Postsecondary Skills with Frankfort Independent Schools

Frankfort Independent Schools created their Profile of a Graduate with the help of their community and Next Generation Learning from the University of Kentucky. When they were ready to implement, they called CTL to help create a five-year map of implementation. Together CTL and FIS have begun to implement CTL’s Postsecondary Skills Model. In year two, students in classrooms across the district are receiving explicit strategy instruction around skills and support in understanding how to build their capacity and reflect on how well they are doing in gaining proficiency in the skills.
This work is early in its implementation but already teachers are designing routines for their classrooms that have students setting goals for skill development, conferencing with students to use rubrics to reflect on the implementation of the skills, and using rubrics for feedback from the students themselves, their peers, and the teacher.
CTL’s Four Pillar Framework has provided the scaffolding and supports teachers have needed to identify expectations, align them both horizontally (across teams) and vertically (across grade levels) to provide students consistent and progressive expectations.
Frankfort Independent Schools (FIS) established its Profile of a Graduate to prepare all students to be postsecondary ready upon graduation. This session outlines FIS’s efforts to create an implementation map, integrate the PoG skills into everyday classroom instruction, and provide students with goal-setting and metacognitive reflection in developing their skills.
The partnership between Frankfort Independent Schools and CTL has provided the foundation for building a culture where students, teachers, and administrators work together to build the Profile of a Graduate (PoG) skills in every student, every day. FIS started by working with the community and key stakeholders in identifying the skills important to the community. These skills, in turn, became the PoG. To embed these skills into the culture of FIS, the partnership has developed a five-year map to build common and consistent expectations for students, teachers, and community members.
As a result of this session, participants will
- understand FIS’s process in creating its Profile of a Graduate
- understand the steps in integrating skills into classroom instruction,
- understand CTL’s four-pillar framework that FIS is using to integrate the skills into classroom expectations and instruction
During the session, participants will hear from members of the implementation team who are working to bring the plan to fruition. Presenters will also show how students have been engaged as key stakeholders in the process, to provide important feedback and input on routine refinement.
Participants will work in small groups to identify key components of the five-year map, discuss how the skills can be embedded into classroom expectations and supported by teachers to support current teacher content goals and not seen as an additional ‘thing’ to do. As a result, participants will take away a better understanding of how to create a culture that values the development of key cognitive and non-cognitive skills throughout a student’s education. They will also have access to the four-pillar framework used by the partnership to move the skills from plan to classroom reality.