Jun 2, 2022

What’s New with the National Comprehensive Center’s Native Education Collaborative (NEC)?

Amy Bitterman
Native Education Collaborative logo

The NEC develops and disseminates resources to help build states’ capacity to more comprehensively support Native education through collaboration with districts and tribes.  Check out what the NEC has been doing the last few months:

  • Released a new toolkit to support SEAs, LEAs, and Tribal Education Departments (TEDs) when planning, implementing and evaluating learning and programming that will advance education for Native students. 
  • Westat hosted a webinar about Circles of Reflection, Asking the Experts: Circles of Reflection (YouTube video). Circles of Reflection is a series of guided discussions that take place with, first, the SEA, and then districts and tribes to contribute their perspectives. The webinar highlighted a panel of Native educators from Oklahoma who shared their experiences participating in the process.
  • Kicked off quarterly informal discussions with Regional Centers on Native education topics. During the first call in March we focused on the Circles of Reflection.
  • Conducted the first Circle of the Circles of Reflection with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and Regional Center 10. The team adapted Circles of Reflection to focus on Native students in early childhood.
  • Presented a session at the Office of Indian Education (OIE) Project Directors conference for OIE grantees about Circles of Reflection, including a panel discussion of Circles’ participants from three states.

Don’t forget to also take a look at the other resources available through the Idea Bank and the Tribal Consultation Toolkit.