By Nelson Coulter
The BUSINESS of school is LEARNING! You may be getting weary of hearing this
mantra, but it is worth remembering (and reminding others of) daily. We often get busy and distracted in schools,
doing a gazillion things that are not really focused on LEARNING. At Guthrie CSD we have made some serious decisions
about what that learning should actually look like for our students. We have attempted to define the learning of
our students to be something that goes far beyond knowledge and skills (both of
which are voluminously articulated in the state curriculum). The stakeholders of Guthrie CSD have agreed
that perhaps the most powerful learning for our students exists in ways of thinking and ways of behaving. Thus, our focus has moved toward educating our
students in a more holistic and meaningful way.
This is the fourth of a five
part series of articles intended to clarify the Guthrie Graduate Profile, which
has emerged from community- and school-based conversations that have been
ongoing in Guthrie for the last year.
Below are the five pillars (dimensions) of the Guthrie Graduate Profile:
v Learners/Problem Solvers/Critical Thinkers
v Effective Communicators
v Persons of Strong Character
v Productive and Valuable Team Members
v Compassionate and Responsible Citizens
The dimension that will be
discussed here is that of our students becoming:
Productive and Valuable
Team Members
They are/can/have:
•
Good leaders
•
Self-aware and
self-managing
•
Work
collaboratively with persons of different beliefs, interests, backgrounds, and
cultures
•
Engaged and
accountable
•
Authentic and
transparent
•
Effectively use
tools and technology for collaboration
Guthrie CSD stakeholders have
a clear understanding that our students (unless they become hermits) will work
in teams for the rest of their lives.
Those teams might be families, churches, workplaces, communities, etc.,
and they will assuredly be populated with others who may look, think, and act
differently than themselves. Thus, at
Guthrie CSD we have deemed it immensely important that our students develop a
strong degree of emotional and social intelligence. They must understand themselves and their own
beliefs in a profound way. As well, they
must learn to “read” and listen to other people carefully, developing an
understanding of the perspectives, thinking, and behavioral motivations of
others. Associated with these deep understandings
is the idea of acceptance of and tolerance for diversity – diversity of
thought, diversity of interests, diversity of backgrounds, of culture, of beliefs.
Beyond these understandings
and bases of interaction, we aspire for our Guthrie CSD students to learn the
value and power of being fully engaged in endeavors bigger than
themselves. Embedded in that idea is the
belief that to work/live/play effectively with others implies a personal
responsibility for being fair, transparent, honest, and authentic in those
interactions.
And finally, we believe at
Guthrie that our students can only be responsible and valuable team members if
they have well-developed skills in the use of the “tools of the trade,”
whatever that trade or collective endeavor may be. Being able to learn (and unlearn, if
necessary) how to use a wide range of communications and job-specific tools
will be critical to the success of our students, no matter where they end up
working and living.
Guthrie CSD is deliberately educating
our students to be successful, happy, and productive in the global marketplace
or in any setting in which they choose to live and compete. Choosing MORE
for our students is proving to be a very interesting and energizing endeavor. However, we have decided that if we want the
best for the futures of our students, we must invest our best efforts/thinking
in the present.
