How Nevada Came Together to Redefine Learning
- Andy Lott
- Apr 24
- 6 min read
Key Insights
Co-creation leads to lasting, community-driven change.
Thriving learners need more than academics—they need purpose, connection, and voice.
Summary (TLDR)Nevada reimagined what it means to thrive as a learner in the 21st century by listening deeply, designing collaboratively, and centering the voices of those closest to the experience. The Portrait of a Nevada Learner is more than a document. It is a shared vision built by 1,500 Nevadans to guide how learning can help every young person grow, connect, contribute, and thrive. Co-led by the Nevada Department of Education and the Center for the Future of Learning, this process was rooted in trust, creativity, and community-led design. And it's just the beginning.
If you ask a young person what it means to thrive, they won’t give you a number. They’ll tell you about the moment they felt seen by another person or a moment of serendipity that lit a spark of understanding. Oftentimes, we have heard about an experience where they worked with others to solve a real problem and felt, maybe for the first time, their voice mattered.
Learning is happening everywhere — through relationships, challenges, curiosity, and creativity. However, our systems haven’t always kept pace with what young people need or how they grow best, because they were designed for another time and purpose.
In 2022, the Center for the Future of Learning (formerly ed.Xtraordinary) partnered with the Nevada Department of Education to reimagine what learning needed to be for the future. Anchored in a set of questions inspired by REENVISIONED, together we asked Nevadans:
What is a good life and a thriving community?
What is the role of school in helping us get there?
What are the mindsets and skills essential for building that future?
For change to be meaningful and ultimately sustainable, we invited educators and district leaders, young people, families, and business and community leaders to shape this vision.
What emerged through conversations, design sprints, and a multitude of feedback is now known as the Portrait of a Nevada Learner: a shared, statewide vision for the mindsets and skills that bring academic knowledge to life in a rapidly changing world.
How might every learner be empowered to grow, connect, contribute, and thrive?
Just as important as the Portrait itself – the way we built it.
A Process Rooted in People and Possibility
At CFL, we believe that process is a product. If we wanted to build a vision that was inclusive, future-focused, and reflective of real life in Nevada, we had to gather and facilitate in a way that matched those values.
That meant centering three principles from day one:
Broad Engagement: Ensuring voices from every corner of the state—rural and urban, north and south—were heard.
Building on Existing Work: Honoring the learner-centered efforts already happening in schools and districts across Nevada.
Co-Creation with Those Furthest from Power: Putting young people and educators in the driver’s seat as co-designers, not just contributors.
Over the course of eight months, more than 1,500 Nevadans joined the effort—including over 400 young people. Through surveys, workshops, interviews, fellowships, and community conversations, we built the Portrait not as a mandate, but as a mosaic of perspectives.
Listening First, Always
Our statewide journey began in October 2022, with a launch workshop that brought together more than 200 educators, students, and community leaders.
The question that guided us:What do Nevada’s young people need to thrive in a changing world?
The room was buzzing—with ideas, sticky notes, vision boards, and recorded reflections. From there, we crunched the data, launched virtual conversations alongside our first statewide survey gathering insights from community members and especially districts already developing local learner portraits for the purpose of leading more learner centered systems. Using a rigorous, hands-on analysis approach, we identified key themes and built a first draft of the Portrait that reflected what we heard across communities.
Design Is Iteration, and Iteration Builds Trust
We released that early draft back to the community, not as a final product, but as an invitation: Tell us what we missed. Help us make it stronger. A second survey brought in even more perspectives. We held one-on-one interviews, small-group dialogues, and listening sessions. At every stage, Nevadans showed up with feedback, ideas, edits, and energy to co-create something real.
Our School Design Teams brought survey insights to life through modeling what Portrait implementation might mean. 50 educators assembled as school teams across six Nevada districts took the emerging data, provided feedback, and built examples of what it may mean to operationalize these mindsets and skills in their own contexts. What kinds of relationships, experiences, and environments would be necessary to activate the portrait?
Recognizing those closest to the challenges of transforming education for the future were educators and young people, we wanted more than just youth voices engaged – we wanted young people to build learning the way they might if the portrait were already adopted. Under the Nevada Department of Education’s leadership, we designed and launched Vision Seekers, a fellowship that deeply engaged 20 young leaders from several counties in Nevada. These young people asked questions of their peers and neighbors, analyzed data, facilitated discussions, and created powerful artifacts that represented their communities and their visions for the future.
As our Vision Seekers presented artifacts and educators finalized their learning projects for an upcoming public exhibition, we convened a final Portrait Perspectives Panel of 60 Nevadans (students, educators, family advocates, and community and business leaders) from every corner of the state. Through a series of four co-creation workshops, they synthesized data, iterated on the Portrait, and refined language and the graphics for the final project.
We shared the final Portrait of a Nevada Learner at the 2023 Nevada Association of School Superintendent’s Annual Academy in Lake Tahoe, NV. School Design Teams shared their learning and insights with district leaders and their teams across the state. With strong accolades for the portrait being built by those who would ultimately be responsible for implementing it, these 50 educators would grow to include 200 in the next phase of implementation. Next up would come launching a network to convene educators and communities to bring it to life.
What We Learned
Trust takes time. Beyond outreach building trust demands patience, consistency, and a willingness to listen. We launched this work during a politically charged moment with shifting executive state leadership, when many were rightfully skeptical if this endeavor would even continue. By showing up with humility and honoring the efforts already underway in local communities, we created space for shared purpose to emerge. Over time, what began as hesitation transformed into a sense of shared ownership.
Young people and educators must lead. The people closest to the learning experience have the clearest view of what works and what needs to change. Their stories, reflections, and vision were essential to making the Portrait relevant and real. We created space for educators to lead through flexible, high-impact roles, and invited students to shape the narrative, not just respond to it.
Shared vision creates momentum. Despite Nevada's vast differences–urban and rural, north and south, across ideologies–we found striking agreement on what young people need. The Portrait became a rallying point, offering a hopeful, unifying vision grounded in dignity, belonging, and purpose. It reminded us that when we focus on what matters most, we can move forward together to help young people feel empowered, connected, and able to make an impact on a thriving community. The Portrait helped channel that energy into action.
A Compass for the Future
The Portrait of a Nevada Learner is a tool, a touchstone, and a mirror. It reflects the hopes of our communities, the wisdom of our young people, and the urgency of this moment. For CFL, it is also a foundation that shapes how we connect, build, and amplify learning transformation across Nevada.
As we move forward, we continue to ask ourselves:
What is a good life and a thriving community?
What are the mindsets and skills we need to embody to embrace those lives and communities?
What kind of learning experiences - everywhere where communities live, play, and work - will help us get there?
To learn more about the Nevada Department of Education’s Portrait of a Nevada Learner visit www.nvfutureoflearning.org. Connect with our CFL Team to keep building the future - we’re here to put possibility to work, together.
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Jeanine Collins is the Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer at the Center for the Future of Learning, and Andy Lott is the Managing Director of Storytelling.
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