Kashunamiut School District, April 2010

1. Kashunamiut School District, April 2010 Who are you?Kashunamiut School District; Student Pop.: 320 K-12; School Staff: 36; Admin: 7; Certified: 26; Classified: 21; Board Members: 5 What is your question? How do we engage the stakeholders: staff, students, administration leaders, school board, parents, community members in examining, clarifying, and establishing priorities for student achievement? We sought to define the native and non-native perspective of student success at the Fall 2008 AEIN Conference. This was a busy year for us and we had difficulty finding time to work as a team. As a result, we developed sub-topic inquiries about Cup’ik Immersion and Academic Literacy. How did you come to this question? At a recent Curriculum Institute, a discussion took place that focused on the following inquiry question, “What does a well-grounded, well-educated 18-year old (Chevak) student look like.” This brought us back to our originaly inquiry question as presented here. What difference(s) do you see in one or more of the following as a result of our work together? Leadership-hire & retaining practices have altered to find and retain staff who are committed to serving a Culturally Responsive Education experience. Professional learning-The development and implementation of a mentoring program of Alaska native with non-Alaskan native staff with the sole purpose creating a culturally proficient staff. For example, professional development training in Cup/Yup’ik culture takes place during in-service days. Professional and/or student learning culture-professionally, we will need to take what is learned in the mentoring experience and integrate the cultural content in a scope & sequenced curriculum map. This is a long term goal. In the interim, we will map the curriculum with which we are working. Within the Cup’ik Immersion program, we need to ensure that the teachers merge and leave no gaps in content from the Cup’ik to the English classes. Family-community relations-Our present goal is to create community forums that involve the mentor and mentee in working with the community to define curriculum and classroom management for the purpose of establishing healthy relations between the community and the school. How has being part of the network contributed to the differences that you cited? The network is like a mirror for us. It reflects our ideas and helps us to see the prism, the perspectives of all the stakeholders. Professionally, we have learned to receive and give constructive criticism and to become aware of inappropriate judgments. How have you benefited from being in the network and how have you contributed to the network? Our leadership team has learned to trust one another personally as well as professionally. Our goal is to listen and be open and responsive to feedback, modeling what it is we are considering others to practice. AEIN is funded under a $9.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. The ideas and opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the policies of the U.S. Department of Education or endorsement by the Federal Government.