Our district is in the process of creating a Portrait of a Graduate for Joplin Schools. We've held a couple of fantastic Focus Groups to seek community, staff, student, and parent input on the broad range of skills that are important for our students to possess.

Using their brainstormed lists, we have built a quick survey asking respondents to rank a series of skills, competencies and traits within four categories:

• Ethical/Moral abilities
• Intellectual abilities
• Performance abilities
• Civic/Community abilities.

There are no right or wrong answers, only preferences about what you and our community consider to be the MOST valuable competencies for our students to have as they work to build successful futures. The tricky part is that the brainstormed competencies are all important, good skills for our students to master, so we are asking you to be picky about which you feel to be the most valuable assets. The survey will remain open through Jan. 12, 2025.

Take the Portrait of a Graduate Survey Here

It should take 7-10 minutes at most, and will play a huge part in helping us narrow down the final handful of competencies that Joplin wants to see in its Portrait of a Graduate. You can learn more about the Portrait of a Graduate process here, including next steps and how the Portrait will influence curriculum and real-world learning opportunities for our students in PreK all the way through 12th grades in the coming years.