Virginia Beach City Public Schools (VBCPS) has a long history of education innovation and success, which made it an excellent partner for engaging in this work.
Virginia Beach City Public School’s Portrait of a Graduate is the district’s articulation of what young people should know and be able to do when they leave high school.
There are more than 80 schools in this district by the sea, composed of 70,000 students and hundreds of staff that fill the halls, classrooms, and corridors with big ideas, creations, inventions, and a-ha’s. This work built on the city’s great tradition of innovation.
2Rev held an extensive search and application process to determine the best community partner for this work. After sharing the opportunity through social media and with their national network, 2Rev connected with interested candidates to determine their willingness and aptitude towards innovation. Candidates were asked to complete a written application to answer questions that got to the heart of the work together and followed up with video interviews. Finalists had one-day site visits with the organization.
There were so many incredible districts taking on meaningful education reform work, but 2Rev specifically set their sights on a mid-size, diverse community of students and staff with strong leadership who had proven to be results- and learning-oriented, collaborative, and flexible — and VBCPS emerged as the best choice. Though the size of the district and city was larger than what the team had set out looking for, VBCPS has so much to offer its students and community. 2Rev was highly impressed by the leadership team and the engaged and supportive community, particularly Superintendent Aaron Spence and his team. As a community, Virginia Beach was already interested in and knowledgeable about design process, innovation, and STEM. As an added bonus, the district was already a part of the Assessment for Learning Project, a national initiative that 2Rev is also involved in where they are reimagining assessment, which gave them a unique edge and the ability to hit the ground running with the work.
“One of the hallmarks of Virginia Beach is we recognize the value in our community. We recognize the wisdom of our staff. We have a community that is completely vested in education and we’re doing some good things as a result. The danger of doing well is believing we’re the king of the court: there are so many extraordinary things happening in our country in education, and that’s why we are doing this work with 2Rev. We are so much better for the work thus far.”
Where We Are Now
The Virginia Beach community is an eager, forward-thinking, highly engaged partner that has immersed itself fully in educational innovation. After nearly a year and a half of working together, 2Rev believes their level of readiness at the start enabled the teams to make deep, sustainable progress in Virginia Beach at the intersection of fragmentation and future of learning systems design, which will, in turn, create new pathways of learning to share with other communities. Now that the work has culminated, it has proven to have significant synergy with other initiatives and efforts underway at VBCPS, which will really help propel the work forward in meaningful and integrative ways.
An enormous part of what made this partnership so successful is the Virginia Beach team, led by Lisa, Dr. Don Robertson, and James, and the culture of trust and explicit invitation to try new things and take on the risks they create. Participants knew they were given the space and freedom to prototype some wild ideas. This atmosphere takes work that is already complex and challenging and makes it enjoyable and with a focus on learning.