Portrait Dimensions: A Closer Look
Exploring the skills and values that define the Portrait of an Oak Park 8th Grade Graduate.
What Is the Portrait?
The Portrait of an Oak Park 8th Grade Graduate outlines the key competencies, mindsets, and values our community believes every student should embody by the end of middle school. It is competency-based, which means it’s measurable, and it focuses on creating an ecosystem that supports youth development in partnership with our community.
Portrait Dimensions
The following eight dimensions represent the culmination of a thoughtful and collaborative community engagement process. Each word was carefully selected by our District 97 design team to reflect both their educational expertise and the values and priorities of our community. These dimensions define what we believe every eighth-grade graduate should embody as they move forward into high school and beyond. Click the menu below to learn more.
Graduates will explore a wide range of careers and their qualifications, including college and non-college/trade pathways. Through experiential learning and relationship development, they will practice behaviors and skills that are important for work, and connect with their own interests and passions.
Graduates will make a positive impact locally and globally through civic engagement and sustainability practices.
Graduates will be innovators who collaborate with their community to “think outside of the box” and turn their dreams into action.
Our community will have the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the world by using technology responsibly and safely, while making informed and respectful decisions.
By practicing day-to-day financial life skills, graduates will make responsible and ethical decisions for the future.
Students will be knowledgeable about world languages and global issues, will value and understand their own and other cultures, and will develop attitudes and values that help them live respectfully with others around the world.
Students will develop skills to self-advocate for their physical, mental and social well-being. Students will understand their changing identities and develop skills to love themselves for who they are, and others for who they are.
Graduates will apply research-based practices to read, analyze, evaluate and articulate information in order to make sense of, question and challenge the world around them.