Beginning with the End in Mind

On the morning of my youngest child’s graduation, I’m reflecting on what it has been like to raise three kids in the K-12 system while working to change it. This idea has always been at the heart of that work: begin with the end in mind.

Two decades ago, I was working at a public school in California that reimagined what education could be. Long before the Portrait of a Graduate movement gained momentum, this school was guided by Expected School-Wide Learning Outcomes that included durable skills integrated with deep conceptual knowledge of academic content. Every aspect of the school was designed with the end in mind: to help students reflect, grow, and develop agency around those shared outcomes. It was full of students collaborating, engaging in sustained, complex discourse, and grappling with real issues that mattered. Students created authentic, beautiful work that showed conceptual understanding. It was a profound professional experience that was life-changing for me.

Identify what matters.

During those years, we welcomed three children into our family. After our youngest was born, we moved from California to Kentucky, and I found myself enrolling our oldest daughter in kindergarten in a more traditional system. I worried that the creativity she displayed in preschool would vanish in a system that might not nurture it.

I went home after visiting her school and wrote my vision for my children’s educational experience and tucked it away. I wanted them to be in a system that engaged them deeply in meaty, compelling topics that challenged them to think critically and collaborate meaningfully and honored them as thinkers and creators.

We moved again, this time to Ohio, and our youngest entered kindergarten. We entered a new system with similar questions. Now, in the blink of an eye, she is graduating.

What happened? Did we realize the vision for our children’s K-12 experience? Have we seen shifts towards that vision? Has my vision changed?

Here’s what I learned: Every system is intentionally designed to achieve certain results, and we can design them for even better outcomes.

Some moments did not match my vision. I remember one of our children sharing the assignment and rubric for a Socratic Seminar and vividly describing the experience. An opportunity to ask thought-provoking questions, elaborate on and clarify ideas, support thinking with evidence, build on and respectfully challenge ideas, paraphrase, and synthesize discussion points turned into a competitive race for points that fostered interruption and pitted students against each other. The absence of shared, clearly defined, and unpacked future-ready outcomes can foster shallow learning rather than deep conceptual understanding. And we run the risk of teaching students the habits of ineffective communicators, collaborators, and critical thinkers.

Design learning to foster what matters.

Our youngest’s senior experience in the Biomedical Academy this year was everything I hoped for. It was anchored in transdisciplinary concepts, problem-based, collaborative, and integrated (AP Biology, Body Systems, Medical Interventions, Advanced Research, and 3D Art all woven together). She engaged in a complex year-long authentic research project with a purpose that developed passion. The combination of the complex products she created, her interactions with experts in the field, and the rigorous process in which she engaged were all designed to give her the opportunity to demonstrate deep conceptual understanding of the content, disciplinary literacy skills, and the durable skills she will need for engineering school and her future career.

This experience affirmed the power of deeper learning. It also made me think about the opportunity to more intentionally name and unpack future-ready outcomes for all learners, so that more experiences like this can flourish across every grade and subject.

Measure what matters.

My final experience in the school building was an awards ceremony focused on GPA, AP, and SAT performance for students who made the cut. It was an impressive celebration of traditional academic measures, but it made me wonder what it would look like if we broadened our lens to honor and showcase the full range of student growth and achievement.

After that ceremony, I reflected on how positive we had felt walking out of the Celebration of Excellence awards the year before. During her junior year, our daughter's AP Chemistry teacher gave her the Celebration of Excellence Award for consistent hard work as a student and an athlete. Her teacher noted how her personal goals and commitment to excellence drove her growth and inspired others to reach greater heights. This kind of recognition, grounded in perseverance, agency, and the ability to lift others, reminded me how powerful it can be to celebrate broader dimensions of student achievement.

Celebrate what matters.

At the end of their journeys, I felt like something was missing in their educational experience. When the final moment has students leaving the system reflecting on how their GPA and standardized test awards list compared to that of their peers, whether they made the cut and were invited into the room, it positions them to see themselves as test takers, measured by a snapshot on one day, rather than contributors who have grown in durable skills, conceptual understanding, and agency over time.

Some students do this kind of deeper reflection naturally. Ours did, but some systems have intentionally designed these culminating experiences to focus on how students have grown and how they will continue to foster their learning. When we build systems towards these outcomes and experiences, we bring clarity and coherence to the work and develop shared ownership for results. We have an opportunity to reframe what we value in education.

Reflect on what matters.

Today, our youngest is heading into the world as a future engineer who tuned out the noise about test scores and competition and focused on what she called “monitoring her understanding.” And she succeeded. This is our portrait of a graduate, and we are so proud of her for what she accomplished!

Seventeen years with children in the system have fine-tuned my vision but not changed it: more than ever, I believe that beginning with the end in mind and aligning every part of the system to support future-ready outcomes is how we best prepare students.

To all of the educators working to change the system, thank you!

As we keep working to create better conditions for all learners, I'm grounded in these five big ideas:

• Identify what matters.
• Design learning to foster what matters.
• Measure what matters.
• Reflect on what matters.
• Celebrate what matters.