
What is the Portrait of a Graduate?
Over the course of the 2017-2018 school year, the entire Rye Country Day School community collaborated in developing a compiled set of learning outcomes that tie together the School's mission statement, core values, strategic initiatives, and curricular and co-curricular goals. These outcomes are grouped into four domains, character, knowledge, skills, and citizenship, each of which is then expanded into a list of attributes and habits RCDS students practice. The learning outcomes listed in this portrait are both ambitious and realistic, and they extend across all departments and throughout the RCDS program, Pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12.
The purpose of this document is rooted in a basic concept: agreement on what we want our students to be able to do is necessary if we are to deliver these expected outcomes to the best of our ability. This Portrait of a Graduate provides a cohesive statement of who we are and what we believe, bringing together our existing values and initiatives as both stemming from and contributing to a central vision. This is, notably, a living document. We will amend it as the needs of students evolve, and we will put it to use regularly in the years to come in our teaching, in our strategic initiatives, and in our professional development.
Portrait of a Rye Country Day School Graduate
Students emerge from RCDS with strength of character, ready to engage in continuous learning, to show kindness and empathy, to adapt and thrive within a changing global context, to contribute meaningfully to their communities large and small, and to find joy and fulfillment in life. Experiences that promote these outcomes are woven throughout the program with increasing complexity and expectations.

Character

Knowledge

Skills
- Communicate Effectively
- Ways of Thinking
- Growth Mindset & Effective Effort
- Live Well
- Collaboration
- Initiative and Follow Through
Communicate Effectively
Students:
- Express well-formed ideas clearly and powerfully in writing, speaking, presenting, and creating.
- Listen, read, and watch to gain understanding and perspective.
- Navigate difficult conversations and manage conflict.
- Understand non-verbal communication.
- Communicate in more than one language and across difference.
Ways of Thinking
Growth Mindset & Effective Effort
Live Well
Collaboration
Initiative and Follow Through

Citizenship
Awareness
Students:
- Practice empathy and perspective taking.
- Examine local and global issues.
- Show openness and flexibility towards differences in opinion.
- Recognize stereotype and bias.
- Understand communication in intercultural contexts.
- Embrace diversity, understanding its importance.
- Recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected and often digital world.
Engagement
Purpose
Students:
- Identify what drives them and design their lives and actions accordingly.
- Aspire to make a meaningful and positive difference in the world.
- Are committed to justice and social and environmental responsibility.
- Demonstrate the Rye Country Day motto of “Not for Self, but for Service” through the choices they make and the actions they take.