Portrait of a Graduate, Portrait of a School

How do you capture the essence of a school and their graduates in one page?

Buncombe County Schools (BCS) wanted to define and communicate the core skills that every BCEC student will master upon graduation, along with the core elements of the schools’ responsive learning community to an audience of prospective families and students.

Starting with a sketch from their principal, we worked with the school through a co-creation process that featured discussion, prototyping, feedback, and revisions.

The end result is a one-pager (front and back) that the school uses to communicate its value and unique approach to current and future families, students, staff, and community partners.

"Working with Constructive Learning Design has transformed how we communicate our school's strengths."

Donna Lanahan – Director of Secondary Education

How BCEC Found Their Voice

Our Approach

Discover

What’s Most Important

We work with schools to identify and clarify the most important skills that they want their graduates to have. Some schools have already started this work, or have adopted a district or state’s portrait of a graduate. We support leaders and teachers to clarify and define what these skills look like in action, and identify how the school supports students to master those skills. We encourage and facilitate sketching, brainstorming, and visualization, but there’s no need to be an artist!

Develop

Multiple Options and Receive Feedback

Based on the discussions and sketches, we develop several options to communicate the school’s unique story. These initial ideas are then presented to the school leaders, teachers, students, and other stakeholders for feedback – building ownership and strengthening the school community.

Based on the feedback, we refine the design – going through several rounds of feedback before we get it just right.

Develop

Multiple Options and Receive Feedback

Based on our initial discussions, we develop several creative concepts to encapsulate the school’s mission while being visually compelling. These ideas are then presented to the school leadership for feedback, fostering a collaborative environment where the design evolves in line with the school’s vision.

We refine the concepts iteratively, making adjustments to the visuals and content as needed, ensuring the final design aligns with the established goals.

Deliver

The “Final” Product

Once the design is approved, we deliver files suitable for printing and sharing on the web. But our work doesn’t stop there. We help schools integrate their Portrait of a Graduate – Portrait of a School into their daily work with students, families, and community partners. Plans and visions get left in a dusty drawer, our stories and tools get used to improve recruitment and instruction.

Our partners often reach out when they want to revise their Portraits, and we work with them to make updates and build their capacity for telling their own unique story.