Mission-Aligned Stories and Profiles
One Generation (OneGen), founded in 2020 and based in New Mexico, builds community engagement and leadership to foster Indigenous-led solutions and social change efforts in education, health, environment, food systems, and wellbeing. OneGen, under the leadership of Kara Bobroff (Diné/Laokota) collaborates closely with the NACA Inspired Schools Network (NISN), which is led by Anpao Duta Flying Earth (Lakota, Dakota, Ojibwe, Akimel O’odham) and is the nation’s first school network dedicated to Indigenous Education, founded in 2016. NISN currently has 13 member schools across five states. OneGen and NISN collaborate to enhance and share holistic and equitable student assessment systems within learning environments that support student academic growth through culturally relevant curriculum, community-led school design, holistic wellness, and identity development.
Tool Spotlight
1
Mission-driven School Cycle: Street Data is sourced through three main methods: (1) incorporating student capstones as tangible evidence; (2) observing interactions among students, families, staff, and the community throughout the creation and presentation of these capstones; and (3) actively listening to the voices of families, students, staff, and the community. NISN’s staff and staff members from affiliated schools share responsibility for gathering, arranging, and sharing this street data. This collected information is then utilized in the weeks following the capstone projects to facilitate an annual reflection period. During this time, students, staff, and families collaborate to identify qualitative patterns in the data. Subsequently, they formulate recommendations for enhancing the upcoming school year’s educational approaches, learning methods, curricula, and professional growth opportunities.
2
Graduate Profiles: NISN and OneGen collaborated with stakeholders across school communities to create student graduate profiles that honor the aspirations and values inherent within the community. This collaborative approach ensures that the profiles holistically represent not only the academic achievements of students but also the skills, qualities, and attributes that the community deems essential for successful and responsible individuals—in NACA’s case, these include Empathetic Leader, Communicator, Collaborator, Good Relative, Resilient Achiever, and Critical and Flexible Thinker. The diversity of perspectives included in community conversations enriches the process by capturing a comprehensive range of insights and expectations and builds on the strengths of Indigenous communities.
3
Mission-driven Learning Team Weekly Agenda: Mission-driven Learning Teams bring together a diverse group of staff, teachers, and sometimes students and families on a regular basis, either weekly or biweekly. This dedicated time ensures that decision-makers at the school consistently engage in discussions aligned with the mission, using real-world data. These discussions lead to small, ongoing adjustments in teaching, learning, and programming. This process involves weekly planning sessions for professional development and grade-level team meetings, all guided by the insights from street data analysis. The Agenda available in the public good download supports teams in documenting observations, artifacts, and deep listening sessions that relate to community-led, academic relevance, identity development, and holistic health goals set by the community for the education process.
4
Student Wellness Wheel: NACA has used a Wellness Wheel as a fundamental tool since its founding. This tool directly involves learners in assessing the alignment of the NACA mission through the lens of student input. Every week, students fill out wellness wheels to assess their overall well-being and the four wellness aspects: intellectual, physical, community, and emotional. Throughout each school quarter, students establish and monitor wellness goals, which are then communicated to caregivers during NACA’s student-led conferences.
Tool Summary
Schools in the United States are largely subject to narrow interpretations of student success based on limited satellite and map data (i.e., state assessments for proficiency). “Street Data” is a term coined by Dr. Shane Shafir and Dr. Jamila Dugan through their book Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation and is an approach that collects qualitative data from students, educators, and families – an on the ground, holistic and continuous approach to evaluation, rather than a macro, one-point-in-time measurement. Seeking an alternative methodology to assessment and evaluation, NISN and its 13 Network schools started the Growing Together Fellowship in June of 2022 to recommit, reconnect, and re-inspire its students, families, teachers, and administrators to their community-constructed mission and empower each participating school to:
1
Find the permission from within themselves, their school, and their community to dream and tell the story of their own school using Street Data;
2
Analyze their school’s mission through the lens of holistic health with the help of Street Data;
3
Promote identity development and academic relevance;
4
Critique one-another’s current systems and practices to promote mission-driven teaching and learning; and
5
Advance mission- driven learning with a student-facing graduate profile and graduate capstone at 5th, 8th, and 12th grades.
Schools in the United States are largely subject to narrow interpretations of student success based on limited satellite and map data (i.e., state assessments for proficiency). “Street Data” is a term coined by Dr. Shane Shafir and Dr. Jamila Dugan through their book Street Data: A Next-Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and School Transformation and is an approach that collects qualitative data from students, educators, and families – an on the ground, holistic and continuous approach to evaluation, rather than a macro, one-point-in-time measurement. Seeking an alternative methodology to assessment and evaluation, NISN and its 13 Network schools started the Growing Together Fellowship in June of 2022 to recommit, reconnect, and re-inspire its students, families, teachers, and administrators to their community-constructed mission and empower each participating school to:
Contact Information
For more information on OneGen’s work , please contact Kara Bobroff.
Related Resources
K12 Lab at the Stanford d.school
At Beloved Community, our mission is to build sustainable change. We do so by supporting regions to further their collaborative journey for racial and economic equity, and by centering our most marginalized populations as we advance towards the beloved community.
Point of Contact: Peter Worth
Visit the Website: Click Here
Center for Measurement Justice
At The Center for Measurement Justice we aim to bring antiracist assessment and measurement practices to all learners across the nation. Our work is to inspire, prepare, and support a critical mass of measurement professionals and partners as they work towards a socially just assessment and measurement system.
Point of Contact: Jennifer Randall
Visit the Website: Click Here