Site Visits

The host committee identified five unique education initiatives of special interest to conferemce participants. Advance registration was required for Friday's visit to Laguna Pueblo.

Four site visits took place on Wednesday, October 17:

Amy Biehl Charter School/Working Classroom
10:45am - 1:30pm
We saw first hand how a high school has become a cornerstone of urban revitalization and renewal with this visit to the Amy Biehl Charter School. Housed in a restored historic post office in downtown Albuquerque, the school emphasizes the civic mission of education, with a commitment to service learning projects and tightly integrated out-of-school learning. In addition to visiting the charter school, we stopped into the nearby Working Classroom program, which works closely with urban schools to provide tuition-free art and acting instruction to hundreds of students from the city's underserved communities, providing paid arts internships, developing leadership and entrepreneurial skills, and promoting both local and global citizenship.

Native American Community Academy/Wilson Middle School
10:45am - 1:30pm
We saw how two very distinct schools – one a charter school for urban Indians, the other a diverse urban middle school – are thriving on a single campus in the Albuquerque Public Schools. Learn how the school district embraced the charter Native American Community Academy (NACA) as a way to learn how to improve its services to American Indian students, who lag dangerously behind grade level by sixth grade statewide. The school infuses Native American culture and traditions throughout its curriculum while meeting state standards. Students study geometry using designs found in American Indian pottery and read nonfiction accounts of how their particular tribe or community was affected by events such as the Pueblo Revolt or the Long Walk. The adjoining Wilson Middle School serves one of the state's most diverse populations, and is developing a rich suite of comprehensive school-based health services, extended learning opportunities and a mentoring program in partnership with NACA.

Center for Working Families at Central New Mexico Community College
12:15 - 3:30pm
For families living in poverty, academic issues must often take the back-burner to such immediate needs as adequate housing and food, employment and health crises. On this visit, we learned how the Center for Working Families at Central New Mexico Community College helps students to overcome these barriers to achieve academic, social and financial success. The program bundles together multiple services for students in one convenient location, providing employment and career development, work supports and public benefits, and financial literacy and asset-building strategies. Considered a national model, the program is designed to be low-cost and highly replicable, drawing on lessons from other efforts around the country to achieve its remarkable outcomes. It was a must-attend visit for those interested in seeing how a carefully-designed set of comprehensive supports is helping to build the middle class in a historically poor community.  

Santa Fe Mountain Center
12:15 - 4:00pm
As more education institutions grapple with the ramifications of No Child Left Behind and measuring yearly progress, other aspects of students' learning and development can be overlooked. In this visit, we learned how New Mexico's preeminent experiential outdoor learning program – the Santa Fe Mountain Center – provides exceptional learning within the context of connectivity to nature and the outdoors. We traveled to the idyllic village of Tasuke, where the Mountain Center is nestled between Tasuke Pueblo and the Sangre de Cristo mountains. As recent books have begun to address "nature deficit disorder" among young people, the Santa Fe Mountain Center offers an alternative to traditional educational and therapeutic approaches, combining elements of adventure, community and civic engagement, and of education to challenge and enhance the resiliency of participants. After the visit, we journeyed on to nearby Santa Fe where we joined colleagues for dine-arounds and sightseeing in the evening.

Laguna Pueblo Department of Education
Friday, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
We took a memorable journey into the heart of Indian Country with this special site visit. We traveled through some of the most breathtaking scenery in the state to visit the Laguna Pueblo's comprehensive, cradle-to-career education system. Sometimes referred to as "The Harlem Children's Zone of Native America," the Pueblo aims to provide seamless transitions at every point in the education pipeline, overseen by a dynamic and unique nonprofit tribal Department of Education. This extended site visit examined several distinct points in the Pueblo's system, including its Head Start and SPARK program, emerging integrated services at the middle school, educational leadership and adult education programs. We witnessed powerful examples of how children's culture can be leveraged in their learning – and how innovative educational approaches can be woven with ancient cultures. We made use of the 90-minute drive to provide an overview about Indian education and view a video about the Pueblo's schools. A traditional tribal lunch was served onsite. Space was limited to the first 35 registrants.