At the JCPS Academics Leadership Institute in early June, Dr. De’Nay Speaks stood before hundreds of JCPS administrators and asked them to picture the students in their buildings.
“Are we honoring their journey as a learner each and every day in school,” Speaks, an executive administrator in the JCPS Academics division, asked the crowd.
The institute marked the launch of JCPS’ new Journey to Success, a reimagining of the district’s Backpack of Success Skills initiative that launched in 2018 as a way to provide more meaningful learning experiences for students.
Journey to Success is the district’s version of Portrait of a Graduate—a districtwide framework created to transform the student experience by focusing on each student’s journey as a learner.
Like the Backpack of Success Skills, the Journey to Success will feature student defenses of learning at key transition points—fifth, eighth, and twelfth grades—where students will use artifacts to demonstrate how they have met five key indicators of success:
Prepared and Resilient Learner
Productive Collaborator
Emerging Innovator
Effective Communicator
Globally & Culturally Competent Citizen
But the Journey to Success also introduces Milestone checkpoints at all other grade levels to ensure students are on the right path throughout their entire educational journey.
For Milestone checkpoints, schools can choose to feature student-led conferences, exhibitions of learning, and/or mini-defenses of learning. These experiences will act as preparation for the final defenses of learning, which students will complete in front of a trained panel of educators. The Milestones will be chances for families to experience the journey alongside their students and to better understand the learning taking place in the classrooms.
Students are now also able to include experiences outside of school assignments or work. This allows students to show how, for instance, performing a concert, volunteering, or going on a trip has contributed to their learning, according to Speaks.
"The Journey to Success expands upon the original idea of the Backpack to showcase how students have grown during their time in JCPS by highlighting the success skills,” said Dr. Terra Greenwell, JCPS chief academic officer. “It is our goal to value our students as learners who have as much to teach us as we do them. Our families and students will be able to experience and celebrate progress in all grade levels and during pivotal transition points.”
A handful of schools at each level were pilots for the Journey to Success during the 2023-24 school year, with students and teachers reporting a more engaging and consistent format for students to show what they had learned.
2024-25 SCHOOL YEAR TO EMPHASIZE MATHEMATICS
JCPS' inaugural Academics Leadership Institute provided an opportunity for all principals and other leaders from their buildings to celebrate the 2024-25 school year and make sure everyone has a clear vision moving forward.
Along with introducing the Journey to Success, JCPS Academics also outlined the district’s emphasis on math instruction in 2024-25.
JCPS focused heavily on literacy during the 2023-24 school year as it implemented its first K-8 district-wide literacy program, Expeditionary Learning (EL).
In 2024-25, JCPS Academics will maintain the literacy momentum and shift the focus to building strong systems for math instruction, creating high-quality instructional resources, and increasing student engagement with the subject, Greenwell said.
Casey Watson, a JCPS secondary math academic specialist, said the district will work to humanize mathematics for students so they understand how math is woven throughout their daily lives, both in and out of the classroom.
“We want to make it an environment where kids can be seen as mathematicians at any level, from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade,” Watson said. “In the past, math has been more traditional. But we want to unlock their power to be mathematicians, to problem solve, to collaborate, and to highlight their own thinking.”
The district is also moving away from siloed K-5 Math, 6-8 Math, and 9-12 Math divisions and has rebranded as JCPS K-12 Math to the Power of Me, Watson said.
The Academics Leadership Institute, held at the L&N Federal Credit Union Stadium, provided the perfect venue to pull together leadership teams and make sure everyone is on the same page with the Journey to Success and the shifts toward a strong focus on building mathematics communities in our classrooms, Greenwell said.
This is the first time JCPS has held an institute like this where principals were able to bring other school representatives to “learn about the vision for 24-25 and plan together with their team.”
“Principals rely heavily on their teams,” Greenwell said. “To make these changes and do this in the right way, we have to make sure the messaging and level of support is consistent so everyone understands what the focus should be as we prepare for the new school year. After all, we are all math people and together, we are going to be a district with a strong math identity.”