Growing Through the Work: Embedding the Portrait of a Graduate into Everyday Practice

Dr. Nicole Moriarty and Mrs. Trici Broderick, Ms.Ed.

It’s 9:12 a.m. in a fifth-grade classroom, and the conversations are already stretching across time, place, and identity.

One group is deep into a structured discussion protocol, bouncing ideas back and forth about how the Maya adapted to their environment compared to Salva Dut and Nya from A Long Walk to Water. This isn’t a worksheet moment. These kids are working hard—pausing, paraphrasing, probing—and using each other’s thinking to push the conversation forward.

“Do you think Salva was using persistence and managing impulsivity when he kept walking through the desert?”
“Wait, if the Maya built aqueducts, could that be like how Nya’s village built the well at the end?”

When the class shifts to science, water is everywhere—at least in theory. Students are knee-deep in the Watery Planet unit, building simulations and generating their own questions using Bloom’s Taxonomy:

How could we test what happens when water becomes polluted?

What would happen if a civilization had to move because their river dried up?

They’re not just talking about erosion and aquifers—they’re wondering about survival, power, and systems. And they’re doing it through the lens of the Habits of Mind: posing problems, applying past knowledge, and thinking interdependently.

Later that day, the mood shifts. The room quiets. Students open their notebooks and begin drafting their first personal narrative of the year: The Me That Nobody Knows. One student writes about splitting time between homes. Another reflects on learning to listen more because they used to interrupt. A third writes about how much she misses her grandmother, who still lives where water isn’t easy to get.

There are picture books about South Africa during wartime on the rug. A read-aloud about 9/11 rests on the windowsill. These stories stir rich, emotional conversations:

“Why do some people keep going when everything around them falls apart?”
“What would I need if I were in that situation?”

And running through it all—the social studies, the science, the literature, the writing—is one essential, beautiful question:

To what extent does where we live affect how we live?

These students aren’t memorizing facts.
They’re making meaning.
They’re building identity.
They’re practicing what it means to be a learner—in the truest sense of the word.

So what does a fifth-grade classroom like this have to do with leadership, system change, or professional learning?

Well, if you’ve been following along with our last few posts, you know we’ve been deep in the work of unpacking what it means to lead change—from the district level to the classroom—and how to do it in ways that honor how people actually grow.

This classroom?

It’s not just a nice story.
It’s a living example of what happens when the ideas we’ve been exploring come to life.

Because when we talk about change—organic, human-centered, brain-based change—this is what it looks like in action. Not just in big-picture policy meetings, but in the daily decisions teachers make to design learning that connects, stretches, and sticks.

We explored how leaders at every level—district, building, and grade—can support this kind of growth by creating the conditions for it. And now, here’s where it all comes together:

This classroom didn’t become this way by accident.
It became this way because the people in the system—leaders, teachers, support staff—chose to think differently.

To collaborate.
To design with purpose.
To see themselves as learners, too.

Because here’s the truth: Change is not just inevitable—it’s natural. It’s the result of evolution in any living organism, and that includes schools and districts where hundreds of highly skilled, thoughtful, intelligent people work together. The very act of bringing these individuals into shared spaces creates the need for continuous growth.

One of our favorite reminders?

We’re meant to grow through life—not merely go through it.

So those recent posts were meant to stretch our thinking around how to respond to organic change—whether it comes from inside our teams or from external shifts in policy—in brain-based, ecological, and human-centered ways. So now, let’s return to the Portrait of a Graduate and how the classroom experience above reflects the skills and dispositions we want all of our students to graduate with.

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Bonus Audio!
This week, Charlotte (my 14-year-old daughter) and I recorded a short 6-minute podcast-style reflection for the busy humans out there—because sometimes it’s easier to listen on the go.

Is it perfectly polished? Nope.
Is it a little scripted? Yep.
But it’s a start. And we’re proud of it.

Honestly, it feels pretty perfect to have my daughter learning and practicing these life-long skills with me. Who better to dig into what really matters than the very humans I’m raising?

This is where my work and my heart intersect—and I hope you’ll take a listen.

And when you’re ready, scroll on down to read the full post.
Charlotte and I just scratched the surface—there’s a whole lot more juicy thinking waiting for you below.

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What This Week’s Post Is All About

This week, we’re shifting to something that’s gaining momentum in many states and districts: the Portrait of a Graduate. This is a real opportunity for educators and leaders to think beyond the box—within classrooms, across grade levels and content areas, and across entire buildings and districts.

Are we being overly dramatic about its importance?

We don’t think so.

Because the Portrait of a Graduate is a call to rethink how we define success in school, it challenges us to shift from a system rooted in grade-based Carnegie units and siloed content areas to one that centers competency, disposition, real-life readiness, and connection. It’s a call to cultivate the skills emotionally intelligent and highly capable people use to “show up” in life, at home, at work, and in the world.

And here’s our first ask:
Let’s stop calling it a portrait of a graduate.
Let’s call it what it really is—a portrait of a learner.

Because the truth is, we don’t stop learning once we toss that cap in the air. We keep developing these skills for life.

Let’s unpack what this Portrait of a Graduate (eh…Learner) is really about—and more importantly, how we bring it to life every day. Not as a poster. Not as a program. But as a shared commitment.

We want our parents to walk away from conferences knowing what these skills are, why they matter, how schools are cultivating them, and what families can do at home to support. Because let’s be honest, this work is one of the strongest antidotes to the screen-based childhood we’re all navigating. (Our own kids are teens and twenty-somethings—we’re right there with you.)

And here’s the good news:
We already have so much of what we need.
We just need to fine-tune, enhance, and unify it.

So, let’s go.

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What Is the Portrait of a Graduate?

We’ll use the newly adopted New York State Portrait of a Graduate as our reference point. But truthfully, no matter the state, these frameworks all share a common purpose:

To move beyond preparing students solely for academic success and instead support whole-human development.

“The Portrait of a Graduate is a blueprint for future graduates, where academic excellence meets the ever-evolving world outside the classroom. It paints a picture of students who are not just knowledgeable, but also curious, compassionate, and capable of turning challenges into opportunities.”
— Commissioner Betty A. Rosa

Most Portraits of a Graduate Emphasize:

• Whole-child development: academic, social, emotional

• Real-world readiness: life, work, and civic responsibility

• Transferable skills: communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking

• Character and values: empathy, resilience, ethics

• Student agency: voice, goal-setting, reflection, and purpose

The throughline?
A future-focused vision for thriving humans.

The 6 Core Attributes (New York’s Profile)

Each student is expected to become:

• Academically Prepared
  Grounded in NYS standards, ready for college, career, and civic life

• Creative Innovator
  Curious, imaginative, flexible thinkers who adapt and solve problems

• Critical Thinker
  Able to analyze, connect, and apply knowledge across disciplines

• Effective Communicator
  Skilled in expression, listening, and empathy across contexts

• Global Citizen
  Culturally aware, ethical, digitally responsible, and civically engaged

• Reflective and Future-Focused
  Self-aware, socially conscious, wellness-minded, and goal-driven

What It Is—and Isn’t

It is:

• A call to action

• A community-wide commitment

• A practice of explicit instruction, exploration, practice, and feedback

• A movement for connection

It is not:

• A separate class

• A separate teacher or specialist

• A separate program (please stop with the separate programs)

• A worksheet, binder, or packet (please stop these practices, too)

• Siloed courses

Why It Matters

Let’s not rehash the overwhelm we all feel around the effects of screen-based childhood. Yes, it plays a role. But so do:

• Superstorms

• Pandemics

• School shootings

• Social media-fueled comparison

• Pressure-cooker academic systems

Is it any wonder we’re seeing:

• Disengagement and chronic absenteeism

• Mental health concerns

• Executive functioning challenges

• Middle school apathy

• Performative learning just for the grade

Research That Shifts Everything

Enter Raj Chetty, Harvard economist. His research showed that students with excellent kindergarten teachers earn, on average, $16,000 more in lifetime income. In a class of 20, that’s $320,000 of impact.

But what made the difference?

Not just academics or small class sizes.

It was the development of non-cognitive skills—focus, self-regulation, manners.
These skills lasted. They shaped future success in life, relationships, and work. (Stop. Reread that again.)

“A good kindergarten teacher raises your kindergarten test scores by teaching you skills like how to be a disciplined student. Those skills don’t necessarily show up in later academic tests, but they end up having a big pay-off in the long run.” — Raj Chetty (2010)

This is precisely what the Portrait of a Graduate is pointing us toward.

✅ When a kindergartener learns to share with a peer
✅ When a third grader thinks flexibly about a math problem
✅ When a middle schooler reflects on a group project

They’re all building the graduate profile—brick by brick, moment by moment.

Now imagine if we started this in Pre-K and stayed committed through graduation.
Just imagine. Imagine the world we will help create!

Adolescent Development & What Teens Are Telling Us

Nicole was recently asked:
“What would the ideal middle school look like?”

The answer?
It’s not just about knowledge and skills—it’s about needs.

A recent article in The Atlantic titled What Kids Told Us About How to Get Them Off Their Phones echoed what Ellen Galinsky’s nine-year research project also found:

Teens want:

• Autonomy and freedom

• To be listened to

• To be understood

• To explore who they are

• To learn life and learning skills

Galinsky identified:

• Five Core Needs: belonging, identity, competence, agency, and connection

• Five Life Skills: goal-setting, strategy, perspective-taking, problem-solving, and resilience

• A Possibility Mindset and Shared Solutions to co-create with adolescents (Doesn’t a possibility mindset sound so cool??)

This isn’t fluff. It’s aligned. It’s essential. It’s exactly what the Portrait of a Graduate is asking us to do.

This Work Is Never Finished

Like the Van Wyck Expressway—this is a work in progress (since 1971!)

But there are ways forward.

What We Did—and What You Can Try

Working across multiple districts, we’ve developed a comprehensive framework—not a set of siloed initiatives, but a cohesive approach grounded in interdisciplinary units of study as seen in the above classroom scenario. Each unit was designed around a central theme drawn from academic content area standards, universal enduring issues, and an essential question, with the Habits of Mind woven throughout.

Here’s how it looked in action:

• Developed interdisciplinary PreK–12 units that integrated academic content across three disciplines with the Habits of Mind, giving students a meaningful and purposeful context for learning.

• Used Harvard Project Zero’s Thinking Routines to make student thinking visible while blending academic rigor with opportunities to develop life and learning skills.

• Embraced School Reform Initiative protocols to support deeper student and teacher dialogue, collaboration, and reflection.

• Piloted Spider Web Discussions to democratize classroom talk, moving beyond the few dominant voices and building shared norms for discussion and debate.

• Integrated literacy routines (Orton-Gillingham, Keys to Literacy, Hochman Method) across K–12 to support reading, writing, and critical thinking in all content areas. Not one of these, all of these, working in tandem across the day and content areas.

• Created project-based assessments AND passion projects aligned to each unit’s essential question—inviting real-world thinking, voice, and civic readiness.

• Launched student-led book clubs starting in grade 3, where comprehension instruction was paired with student choice, ownership, and peer accountability.

• Implementation of Badge Books in the Pre-K to Grade 4 and beyond to support learners in skill development, autonomy, choicefulness, goal setting and so much more.

All of this work was intentionally connected.

It was not a series of separate programs or tasks—it was one unified vision of learning, an instructional framework, if you will, built collaboratively with teachers, grounded in a shared purpose, and flexibly adapted to the needs of different schools and communities.

Each of these shifts reflects what it means to move beyond the box:
No scripted programs.
No extra class period.
Just purposeful, embedded, deeply human learning.

And it worked—because it was built on what matters most:
Curiosity. Connection. Purpose. Practice. Reflection

How do we know it worked? Well, we saw first hand kids who were:

• Engaged

• Thinking

• Collaborating

• Deftly moving between explicit instruction and exploration

• Taking Risks

• Practicing Choicefulness

• Asking for more, and

• SO MUCH MORE! Ask our teachers, better yet, ask the students.

Our Hope

That you see the Portrait of a Graduate not as a capstone…
…but as a call to begin, grow, and become.

Let’s commit to this work. Let’s elevate it. Let’s name it clearly:

This isn’t a program.
This is the way.

Because our kids are worth it—and so are you.

Resources Worth Exploring

Let’s keep moving beyond the box—together.

Use these not as separate initiatives, but as integrated tools to build your shared framework:

• Mind in the Making – Ellen Galinsky

• The Breakthrough Years – Ellen Galinsky

• Habits of Mind – Art Costa & Bena Kallick

• Kids Are Worth It! – Barbara Coloroso

• Harvard Project Zero: Thinking Routines

• Keys to Literacy – Joan Sedita

• The Best Class You Never Taught – Alexis Wiggins

• Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum: How to Design, Revise, or Adopt Curriculum Aligned to Student Success – Angela Di Michele Lalor

• NYS Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Framework

• CASEL

• UChicago: Non-Cognitive Factors Framework

Pro Tips:

• Make space for your teachers to explore Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum by Angela Di Michele Lalor, and allow them to build their interdisciplinary units of study with the state standards and the Habits of Mind. Trust us—they will appreciate the time and be thrilled that you see their value and are honoring their capabilities by committing to them. (Hopefully, we will have a book soon to guide you through this process as well!)

• Overlay CASEL with the CR-S Framework and the Habits of Mind for deeper and more meaningful alignment. There is more in common than we think, and making connections is crucial for everyone to see that there are no such things as initiatives and silos—it is simply what is and should be.

• Communicate regularly and often with all members of the community. Memorialize the work by creating short informational videos and sharing pictures of this work in action—at PTA meetings, on social media, and on your district webpage. The more we showcase and discuss this work, the more it will become a reality.

• Try one new protocol per month. Build slowly and joyfully. You’ll thank yourself later. AND

• Share Raj Chetty’s research with new teachers—it inspires them deeply.

Let’s keep moving beyond the box—together.

If you're looking to collaborate, Nicole is ready to take this work beyond one district and move beyond the metaphorical box, supporting districts to conceptualize competency-based education in a way that makes sense for them!

Nicole & Trici