making Learning Visible for Students and Adults Through Reflection | Getting Smart
• Post 4: Lever 2 for Deeper PoG Implementation: Teaching the Skills Behind the Portrait

The moment that a learner (of any age) is invited to share their learning in front of an audience that extends beyond the gaze of a single teacher, something magical happens. Often, the engagement in the learning process increases, the ownership of the learning rests more completely in the learner, the quality of the product goes up, and all parties involved experience the learning as more authentic and more meaningful. Think of a time when you had to give a big presentation to your team at work, or you defended your ideas in a graduate program, or you built that volcano all by yourself for the science fair… those moments of being invited to share your learning and celebrated for what you offered, can be transformative on many levels.  

This is especially true when it comes to the demonstration of the skills found in a Portrait of a Graduate (PoG).  Implementing a PoG asks us to think differently about assessment and measurement, as it is really difficult to measure most of the skills found in a PoG with traditional assessment tools. We cannot know, for example, how a learner is truly progressing in their skill of creativity with a multiple-choice test. It is a perfect illustration of when a tool (multiple choice tests) does not match the content (a learner’s ability to generate new and novel ideas). This mismatch can often be solved by moving to more authentic, more narrative, and more personalized methods for tracking where learners are along their learning journey.  

Public demonstrations of PoG skills can exert power as a lever of deeper implementation in other ways as well. As learners have key moments during their time at a school or district when they are invited to share their learning publicly, we also get a real window into how the skills are (and are not) living and breathing across the system.  The ways in which learners are able to talk about the skills, and connect them to their academic understandings and to their lives outside of schools, are powerful indicators of how deeply they are engaging with the skills and/or where the PoG skills are more or less present in their daily experience. Establishing a system-wide set of benchmark or cornerstone moments works toward holding high expectations for all students and creating a foundation of shared ownership of the skills by all educators. I have seen this done in a variety of ways – student-led conferences, exhibitions of learning, presentations of learning, capstone projects, portfolio defenses, etc. The key component is that the PoG is the organizing principle of what/how students are sharing, and if you are able to build this as a K-12 Learning Journey, it also provides a transparent road map for how you are measuring progress and growth within the PoG. Here are a few examples of this that districts around New England are piloting:

The core idea is that these public demonstrations of the PoG are designed in such a way that the learners get to tell the story of their own learning – they are in charge of the narrative, crafted with their own words in an arc that is meaningful to them.

The Norwalk Story: Supporting Students to Tell Their Personal Narrative (Kimberly)

As Norwalk Public Schools continued its Portrait of a Graduate work, we began asking a simple yet important question: How do students see themselves in the Portrait? While district leaders and educators developed a strong shared understanding of the Portrait of a Graduate competencies throughout the rollout, feedback cycles revealed inconsistencies in students’ experiences, particularly in the extent to which they had opportunities to reflect on the competencies and actively see themselves within the Portrait. 

In conversations with districts across the country, we explored a range of approaches to public demonstrations of learning, including student-led conferences, capstones, and exhibitions. While these models offered valuable inspiration, we chose a smaller, more flexible approach that could be implemented in ways aligned with existing structures and priorities.

We launched a small pilot of Portrait of a Graduate Scholar Profiles in January 2026. This work was informed by Nipmuc’s work with the NEASC Vision of a Learner Cohort, which helped push our thinking about scholar profiles as a strengths-based, student-centered approach to bringing the Portrait of a Graduate to life. Our pilot included three educators and two coaches working across elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. The goal was to explore a student-facing experience that would increase awareness of the Portrait and support students in reflecting on their Portrait of a Graduate skill development.

Through the pilot, students created scholar profiles that connected their lived experiences, interests, and learning to specific Portrait competencies. We found that the process was meaningful for both students and educators. Students demonstrated a deeper understanding of the competencies and began using the language of the Portrait to describe themselves in authentic ways. Educators noted that the profiles created a powerful entry point for students who do not always see themselves reflected in traditional academic measures.

Student reflections reinforced this shift. One middle school student reflected that the process helped them think more deeply about who they are as a learner and how they approach different situations. Another student shared that the experience helped them realize they were a stronger communicator than they had previously believed. Reflecting on the pilot, one educator noted that integrating the Portrait of a Graduate was not only about assessment but also about “…creating conditions where students feel empowered to express themselves, communicate effectively, and reflect on their personal journeys.” 

Instructional coaches later shared their work with the Portrait of a Graduate Scholar Profile at a district leadership meeting, including a video of students from Tracey Elementary School presenting their process for creating the scholar profiles. As students articulated their thinking and reflected on their growth, it became clear that they were not simply completing a task. They were using the Portrait language to make sense of their learning and who they are as learners. For many leaders, this served as a powerful example of what authentic student ownership can look like in practice.

This year has been intentionally focused on piloting and learning. As we think about how to scale this work thoughtfully, we are continuing to explore where and how scholar profiles can be implemented across different grade-level contexts. The educators and coaches who led the pilot reconvened this spring to develop a Portrait of a Graduate Scholar Profile Toolkit for use across the district and are now supporting implementation both within their schools and more broadly across the district.

This spring, we are also conducting a district-wide needs assessment to better understand where students currently have opportunities to reflect on and publicly demonstrate their Portrait of a Graduate skills. This includes identifying existing projects, presentations, and performances that are already aligned with the Portrait, as well as gaps where new opportunities may be needed to ensure all students have consistent opportunities across their K-12 experience to intentionally reflect on and showcase their Portrait competencies.

Given the size and diversity of Norwalk Public Schools, it is essential that any approach to public demonstration allows for local flexibility while also maintaining shared expectations. Our goal is not to prescribe a single model, but to develop design principles and guidelines that support students across the district to have meaningful opportunities to reflect on and share their growth as learners.

As our Portrait of a Graduate work continues, we see public demonstrations not as an endpoint, but as an evolving opportunity. By starting with experiences that are meaningful to students and educators, and by learning through pilots before scaling, we aim to ensure that public demonstrations deepen students’ ownership of the Portrait of a Graduate skills and strengthen their identities as learners. 

 If you are thinking about trying out Public Demonstration of the Skills as a lever of PoG Implementation, consider the following things:

• Engage students as co-designers. Ask students how they would want to demonstrate the PoG skills and take them through a design process in order to create some proposals and pilots. Students have come up with great ideas like PoG “TED Talks”, Letter to Self that they open years later, PoG Video reflections, or Student to Student (older to younger) PoG Conferences.
• Use existing structures. Do you already have a capstone project? Great – identify the PoG skills that students authentically need to use in order to be successful in that project, and pilot a version where students include their reflections on how they used those skills. 
• Formalize your reflections. In Blog 3, we discussed the value of incorporating regular reflection of the PoG. You can invite students to save any reflections they do throughout the year, and then choose 1 or 2 at the end of the year that they synthesize and then present in front of a partner, group of peers, the whole class, or some other authentic audience.

Be sure to catch the next blog as we explore the importance of the PoG being seen as everybody’s work, and how the adults in the system need to have their own learning journey.