Anti-Bias, Anti-Racist (ABAR): This work relies on the understanding that oppression, in the United States, is a system supported by discourse, ideology, and everyday practice, that privileges certain groups and disenfranchises other groups based on race, class, gender, language, religion, ability, and sexual preference. It is with this understanding of institutional oppression that we approach our roles as co-conspirators for racial and social justice.
Capstones: Embracing street data, a Graduate Capstone is the performance task associated with the knowledge, skills and dispositions embodied by the graduate profiles. The performance tasks should be coherently aligned with the language, culture, community developed mission and vision associated with the development of an NISN school. Simply put, the Graduate Capstone should demonstrate evidence of the student’s development of holistic wellness, academic relevance, identity development, and community values from their school and curriculum.
Collaborative leadership: In a similar sense as reciprocity, all the NISN team members have the opportunity to grow, rely on each other, learn, and teach. In the same vein, we all have areas in which we excel and have many tools, gifts, and talents we bring to the table and have the opportunity to step up and lead.
Community Based Curriculum: One of the largest disconnects between Indigenous communities and western-based institutions is community and cultural reflexiveness. By incorporating a curriculum that is flexible and responsive to the needs of the community and reflective of the history and culture, students are more likely to engage, participate and maintain a sense of intrinsic motivation and take individual responsibility in the importance of education. It is the goal of the NISN to utilize a community-based curriculum specific to the needs of each school site and community, rather than taking a one size fits all approach.
Community Schools: NISN schools that serve the unique needs of the communities in which they reside. Our network schools are developed through an Indigenous lens by members of the community. Critical points of development include culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum, land-based learning and other practices often overlooked by western-based institutions. This could be through transformative practices such as parent, student and community events and support.
Continuous Support and Development: The process of creating and developing a high quality school requires development of capacity at the local level via systems, policy, procedure, individual and community development. To achieve sustainable and high-quality community schools, the process requires a continuous support and development process that provides the promotion of sustainability via the right type of support at the right time in the development process. The process culminates when development has reached a sufficient point at which instruction and operations are braided into the fabric of the school
Culturally-revitalizing sustaining curriculum: A curriculum model that seeks to assist in strengthening and/or sustainment of Indigenous culture throughout generations within a given community. By utilizing the Indigenous Genius by Design Framework, a curriculum committee developed in collaboration with community leaders, knowledge keepers, NISN staff members, parents and teacher-designers, NISN seeks to develop curriculum that meets the unique needs of each community as a portion of the NISN Theory of Change (Link).
Exemplars: High quality examples from one of the NISN schools or fellows that provides a frame of reference from which other schools or fellows can learn from as a foundation. Exemplars may include Academic, Organizational, Financial, or other planning documents, curriculum maps, scope and sequence documents, facilities master plans or other similar files intended to help as a foundation or frame of reference.
Graduate Profiles: A school design term that has been augmented from the text, Street Data, NISN will define Graduate Profiles as, a collaboratively developed description of what every student must know, understand and be able to do at the time of graduation or promotion from one of the NISN schools.
Holistic Wellness: Utilizing the framework of the NISN Wellness Wheel. The NISN and partner schools and fellows seek to strike a holistic sense of wellness in Intellectual, Physical, Community, and Emotional needs. For NISN staff, partner schools, fellows, and students to be their full selves, we must promote and foster this sense of wellness in all that we do.
Identity development: Healthy identity development is an ongoing process of growth in self-awareness, understanding, actualization and resiliency that includes one’s community, culture, race, beliefs, land, and social impacts.
Indigenous Genius By Design (IGbD): A re-frame on the principles of backwards curriculum design used by NISN network schools for original curriculum design. IGBD is a process and a tool used by the network for curriculum development and is reinforced by our belief that we have inherent genius embedded within each of our communities. NISN staff works alongside community members to determine community core values, essential questions, enduring understandings and year long themes associated with community cultural values and milestones (Link).
Land-Based Healing and Learning (LBHL): Indigenous education (ways of knowing, knowledge systems and how that knowledge is passed down) – By utilizing Indigenous approaches to education students learn components of STEAM, Language and the Humanities that are relevant to the lands that surround them. Indigenous approaches to education are heavily rooted in participatory and active learning. By utilizing an educational methodology that is rooted in relevance and mentorship, students engaged in land-based learning are understanding of the need for stewardship of the land, reciprocity, and respect. Land-based learning is a natural way of learning.
Mission Driven Schooling: NISN schools are dreamed out of a specific community need, this need becomes the centralized voice of the school mission. NISN supports the voices of school leaders, community members, parents and most importantly, students, at every step. By consistently centering those voices, and by extension, the mission, we strive to continue telling the story of the school community.
NISN Frameworks: The overarching protocols, strategies and approaches provided to school design fellows, existing NISN schools and network affiliated schools that allows for continuous growth and improvement of capacity to site leaders for the development of their respective schools. The frameworks include support from educators and administrators in facilities/maintenance, student supports, finance, curriculum and instruction, charter authorization and accreditation.
Professional Inquiry: NISN strives to work towards establishing an organizational culture and environment where there is inspiration and support for public learning: curiosity, vulnerability, agency, symmetry and innovation. We are on a journey to better understand and constantly improve Indigenous Education for the benefit of Indigenous students as determined by the mission of their community voice.
Reciprocity: Reciprocity is embodied within many Indigenous cultures in many ways but one of the most prime examples is in land stewardship. Similarly, by engaging in a process such as education or knowledge transfer, all engaged parties are teaching and learning in a respectful manner that allows information, inquiry, and observation to flow freely and mutually in all directions. In this same sense, the NISN and school sites teach to and learn from each other with a mutual respect that allows support to be given and received in the right places, at the right times. Reciprocity with NISN means to strike a balance in personal, professional, and organizational continuous growth for the betterment of communities and schools.
School Design Fellowship Framework: The framework under which new fellows and prospective schools are mentored and guided, by NISN staff, through planning, implementation, opening, and continued operation of a new community-based school. Fellowship frameworks include support and facilitation and community organizing, yearly deliverables and performance tasks and organizational development leading towards the opening of a k-12 school.
Sustainability: The ability for a school to operate in day to day, as well as long-term functions without the direct support of the NISN partnership. The goal is to achieve school sustainability through capacity building at the individual, institutional and community level as well as providing guidance to build institutional frameworks that allow processes to be completed as part of ongoing evaluation of the individual school site.
Talent Development/Leadership Development: Leadership development with NISN is focused on building off the foundation of individual talents within each leader to ensure that all site leaders have the support needed to maintain a continuous growth mindset. Areas of growth are developed via Organizational and Instructional Leadership Team meetings, regular check-ins, by reviewing NISN tools for monitoring progress such as the Scorecard, Graduation Data, NM Dash tool (when applicable), Mission Driven Story Cycle data.
Wellness Wheel: The wellness wheel is a self-reflection tool that supports the user in assessing their holistic wellness and is intended to center the NISN core value of Holistic Wellness. Elements of holistic wellness used by NISN include: Intellectual, Social/Emotional, Physical and Community Relationship wellness. The wellness wheel provides a snapshot of the holistic wellness of the participating individual, which can provide long-term street data when completed with regularity (Link).