Thursday, February 27, 2020 | Making The Grade BerkshireEagle.com | BenningtonBanner.com | ManchesterJournal.com | Reformer.com 36
Pittsfield High School alumna Champagne Eurquhart makes the case that in the real world, the grades you received in the past matter less than the experience and relevant knowledge you bring to today’s workplace and society. Eurquhart, 25, is known for being a friendly, funny, helpful member of her Pittsfield, Mass., community and staff member at Richmond Consolidated School. The PHS Class of 2013 graduate was a good student, a cheerleader and a Gladys Allen Brigham Community Center volunteer throughout her high school years. “People today don’t see me and say, ‘You went to PHS and got an A in math.” They say, “You were the cheerleader who helped coach. My daughter still talks about you,” Eurquhart said. In reality, she said, she was “awful at math.” But, she said, her extracurricular experiences were more valuable to her than grades and a testament to who she was as a young person. “I wish the school could have seen more of what I was doing outside of school,” she said. After she graduated, she began putting together her own portfolio
of her best work, from certificates she earned through her high school health technology program and training with the U.S. Army National Guard, along with notes about her dreams and goals. She calls it her “I Love Me” book, and it gives her not only confidence but evidence of what she’s capable of. School leaders across the country are also realizing how shaping a student’s core values — like the confidence and resilience Eurquhart has developed over the years — matter just as much as academic success. So now schools are formally rethinking and redesigning what exactly goes into the high school experience. An initiative known as “Portrait of a Graduate” is just coming into focus in Berkshire County and has been advancing over the past several years in other parts of Massachusetts, as well as Vermont and other parts of the country. The catchphrase “Portrait of a Graduate” is not a physical image meant to be immortalized in a yearbook, but rather a pedagogical approach schools are taking to create a “snapshot” of the ideal skills — including academic and social-emotional attributes — that every high
school should have before they leave the building for good. It’s also an acknowledgement among school leaders, employers and other stakeholders that, as skills gaps persist among job seekers, something must be done with the often antiquated high school system of teaching and learning.
Investing in a better future The private, philanthropic Bostonbased Barr Foundation, which has some $1.8 billion in assets, has been investing significantly in this work. In December 2019, the foundation awarded a total of $2,816,000 in “Portrait of a Graduate” grants to 14 New England school districts and organizations. Seven of these award winners are in Massachusetts, including the Berkshire County Education Task Force and Berkshires Tomorrow Inc., an arm of the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. The other recipients are located in Maine, New Hampshire and Connecticut. “We sought this $250,000 grant on behalf of five county high schools to help them, and the county as a whole, move toward offering the
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highest quality and most soundly focused education possible,” task force chairman William Cameron said in a statement. “That effort begins with developing a clear understanding of what the community views as essential in preparing its high school graduates for the future that lies before them.” The participating Berkshire schools include: Berkshire Arts and Technology Charter Public School, Drury High School, Lee Middle and High School, Pittsfield High School and Taconic High School. Berkshire Hills Regional School District in Great Barrington, Mass., previously received a different Barr Foundation grant to do similar work across its elementary, middle and high schools. Profile or portrait of a graduatetype work is not exclusive to Barr Foundation grant recipients. In Vermont, while the Winooski School District has been working on a model in partnership with the foundation, its Southern Vermont peer, Windsor Central Supervisory Union, went through a similar process on its own last year. Either way, the mission and purpose of going through this process remains the same.
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