PORTRAIT
OF A
LEARNER

design team member

In Douglas County School District we already had a Portrait.  It had originally started as a Portrait of a Graduate and had been created by a small group from the EPIC steering committee,  pre-Covid. After conversations with stakeholders we determined that we should change ours to a Portrait of a Learner and should include student voice in the process.  We didn’t want our Portrait to just be a poster of words on the wall, but instead a living thing that could be continuously shared with not only our students, staff and families, but also with the greater Douglas County community.  We also had discussion that with confusion around EPIC among various stakeholders and the desires of some to see it go away, we needed to really consider how to share the attributes of our Portrait and make sure everyone knew that Empower, Prepare, Inspire and Connect are words we want our learners to be.  EPIC is not a thing, but the acronym for our Portrait of a Learner, the philosophy that drives how we do business in DCSD.  It encompasses our instructional framework and our Portrait helps give us reasons to focus on practices that embrace positive culture, learner-centered environments, and responsive instruction.