Portrait of a Lakota Graduate and 4Es

In Lakota, WE believe that we are preparing EVERY student for success after graduation in one of the 4 Es: Enrollment in college, Enlistment in the military, Employment in our workforce, or Entrepreneurship. The Portrait of a Lakota Graduate serves to align the pillars of Lakota's strategic plan with the 4 Es by providing clearly defined skills that most likely lead to future success for our graduates. 

The center of the circle is our student - our Lakota Learner - and the core tenets of our Strategic Plan. The 4 Es are at the top of the circle to remind us of our goal for every Lakota Learner. The base of the circle is the 6 categories of the skills, characteristics and attributes that WE as a community have defined for success of our graduates. Each of these is an intentional adjective/noun pairing to incorporate the most critical ideas that surfaced through months of discussion.

This Portrait serves as a “north star” for our district, but as another one of our Strategic Plan pillars states, “WE are In This Together”. We will continue testing the concepts in the Portrait with our teachers, students and families to adjust our focus, as needed, and build a shared understanding of how best to prepared our graduates for their future. We will continuously strive to align current projects, course offerings and real world learning experiences to incorporate these skills. 

We will also continue to share the Portrait with our business and community partners to develop a common language for what we hope to develop in all of our graduates. In time, we will look to develop culminating experiences (projects, portfolios, capstones, internships, etc.) that align to the Portrait and allow students to demonstrate in significant ways to authentic audiences that they have mastered certain aspects of the Portrait of a Lakota Graduate.