Living the Portrait Together: The Power of Parallel Pedagogy

My former colleague and artful educator, Alcine Mumby, always used to say, “teachers cannot be expected to teach what they don’t know or have never experienced themselves…”, and this has rung true for me in my own experience as well as what I witness in working with educators across the country. The passion and commitment with which educators walk into their buildings each day is unfortunately not always enough when we are asked to regularly adopt new practices, teach new classes, learn new technology… and often without the structures of quality teaching and learning to support that process. Ironically, teachers are often “taught” in ways we would never even consider enacting on our students. And we currently have a workforce of teachers who are still largely educated in more traditional K-12 schooling and teacher preparation programs. Which means that teachers who are being asked to integrate Portrait of a Graduate skills into their teaching probably have never experienced this in their own learning.  

This is one of the most impactful obstacles to a PoG actually living and breathing in a school or district that I have seen. If you do not acknowledge, allow for, celebrate, and intentionally structure the adult learning of the PoG, your Portrait may never be more than a list on your website or a pretty poster in the hallway.  And alternatively, when your students see and feel that everyone in the school and/or district is working on the same thing, powerful coherence and culture-building often happens. So a really important step when launching or beginning to implement your PoG is to give your adults time to learn the language, to reflect on their own personal relationship to the skills, to try their own version of any PoG project or artifact you might be thinking of asking your students to complete, and to sit with their curricula and instructional materials in order to identify authentic opportunities for PoG skill integration. They will need explicit instruction on how to do this, models of PoG-embedded mini-lessons, unit plans, and assessments. They need (and deserve) to be able to be learners of the PoG first, before they are asked to turn around and be the expert with their students. And they will need ongoing support to keep the PoG at the center as they become more and more fluent and familiar with this new system.

NPS’ Parallel Pedagogy Journey (Kimberly)

From the inception of our Portrait of a Graduate, we believed the competencies were not just for students but for our greater NPS community. If we expected students to think critically, communicate effectively, collaborate meaningfully, and direct their own learning, then the adults in the system needed opportunities to develop and embody these same skills.

At first, that belief lived more as a value than as a strategy. Then, about a year into implementation, a question began to surface more persistently: Are we, as adults, living the Portrait of a Graduate in our own professional learning and systems?

  We were seeing educators intentionally provide opportunities for students to engage in critical thinking. Yet we had to ask ourselves whether our adult learning structures were providing similar opportunities. Were leaders and educators given space to reflect on their own growth? To wrestle with complex problems? To receive feedback and revise, and ultimately, see themselves as learners of the competencies, not just facilitators of them?

Through both fall and spring feedback cycles, this theme became clearer. Adults across the district expressed the importance of developing their own Portrait of a Graduate competencies. We cannot expect students to engage deeply in critical thinking if our adults are not thinking critically, and we cannot expect students to embrace productive struggle if adult learning spaces do not model it.

This realization pushed us to more intentionally focus on parallel pedagogy. This is an area that we are still developing, but naming it has allowed us to deepen it. 

For example, at Tracey Elementary School, their Character Education Coach, Kristen Penta, is leading the charge and supporting both staff and students to better understand themselves as learners through the launch of the Portrait of a Graduate Learner Profiles (described in our previous blog on Public Demonstrations of the Skills). During a recent faculty meeting, staff members had the opportunity to create their own Adult Learner Profiles. They reflected on their strengths through the Portrait of a Graduate competencies. One educator shared, “This experience reinforced how I can be a role model for my students and demonstrates how I utilize the competency [effective communicator] in my daily life.” Other educators shared that developing their profiles helped them remember that they are unique, just like their students, and that we all learn differently. 

These profiles will then be displayed throughout the building so students and colleagues can see them. The message is simple but powerful: the Portrait is not just for students. It belongs to all of us.

What makes this meaningful is not the product itself, but the process. Adults are experiencing what it feels like to articulate strengths and aspirations within a shared competency language before asking students to do the same. When reflecting on the experience of developing her own adult learner profile, a second-grade educator said, “It has enhanced the way I view the Portrait of a Graduate competencies by diving deeper into my background and how I am an effective communicator outside and inside the classroom.” 

As we transition into the self-directed learner competence as our next phase of focus, parallel pedagogy becomes even more essential. We selected self-directed learner as our next focus because we saw it as a catalyst. Feedback from leaders and educators consistently pointed to it as the most leveraged next step. Self-direction deepens students’ ability to monitor progress, apply feedback, and understand the purpose behind their learning. It helps move students from doing school to owning their growth.

But this same shift must also occur for adults. If we expect students to set goals, monitor progress, and reflect on their growth, our adult systems must create opportunities for leaders and educators to do the same. This spring, we are engaging building and district leaders in professional learning designed not only to build understanding of the self-directed learner competency, but to practice it. 

We are learning that parallel pedagogy is not an enhancement to a Portrait of a Graduate. It is a necessary condition for its success. When adults practice the competencies alongside students, the language becomes shared, expectations feel authentic, and coherence across the system is strengthened. We have learned that this work cannot live in classrooms alone. If the Portrait of a Graduate is going to shape students’ experiences, it must also shape how adults learn and work together. It has to show up in how we design professional learning, lead meetings, give feedback, and reflect on our own growth. Our goal is not simply to implement a framework, but to build a shared way of thinking about learning and growth across the district. 

PoG PARALLEL PLAY

 If you are thinking about trying out Parallel Pedagogy  as a lever of PoG Implementation, consider the following things to try:

PoG Learning Outcomes for Lessons

Whether you have a high level category, a set of subskills or domains, or a set of indicators or I can… statements for your PoG, administrators can model how to connect a PoG skill to a learning moment during professional development/staff meetings. Consider what skill is authentically necessary to apply to a given task or activity, place it explicitly on the agenda, mention it publicly, and invite staff to do some sort of reflective moment. This is the exact same process that teachers can then turn around and do in their classes.

Reflection is for Everybody

Engage your adults in accessible, short, and engaging reflective PoG activities that they can do even the next day with their students:

• Strength/Growth skill – what PoG skill do you feel the strongest in right now and why? What PoG skill do you feel like you have the most to grow in right now, and how could that help you in your life?
• PoG Post-It [at the end of meeting/lesson] – what PoG skill, sub-skill, or I can…statement did you use to be your best self just now. Write that on a sticky note with 1-2 sentences of explanation. Then put it on the corresponding area of the PoG poster on your way out the door. As the facilitator of the meeting/lesson, you have an immediate visual representation of what skills were most popular, and you have specific understanding of how your learners were applying that skill to the same experience.
• PoG Props [in partners/trios] – what PoG skill, sub-skill, or I can…statement did you see your partner(s) use powerfully? How did it positively impact the activity/meeting/lesson? 

PoG Public Demonstrations

Like NPS did, have the educators in your building/district complete their own version of something that you think you will ask your students to complete – a presentation, portfolio, etc. By going through the process themselves, teachers will figure out all sorts of magic in terms of what their students might need. And when the educators share their products with their students, the relationship-building is monumental – this goes miles in terms of student willingness to then engage in their process.

Be sure to catch the next (and last!) blog in this series as we try to synthesize all that we have learned about meaningful PoG Implementation through these levers and innovations.