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WAB Faculty & Staff

Strategy Students: Portraits

We believe that "once a WABbie, always a WABBie", that the experience of learning here is transformative, and has a life-long impact. 

Through a process of generating "portraits of WAB Alumni", we will be able to focus our strategic planning on what our students need from us, as they grow through their learning experiences here at WAB.

"Portraits of WAB Alumni" are visions of the impacts that WAB has on our learners, as we prepare them for an uncertain world beyond school. From these portraits will emerge themes around which we can plan the next 3-5 years of WAB's strategic development. 

This process will be led by our students, with support from the adults around them, and with input from the wider WAB community, of parents, faculty, board members and alumni. 

Portraits of WAB Alumni Process

A large group of our students, many who were involved in the Future NOW Leadership Toolkit pilot, were tasked with co-creating, testing and leading the process of generating community-wide "Portraits of WAB Alumni". This involves four key engagements: 

  1. Tuning into the purpose of education, in and for the world right now. 
  2. Tuning into the Mission and Core Values of our school. 
  3. Collaboratively creating portraits of WAB Alumni - "visions" of young people who will have been positively impacted by their time at WAB. 
  4. Personally feeding-forwards their ideas in terms of ideas to hold onto and questions to explore. 

By visiting some of the tabs, you can see some community engagement slides. 

Through collaborative analysis of the portraits and data generated, we will: 

  1. Determine some key areas of impact that are important to our community over the next few years. 
  2. Determine how we will know if we are having the desired impacts. 
  3. Design and implement actions that will lead to those impacts. 

 

How is FLOW21 Connected?

As one pillar of the 2015-2021 strategic plan, FLOW21 sought to identify Targets for developing a more personalized approach to learning at WAB. Through the 2021-22 school year, the results of the Portraits will help us categorise and evaluate the FLOW21 Targets, considering questions such as: 

  • Which Targets can now be confirmed as school-wide learning principles? 
  • What is the impact of the FLOW21 work so far? What remains to be improved? 
  • How might the Targets enhance our programmes and the actions needed to have the desired impacts (coming from the Portaits)? 

How else is this connected?

Accreditation & Authorisation

In 2021-22 we will begin the process of renewing our acceditations (NEASC, CIS) and authorisations (IB). A key part of these processes is to design for and evaluate the impacts of our school's actions. 

 

The Portraiture Approach

One inspiration for the portraiture approach is from the work of Dr. Veronica Boix Mansilla, described on the IB blog here, and with more connections to her work here.