Haleyville City Schools Profile of a Graduate

In Haleyville City Schools, it is our mission to provide students with the skills necessary to become well-rounded, productive citizens. We believe this is accomplished by motivating, educating and inspiring our students to achieve excellence. But what does that look like? How do we define excellence? What do we expect our students to know or be able to do when they graduate from Haleyville High School and how are Haleyville Middle and Elementary Schools essential pieces of this puzzle? How does it all fit together? This is a question we are seeking to clarify as we develop our Haleyville City Schools Profile of a Graduate. As we develop this profile, we carefully examine our mission, vision, beliefs, teaching strategies, expectations and goals to produce a guide. This guide will be a detailed plan of what our students need to accomplish at each grade level in order to graduate with the skills necessary to truly be well-rounded, productive citizens.

So where do we start? The first step for our HCS administrative team was to examine our mission, vision and beliefs as well as other districts who have already begun this process to decide what exactly we felt was essential to include in the Profile of a HCS Graduate. We used a collaborative Google Doc to gather ideas and thoughts. After much thought and discussion, we chose our core beliefs as the foundation of our Profile of a Graduate. These beliefs are below:

Excellence
~ Student learning is a top priority for our school system.
~ Haleyville City School System expects the highest standards throughout our organization from the students and staff to the Superintendent and School Board.

Integrity
~ A student’s self-esteem is enhanced by positive relationships and mutual respect among and between students and staff.
~ Haleyville City School System fosters positive relationships based on mutual respect, transparency, honesty and the consistent demonstration of actions.

Innovation
~ Students learn best when they are actively engaged in the learning process through a relevant and rigorous curriculum.
~ Haleyville City School System creates dynamic systems and processes that solve problems and overcome challenges.

Equity
~ Students are valued individuals with unique physical, social, emotional and intellectual needs.
~ Haleyville City School System promotes an environment that ensures equal opportunity, honors differences, and values diversity.

Collaboration
~ Students, teachers, administrators, parents, and the community share responsibility for advancing the school’s vision and mission.
~ Haleyville City School System and our stakeholders form a community of individuals who share a collective responsibility to achieve our common vision and mission.

We then simplified these into one statement that will be used as the graphic/starting point for the development of a more detailed plan of action. Below you will see the graphic as a whole and then I have included a larger graphic of each belief:

At this point, we are seeking your input. The next step for us will be for each school to take the above Profile of a Graduate and break it down, adding goals and expectations for their individual schools in each category. We will then break it even further down. For example, what skills should a 2nd grader possess so that we know they understand the importance of Collaboration and be able to demonstrate mastery of this before they enter 3rd grade. Before we take these next steps, we ask if you think of something you think should be added to this profile, let us know. My email is hsutherland@havc.k12.al.us. I welcome suggestions from businesses, individuals, parents or most importantly students.

As I stated above, our goal is for us to focus all of our efforts, resources and expectations around ensuring that students have all the skills necessary to become well-rounded, productive citizens. This profile should help us do just that. Thanks for your time and help with our Profile of a Graduate! We appreciate you and You Matter!

~ Dr. Sutherland