Coming Full Circle: The Portrait Lives Through Students

This blog post is the final 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
• Post 5: From Understanding to Ownership: When Students Tell Their Story through the Portrait of a Graduate
• Post 6: Living the Portrait Together: The Power of Parallel Pedagogy

Over the course of this series, we have explored what it takes to move a Portrait of a Graduate from a vision to everyday practice. We have shared lessons learned from implementing a Portrait of a Graduate as a systems-level initiative and explored four key implementation levers: reflection, explicit instruction, public demonstration, and parallel pedagogy. 

As we close this series, we want to end where all Portrait of a Graduate work begins: with students. While structures, systems, and instructional practices all matter, a Portrait of a Graduate only comes to life when students see themselves in it, understand its purpose, and have opportunities to shape it. Their voices are at the heart of this work.

Student Voice

While there is no one right way to bring your PoG to life, what is universal about PoG implementation is the importance and the value of engaging students as authentic & meaningful co-designers, along every step of the process.  It is so easy to let a Portrait slide into the category of “just the next initiative that is being done to us and/or that we are doing to students in order to check a box”, put something on our website, and then keep trying to do everything all of the time. If the PoG is going to be able to live into its true intention of increasing relevance and belonging for all students and to better prepare them for this rapidly changing world, it cannot be created and implemented by the adults in the system alone. As we face the disruption and transformation of the workforce due to AI, the rising cost and decreasing value of higher education, and the shifting shape of social connection, our young people need to feel like school is offering them meaningful learning experiences that contribute to their growth, curiosity, and sense of purpose. They are the ones who can best guide and co-design what that looks like/sounds like/feels like.

Ideally, students were an integral part of designing and defining your PoG skills from the very beginning. Regardless, there are so many ways to invite, integrate, and invoke their creativity and insights as you begin to implement. It is helpful to have a formal PoG Implementation Team that includes a significant number of students (rather than the “1 or 2 student representatives among a group of adults” more traditional model) who hold the work of the PoG over time. These team members should be compensated for their time in some way, and ideally would be able to participate for more than one year in order to facilitate sustainable innovation and change at a system level. Structuring that team so that every meeting centers the voices of the students can be really transformative for everyone – starting each meeting with students sharing their own experience/reflections of the PoG, opening any discussion or brainstorming session with student voice first, etc. This can begin to shift how student voice and experience is considered and valued at a much larger level than just the PoG team.

Some other suggested ways to engage students as co-designers and collaborators for implementing the PoG:

Deep Listening

Perhaps an obvious one that sometimes gets overlooked or skipped because we don’t have time or it has not worked well in the past is to begin with listening… deep listening. Students can powerfully articulate what is and is not working for them, and they have brilliant ideas and solutions that we likely have never even considered. Focus groups, empathy interviews, kiva panels, etc. can give us access to their lived experiences as well as to their imaginations if we can build trust and relationships that foster honesty and vulnerability in those conversations. Street Data and Pedagogies of Voice are incredibly rich resources to help with this, and the entire undertaking of engaging students.

Design Sprints

Whether it is in within the structure of a specific class, or a special after-school/weekend event, ask students to put on their hats as designers and challenge them to:

• design a culminating assessment that they would want to complete to demonstrate their growth in a PoG skill
• re-design a lesson or unit that they have experienced recently with a PoG skill(s) more explicitly integrated into the content/learning
  • and/or co-design an upcoming one with the teacher who would be teaching it!
• create reflection prompts/structures that feel meaningful, and that they would want to complete themselves

These can culminate in a “pitch day” where they present their ideas to peers and/or adults who give feedback, vote, and even adopt the idea/plan on the spot. 

Feedback Cycles

As teachers begin to design lessons, units, or projects with the PoG embedded into the learning experience, they will need help in doing this.  Invite students to a PD day or collaborative planning session where teachers preview what they have planned. Students can then give feedback on the overall design of the unit, and identify how/where the PoG skills could be more powerfully taught, practiced, etc.

Many systems have recognized the need to articulate their PoG skills in the form of performance outcomes/indicators, “I can…” statements for their students. There has also been a move across the country to build ‘Portrait of an Educator” and “Portrait of a Leader”. I have found it can be incredibly illuminating to have your students articulate what they would want from their adults in the PoG skills. Rather than creating separate lists of skills, we can ask students to draft “I can…” statements that describe what it looks like/sounds like/feels like when the adults in the building are demonstrating those PoG skills.

When Students Own the Portrait of a Graduate (Kimberly)

One lesson has stayed with me throughout this work: a Portrait of a Graduate only becomes meaningful when the entire learning community sees themselves in it. Students, educators, leaders, families, and community partners all have a role in bringing the Portrait to life. At the same time, because the Portrait ultimately exists to support students, their voices should remain at the center of its development and implementation. When students are invited to help shape the work, they challenge our assumptions, strengthen our thinking, and remind us to see the Portrait through their eyes

One piece of feedback has stayed with me throughout this work. Students and educators appreciated the vision behind the Portrait, but they pointed out that the language did not feel like it belonged to students. The competencies made sense to adults, but not necessarily to the young people we hoped would use them. That feedback challenged our thinking and ultimately led to the development of student-friendly “I can…” statements. While this may seem like a small shift, it fundamentally changed how students engaged with the Portrait. Instead of reading abstract competencies, they could begin reflecting on their own growth in language that felt meaningful and accessible.

That feedback was about so much more than just language. It reminded me that a Portrait of a Graduate should be something students can use, not simply something we hope they understand. When students begin reflecting on their learning through the competencies and using that language to describe their growth, the Portrait becomes woven into the fabric of everyday learning.

As this series comes to a close, I would encourage every school and district to ask one question: If we asked our students to describe our Portrait of a Graduate and share examples of where they see the competencies come to life, what would they say? Their answer may be the clearest measure of whether the Portrait is truly alive within our learning communities.  

We hope that this series has offered some helpful ideas and resources in terms of your own implementation of a PoG.  Please share your stories of PoG success, challenge, and growth so we can all continue to learn together.