This aricle appeared as "Self-Portrait" in the Fall 2023 issue of Independent School. Independent schools pride themselves on being purpose-driven organizations. Purpose, an organization’s reason for existing or its why—when it is clearly defined and shared by a school community—can be a powerful driving force. Purpose can motivate the community to intentionally, passionately, and transparently pursue objectives and goals. A clear purpose creates a greater sense of fulfillment and accomplishment. Schools with a strong sense of purpose—beyond a name-brand high school or college matriculation lists—ultimately have deeply satisfied stakeholders and a connected community because they see themselves as part of an organization that has meaning and is greater than that single entity. They, in turn, are imbued with a purpose that is greater than themselves. Purpose-driven organizations tend to be more creative, more aspirational, more connected, and more innovative because they are organized around a higher calling.
A school’s mission statement is often associated with higher purpose, but it is not always a galvanizing force. At The Buckley School (CA), like so many other schools, the mission statement is lofty and lays out commitments that the community really embraces. While it outlines north-star goals, the language is general rather than specific. Undefined phrases, such as “a dynamic, nurturing learning community,” could look very different from classroom to classroom. In the context of a diverse faculty—diverse in training, experience, and pedagogical approach—the learning experience was so varied that students and families sometimes felt they were a part of different schools rather than one unified community.
In the summer of 2019, Buckley’s board of trustees tasked the school with unifying its relatively siloed community to create a sense of one school. At the time, Buckley was overdue for a new strategic plan and had engaged with Leadership+Design to facilitate a broadly inclusive process of planning for its future that it hoped would also reunite factions within the community. However, by April 2020 it was clear that due to the pandemic, the school would not be able to undertake the extensive planning process originally imagined. At the same time, Buckley needed to be unified under a guiding light and a shared vision. With the board’s support, the school pivoted to take on a more manageable task—to create a Portrait of a Graduate—and embarked on a journey that, as it turned out, would not only set the course for Buckley’s program and practice, but would shift the entire K-12 culture as well.
The Road to Purpose
The idea of a Portrait of a Graduate emerged in the early 2000s as schools evolved to prioritize skills important in what Dan Pink, in his book A Whole New Mind, calls the “conceptual age” rather than the “information age” that defined much of the 20th century. With content readily available through the internet and other technological advances, educators have turned their attention to introducing and emphasizing skills sought by the workplace. A Portrait of a Graduate, simply put, is a set of shared attributes and qualities that a school aspires to develop in its students. Whereas the mission serves as the guiding light or north star, the Portrait of a Graduate outlines more specific skills and often is used to help a school align curriculum, foster key conversations about pedagogy, and create shared language that faculty, students, and parents alike use. The qualities identified in a Portrait of a Graduate should be aspirational, observable, trans-disciplinary, and relevant and teachable at any age. It has the capacity to unify a professional community around the precise experiences it designs for students.Because it required generative conversation, divergence and convergence, and many iterations, the process of creating a Portrait of a Graduate for Buckley kick-started a series of cross-disciplinary, cross-divisional, all-school conversations about teaching, learning, and designing experiences for students. A small design team of faculty, staff, and trustees representing different divisions and disciplines did a landscape scan to ground themselves in the work. They reviewed a range of portraits that other schools developed, consulted with universities about the skillsets they were seeking in students, and became familiar with the work of the leading think tanks and institutions evaluating the skills needed for today’s workforce and anticipating those of the future. Specifically, Buckley consulted the work of the World Economic Forum, McKinsey, and the Institute for the Future, to name a few.
The design team also turned inward. Through a series of focus groups with faculty and staff, trustees, key parent and alumni volunteers, and student leaders feedback was elicited. They asked community members to imagine the ideal graduate—who is that person that we hope our students will be? What are the key attributes we believe every graduate needs to be prepared for college and for life? And, in a K–12 school, what are the attributes that we can begin working on in kindergarten and still see as aspirational for our seniors?
As the portrait took shape, the community was invited to see a rough prototype and provide a first round of feedback. Iterative processes can feel uncomfortable. Through a series of focus groups with faculty and staff, trustees, key parent and alumni volunteers, and student leaders, feedback was elicited. While on Zoom, Jamboard and surveys were used to gather anonymous feedback the group could then review and discuss. The design team of high-achieving educators and trustees who strived to put their best foot forward at all times had to learn to let go and get comfortable sharing less-than-perfect drafts. The design team learned, however, that a less-than-perfect draft enables the community to feel more comfortable offering feedback and the design team to be more prepared to accept that feedback. This is never easy, but the more feedback is collected, the more likely the greater community will feel it has played a role in the final design, thereby creating buy-in—a phenomenon sometimes known as the IKEA effect, in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created. The engagement of the community in the feedback and iteration of the portrait created a sense of shared purpose because everyone could see their fingerprint on the portrait.
By coming back to key constituencies on multiple occasions, particularly the K–12 faculty and staff, the board, and a few key parent leaders, the community grew increasingly excited about the portrait. Shared language and a shared vision for the school’s future began to emerge. Unlike mission statements that are usually very brief—one to three sentences—portraits have more room for details and specifics. But precise and inspiring language must be woven throughout the portrait for it to be clear and effective. By pairing and unpairing words and phrases for months on end, by drafting and redrafting, by listening to the nuanced remarks of teachers, and noting the implicit worries expressed by parents and trustees, by refusing to settle for language that was common and expected, Buckley arrived at five key attributes as the pillars of the portrait. (See “Architects of the Future” at right.) Each attribute was clarified and defined by five specific demonstrated behaviors. The intentional word choice helped create one clear, shared vision. Faculty could readily see how they were already teaching the skills of the portrait. Because the phrasing was full of poetic surprise, the attributes and demonstrated behaviors also serve as inspiration—the guiding light for curricular change and innovation.
Bringing the Portrait to Life
To truly come to life and be that purpose-driven document for a school community, a portrait needs to be used across the school in many ways—to drive schedule changes, to align curriculum, to develop new programs and to sunset programs that no longer serve the school. If a school is going to achieve its purpose—graduating students that meet this profile—the portrait must be embedded into conversations and organizational design across the whole school.At Buckley, this integration began with the campus and the creation of physical manifestations of the portrait. We recognize that the physical environment is an extension of the program, and the artifacts that surround us shape culture. As a starting point, we were intentional about creating something tangible and thought carefully about what the portrait would look like—how the layout of the portrait on a page would bring to life and reinforce both explicit and subtle messages. We chose graphics that highlight architecture and the capacity of an architect to build and design both a life and a world. Walking throughout campus today, visitors see posters of the portrait in every classroom. Pole banners hang from the lamplights that line the campus. Stickers decorate laptops, notebooks, and water bottles.
The physical collateral alone, though critical, is not enough. During the 2021–2022 school year, after the school and the board had developed and officially adopted the portrait, the director of innovative teaching and learning, in partnership with division heads and department chairs, led a yearlong process of asking faculty to map where and how they were already teaching the attributes and skills of the portrait in their curriculum. By prioritizing these conversations throughout the year, faculty engaged repeatedly in meaningful and deep ways with the language of the portrait. This reflective work also enabled them to recognize the strengths of the program and to take pride in the work already at hand.
If the portrait is to unify an entire community, students and families must understand the vision and be excited by it. Division heads, members of our admissions team, and school administrators use the language of our portrait to help prospective families get to know our school and program, and to imagine who their child will be as a result of a Buckley education. When 122 students were inducted into the National Honor Society, the students were challenged, in the words of our portrait, to “consider their impact, turn empathy into action, and uplift others.” At new-student orientation, students were encouraged to be “resilient explorers” by getting involved with activities and clubs they’ve not tried before.
This spring, the course evaluations for the English department ask students to identify which demonstrated behaviors they developed this year as a result of the class. As Buckley considers what to put in place of an AP program, the portrait is at the center of these conversations. As the school reimagines end-of-year celebrations, the community wonders, “How might the portrait be the backbone of a portfolio program? A framework for awards? A theme for speeches?”
The portrait has also become key to faculty retention and recruiting, referenced explicitly in job descriptions and opportunity statements: When we ask candidates for teaching and administrative roles, “Why Buckley?” they’ve shared that the ideas conveyed in our portrait drew them to apply; they say they want to be part of a community where students are expected to be creative thinkers, resilient explorers, inclusive leaders, dynamic storytellers, and true friends. When candidates don’t naturally point to the portrait as one of their reasons for wanting to work at Buckley, we explicitly ask them to skim through the key attributes and demonstrated behaviors and share one that they would bring to this community as a strength and one that they are still developing.
Purpose and Pride
Because Buckley has been so intentional about using the portrait at every turn, and because the language is poetic, emotionally resonant, inspiring, and accessible for every discipline and grade level, it’s quickly become the fabric of the community. For the adults, it’s also a roadmap for how to be.When a teacher asked, “If this is what we expect of our students, shouldn’t this also be what we expect of ourselves?” it was a goosebump moment. This one question revealed so much: that the school had a unified vision for our students K–12, that teachers understood that the ideals identified in the portrait were best taught through a living example, and that teachers were inspired to embody these same ideals. The process of co-creation created alignment. Watching one another at work, wrestling with ideas and language, created even greater respect across divisions. The process created purpose. The process created pride.
