On Thursday, January 11, Pike-Delta-York Local Schools hosted its first Portrait of a Panther community meeting. In attendance was just over 30 representatives that included teachers, administrators, students, parents, industry partners, and local business owners.

 

A representative from Battelle for Kids helped facilitate this first meeting. He shared some information on the changing landscapes of the world in relation to the future of the workforce. The group was separated into 5 stations that focused on a topic for landscape change: Workforce, Pace of Change, Global, Social Intelligence, and Science of Learning.

 

In each of these stations, participants had the opportunity to read a piece of research that shares how the world has changed, and how the world is going to be changing based on new technology and demographic trends. Each group responded to a question pertinent to the topic for how we can prepare our students for the changing trends discussed.

 

After participating in the five stations, the group was asked some reflection questions. Of the landscape shift stations, 47% of the participants marked that “Social Intelligence” was the landscape shift that resonated the most with them. “Science of learning” was next, as 28% of the participants identified the changes in how our students learn resonated the most with them.

 

At the conclusion, the participants gave some feedback on what they learned from the night’s discussions and left some feedback. The final question was, “What are your hopes, dreams, and aspirations for the students of Pike-Delta-York Local Schools?”

 

In our next meeting on Wednesday, January 24, we will go back and look at our responses to the questions at the stations, and we will look at the responses collected from the last survey question about our hopes, dreams, and aspirations for our students. The next meeting’s goal will be to identify the essential skills and mindsets we believe our students need to thrive today and tomorrow.

 

The work of our Portrait of a Panther will create a shared vision for our district. To use the solar system as an analogy, this Portrait of a Panther will be the sun in which all of our departments, initiatives, and resources revolve around. These guiding essential skills and mindsets will be embedded into our core "why" we do what we do every day.

 

We invite anybody who can attend, to join us Wednesday, January 24, at 6 PM in the Middle School Cafeteria. There is no need to RSVP. If you missed the first meeting, we’ll bring you up to speed.