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Wisconsin Career Readiness Standards

Community of Practice

Skills for Success:

The Why Behind Wisconsin's Career Readiness Standards

Module 14:

Creating Your Future-Focused Action Plan

Welcome to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s Career Readiness Community of Practice! In this final, fourteenth module, titled, “Creating Your Future-Focused Action Plan”, we’re going to set you and your system up with an actionable plan to continue to move this work forward long after your completion of this Community of Practice.

To make the most of this learning experience, we encourage you to engage actively by taking notes and reflecting on how the content applies to your unique context. Pause the video whenever you need to process the information or dive deeper into the provided resources. If you’re able, consider collaborating with colleagues or teams for richer discussions and shared insights. Finally, don’t forget to follow up with your regional CESA for additional support.

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Objectives

Use Your Engagement Intentions to Complete an Actionable Plan for Systems Change

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Wisconsin Career Readiness Standards

Our North Star for Career Readiness Systems Change

Wisconsin Career Readiness Standards (WCRS)
Career Ready	Learning Ready	Life Ready
Career Awareness (KNOW)	Academic Skills	Self-Awareness, Management, & Responsibility
Career Exploration (EXPLORE)	Critical Thinking and Problem Solving	Interpersonal Communication & Collaboration
Career Planning (PLAN)	Innovation Mindset & Skills	Global Competence
Career Preparation (GO) Postsecondary Education & Training Preparation (GO)	Technology Skills	Responsive Leadership
K5 12 grade Integrated across all subject areas, as a part of ACP activities, and/or into Career Pathways (WBL, IRCs, DE)

Before we get started with our new content and today’s vision planning, let’s take a moment to ground ourselves by revisiting the Wisconsin Career Readiness Standards. You’ve explored these in depth throughout Modules 1 through 12, but it’s important to keep this visual in mind as we begin planning for next steps.

These standards provide the foundation for ensuring that every student is not only academically prepared but also career-ready. As we move into creating your district’s action plan today, these standards will continue to be your guide, helping you align your goals with the larger vision of preparing future-ready students.

"The WCRS are divided into three key strands: Career Ready, Learning Ready, and Life Ready. Each strand focuses on different aspects of student development. The Career Ready strand includes standards that help students explore career options, develop plans, and prepare for future careers through real-world experiences. The Learning Ready strand emphasizes the academic and critical thinking skills needed to succeed in education and future careers. Finally, the Life Ready strand focuses on the social-emotional competencies, leadership, and interpersonal skills that students need to navigate personal and professional challenges throughout their lives.“

"Together, these three strands provide a comprehensive framework to ensure that students are well-prepared for whatever path they choose after graduation."

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Vision Planning Activity

Main Objective: Use the Vision Planning presentation to outline a few key change ideas for improved career readiness in your system & prepare for advocacy work in your district or school

Now that we’ve explored the key concepts and frameworks for improving career readiness in your systems, it’s time to move into the main activity: Vision Planning. The main objective here is to use a template Vision Planning presentation to outline a few key change ideas that you believe will lead to improved career readiness in your district or school. The presentation format allows you to use your time wisely - using your expertise and new knowledge of the WCRS to select and refine change ideas for your system. Then, you’ll also be prepared to articulate your ideas to those in your system, whether it is one district administrator, or a team of building-level educator leaders.

In this way, this Vision Planning activity is about more than just setting goals—it’s about preparing for real advocacy work. By the end of this exercise, you’ll not only have a clear sense of the changes you want to make, but you’ll also have the tools and language needed to bring others on board. Whether that’s through presenting to your school board, engaging with community stakeholders, or collaborating with colleagues, this Vision Planning process will help you articulate your ideas and create a roadmap for action.

On the next slide, we’ll walk through the detailed steps for engaging with this resource and making the most of this time to start planning for real, impactful changes in your system.

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This is the blank Vision Planning document that we’ll be using to outline your key change ideas for improving career readiness in your system. The idea here is to help you clarify and map out the steps needed to implement these changes over time.

First, on the left side of the document, you'll list the specific system change or focus area you want to address. This could be something like improving career-based learning experiences, aligning your district with the Wisconsin Career Readiness Standards, or—as we saw in the example—revamping your district's Portrait of a Graduate. The selection of what to focus on can really be guided by your engagement intentions this school year. A good goal isn’t necessarily the biggest goal or most transformative goal - it’s really about selecting a feature to change that is right for your system given your system’s readiness, capacity, and priorities. Before selecting something to focus on, review again the pathway that you thought was the best fit for your system at this time. Any step you take, if it is achievable for your system, can support improvements in your career readiness programming.

From there, in each of the following columns, you'll identify your success criteria at various stages of the change process. Success criteria are clear, observable, and measurable indicators of progress. In other words, what will we see or experience at each stage of implementation if we are moving in the right direction? These should be simple and direct statements. For example, under “What would it look like after a few key changes?” you might have success criteria like “Team convened and agreement on revised PoG reached” or “Stakeholder input collected and analyzed.”

The key is to keep this process clear and focused. You don’t need to outline every tiny detail of the change—you just want to focus on the major steps and visible progress markers that will help you monitor your progress.

Remember that this tool should be easy to understand and easy to share. You want to be able to take this back to your district and use it as a conversation starter with other stakeholders—whether that's your colleagues, school board members, or community partners. So, don’t overthink it. Keep it straightforward and accessible.

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Vision Planning Example

Here is my completed example of my first choice on a key system change focus. You’ll see that I kept it clear and simple on the left.

In each of the subsequent columns, you will see listed success criteria. Success criteria is observable, simple statements that we could see and measure if we’ve completed those steps. For example, under “What would it look like when we’re halfway to our goal?” you’ll see one success criteria is: “New PoG graphic created with student artwork.” This is a simple statement that could be easily implemented and measured if we’ve completed it or not. The use of success criteria makes it easier for our team, if we choose to implement these changes, to stick to small, incremental changes over time that will ultimately allow us to work toward our ultimate goals and outcomes on the right. Remember, don’t overthink this resource. It should be simple enough that any stakeholder could be invited to join in the conversation about the changes you’re hoping to advocate for within your system.

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Vision Planning Directions

Vision Planning Presentation Activity: 35 Minutes

Before you begin, reflect on where your system currently stands and identify key changes that could make great launching points. Using your Engagement Intentions can help substantially with selecting priorities
Fill out the Vision Planning Presentation with a few target areas in which you could start making improvements this year
Remember, this Vision will help guide your and your team to advocate for systemic changes back in your district and get started

Now it’s time to start developing your Vision Plans. On the slide, you can see that you will have access to an important file template to engage in this work. This file is available on the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s WCRS webpage under the Resources section. When you access this file, you will be forced to make a copy for your to keep and edit for your own system. The file link will take you to Google Slides, where you’ll work in a presentation template to formalize your ideas. Completing your action planning in a presentation format will allow you to easily translate your ideas into a presentation to share with others in your system. With this file, you’ll consider key aspects of your system that you would like to target for improvement. Focusing explicitly on that key aspect of your system, answer the four questions at the top: What does it look like now? What would it look like after a few key changes? What would it look like when we’re halfway toward our goal? What would it look like when we’ve achieved our goal? Remember, the key is clear, observable success criteria in each box. This will help us celebrate every step along the way and see it for what it is: excellent progress in a challenging and complex continuous improvement process.

Finally, remember that these Vision Planning Presentations are not just tools for planning—they are also designed to help you advocate for change when you are ready to share this work out in your school or district. By presenting this plan to stakeholders, you’ll have a clear framework to showcase your goals and progress.

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Vision Planning Tips

Some tips for completing this document:

Start by choosing one or two key areas of focus that align with your district’s needs and your engagement intentions
Think about how the change would evolve over time—what’s happening now, what small steps could you take to make progress, and what would success look like at full implementation?
Use simple, specific language for success criteria. Focus on things that are easily observable and measurable.
Work collaboratively if possible—engaging other stakeholders in developing the success criteria can help get buy-in and create shared ownership of the change process.

As you work through your Vision Planning document, keep these tips in mind to make the process manageable and impactful.

First, start by choosing one or two key areas of focus that align with your district’s specific needs, your district’s readiness, and capacity, as summarized in your ideas about engagement intentions. Don’t feel like you need to tackle everything at once. Focus on where you can make the most meaningful progress.

Next, think about how the change would evolve over time. What does the situation look like now? What small steps can you take to begin moving in the right direction? And ultimately, what will success look like when you’ve fully implemented this change?

When you’re writing your success criteria, use simple, specific language. The key is to focus on things that are observable and measurable. It should be clear when a step is completed.

Also, work collaboratively whenever possible. Engage other stakeholders—whether it’s teachers, administrators, students, or community members—in developing these success criteria. Collaboration helps ensure buy-in and creates a sense of shared ownership in the change process.

Finally, remember that this is a living document. It’s not meant to lock you into a rigid plan. Feel free to adapt and adjust as you go, based on new information, feedback, or evolving priorities.

By keeping these tips in mind, you’ll create a Vision Planning document that’s not only actionable but also flexible enough to guide your district or school toward real, lasting improvement.

At this point in Module 14, we recommend that you pause the recording to make time and space for this valuable work. Having a completed action plan is essential for ensuring that the energy you’ve put into career readiness and systems transformation during this Community of Practice brings about actionable implementation steps and strategies within your local context. It is recommended that you take at least 35 minutes here to work on your Vision Planning Document, although more time may be required given the complexity of your change ideas and goals for your system. While you may work alone, this activity becomes more powerful the more key stakeholders and champions that you engage during this process. When you are ready to move on, please resume your Module 14 video.

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Vision Planning Feedback Activity

Meet with a partner or small group to share your Vision Planning presentation so far.
Share your “Why” for the key aspect you selected, and then share your success criteria along the pathway to improvement.
Provide and receive feedback on your plan.
Discuss ways to refine your success criteria and goals for your intended audience

Welcome back! Now that you’ve had time to start your Vision Planning Presentation, it’s time to gather some peer feedback. Pair up with a partner or a small group to share what you’ve come up with so far. Make sure you start with your “why”, and communicate to your partner or small group your reasons for selecting the key aspect for priority within your system change process. Then, share your observable success criteria at each step of the continuous improvement journey.

If you are aware of any other schools that have engaged with this Community of Practice, this can also be a powerful time to engage with others outside of your system to learn more about what this could look like in diverse settings across the state. Learning from others can help you brainstorm, consider, and refine your own priorities for your system. You might come away with new ideas or adjustments that will help you succeed, and feel validated in your thinking before returning to your district to share your learning in our Community of Practice this year.

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If I was sharing my example with my partner, I would tell them that I selected the revision and implementation of the Portrait of a Graduate (PoG) as an essential key change in our system because it represents the foundation of what we want all students to embody when they leave our district. Right now, our PoG is outdated and underutilized. Many people don’t even know it exists, and it isn’t serving its purpose as a guiding framework for student outcomes. I believe that if we bring it back to the forefront and align it with both career readiness and life skills, it will help us create a more cohesive and future-focused vision for our students.

For success criteria, I’ve mapped out a series of steps that reflect where we are now, the progress we want to make, and our end goals:

Currently, the PoG is barely known or used. It’s not embedded in our district's culture or decisions.
The first key change we’ll make is convening a team of stakeholders—students, teachers, parents, and community members—to begin discussing why the PoG matters and how we can make it more relevant. The goal here is to get everyone on board and committed to revising the PoG as a meaningful “North Star” for our district.
By the mid-point, we will have collected input from all stakeholders, revised the PoG, and gained approval from the school board. At this stage, we’ll also involve students in creating a new visual representation that’s more engaging and relatable. This updated PoG will be shared widely with students, staff, and community members.
In the final stage, our PoG will be actively referenced and used as a tool for systemic improvement. Educators will be using it to inform their teaching practices, students will understand and work toward embodying the skills it outlines, and it will be a key reference point in district decisions about curriculum, instruction, and community engagement.

I see this as a critical change because once our PoG is fully integrated, it will drive alignment across academic and non-academic goals, giving our district a clearer sense of purpose and direction. It will become a living document that guides how we prepare students for both career readiness and life beyond school.

Following my explanation, I would ask my partner to think about all the stakeholders I’ll be working with - principals, district administrators, and teachers - and ask them to give me feedback on how to clarify or improve my overall message, and catch any success criteria I may have missed. Then, we would switch roles.

If possible, we recommend pausing the Module 14 recording here to engage in this valuable work. Please resume the Module when you are ready to continue on with your action planning.

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Vision Planning Debrief

What were the key insights you gained during the peer review?
How will you apply these takeaways to your district’s action plan?
What are your biggest next steps moving forward?

Welcome back !

Thank you for taking the time to pause and reflect upon your goals and priorities. Given your collaboration with others to garner feedback,

What were the key insights you gained during the peer feedback session?

How do you plan to apply those takeaways to your action plan when you return to your district?

What are the most important things you’ll be focusing on as you move forward with your system’s career readiness goals?

Being able to reflect upon and formalize your responses to these important questions will allow you to continue to grow and strengthen your advocacy skills as you grow a community of key stakeholders – from students, to teachers, to administrators, to school board members, to families, to community members – to join you in this vital work for students, now and in the future.

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Thank

you!

Thank you all for your thoughtful participation throughout the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s Career Readiness Standards Community of Practice! Remember, continuous improvement is a journey, and the work you’ve done in this asynchronous Community of Practice is just the beginning. As you move forward, keep refining your plans, testing your changes, and always thinking about how you can improve your system to better serve your students. Return to this set of Modules time and again as you revisit key ideas, activities, and reflections that are pivotal for this journey. Access resources on the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s WCRS webpage, but most importantly, continue to access your most valuable resource of all: the people in your context, region, and state that are devoted to this transformative calling. Individuals within your school system, community, local CESA, and Department of Public Instruction believe in you, your team, and this work, and we’re ready to assist one another in making this vision a reality in our great state. Thank you!