4th Annual Indigenous Education Symposium: Full Schedule

1:45pm MDT

Bridging Explicit Instruction with Indigenous Genius by Design (IGbD)

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

This session is designed for educators who want to honor the rigor of Native Literature while ensuring every student has the cognitive tools to access it. We will explore how Explicit Instruction (EI)—typically viewed as a "Western" pedagogical tool—can be decolonized and repurposed to serve the transfer of Indigenous knowledge, values, and joy.

Speakers

Jenny Atcitty (Diné)

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
TBA

Breakout Session E

1:45pm MDT

Designing with Relatives: Indigenous Mentorship and the Native Auntie Way of Learning

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

TBA

Many Indigenous educators grow professionally through relationships rather than formal professional development systems. Mentorship from aunties, elders, colleagues, and community members often teaches ways of observing, responding, and caring for others that shape how we approach leadership and learning.

This interactive session begins with a personal story from the facilitator’s upbringing on the Navajo Nation, reflecting on early lessons learned from aunties and elders about observation, responsibility, and relational accountability. These experiences introduce the idea that Indigenous mentorship is a form of professional learning that continues to influence how educators design learning environments today.

Participants will engage in guided reflection to identify the mentors and community members who shaped their own approaches to teaching and leadership. Through collaborative discussion and simple mapping activities, participants will explore how Indigenous values such as relational accountability, observation, and collective responsibility can inform classroom design and professional practice.

Aligned with the principles of Indigenous Genius by Design, this session centers community knowledge, teacher expertise, and relational learning. Participants will leave with practical ideas for incorporating Indigenous mentorship and values into their teaching and professional growth.

Speakers

April Yazza (Diné and A:shiwi)

Doctoral Candidate, University of New Mexico

Yá’át’ééh! My name is April Brannon Yazza. I am of the Red Running into the Water People clan, born for the A:shiwi people, and I am originally from Tsayatoh, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation. Today I serve communities across Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

I am a doctoral candidate in the Native Americans in Educational Leadership program at the University of New Mexico, where our work centers Indigenous pedagogy, community-rooted research, and leadership grounded in cultural values. I am also a proud NACA-Inspired Schools Network... Read More →

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
TBA

Breakout Session E

1:45pm MDT

Indigenous Inclusive Education: Storytelling to Create Inclusive Environments for All Our Relations

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

TBA

This session is built from my PhD and Spencer Foundation funded research to explore Indigenous perspectives of disability from Turtle Island to Aotearoa. I begin with a Diné ancestral story of Locust and Snail Girl, to challenge deficit framing of ability and expand ways for educators to reframe understandings of disability. I move on to share how similar resonating stories and perspectives are found in wider Indigenous schools in Aotearoa and family perspectives in the U.S, to convey how place-based knowledges, and communities are shifting understandings of what it means to enact Inclusive Education for Indigenous diverse learners. It brings us back to our relational values of connection, that move over space, waters, and land, to show how we can learn from one another to build more inclusive worlds for our diverse Indigenous youth.

Speakers

Dr. Sandra Yellowhorse

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
TBA

Breakout Session E

1:45pm MDT

Interactive Journaling: Art-Based Practices for Story, Reflection, and Learning

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

TBA

This interactive workshop introduces interactive journaling as a creative and reflective learning practice that educators can use across grade levels to support engagement with Native literature, storytelling, and land-based learning.

Participants will explore how combining writing, drawing, and visual storytelling in a journal format can help students process ideas, respond to literature, and make meaningful connections to identity, place, and community. Through guided activities, educators will experience journaling practices that encourage observation, reflection, and creative response. These methods support both literacy and inquiry-based learning and can easily be adapted for elementary, secondary, and adult learning environments.
Interactive journaling also creates space for students to explore personal voice and creative expression, helping educators cultivate classrooms grounded in curiosity, reflection, and Indigenous joy. Participants will leave with practical strategies they can immediately apply in their own classrooms.

Speakers

Ruth Riley (Acoma)

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
TBA

Breakout Session E

1:45pm MDT

ISI 101

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

TBA

In this session, participants will learn about the story of the ISI, from early days in 2023 to the launch of the open-access curriculum. There will be an opportunity to hear the story of the project as well as to explore the resources and start thinking about how to adapt or localize the resources in diverse contexts.

Speakers

Paul LeFrancois

K12 Education Program Coordinator, LANL Foundation

Driven by a passion for place-based teaching and learning and a deep belief in public education, Paul LeFrancois serves as the K12 Education Program Manager for the LANL Foundation. In this role, he is responsible for coordinating the Indigenous Science Initiative and the National... Read More →

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
TBA

Breakout Session E

1:45pm MDT

Localizing Native Literature: A Rooted & Rising Approach to Indigenous Genius by Design

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

TBA

This presentation demonstrates how teachers and school leaders can make curriculum their own by centering local land, language, identity, and community knowledge.

At NACA Elementary, localization is a professional stance. It positions educators as curriculum authors who design standards-aligned learning experiences rooted in the Nations represented in our student body. Through the Rooted and Rising mini-project framework, we align NACA’s Core Values and Native Literature to standards-based report cards and our upcoming 2026–2027 scope and sequence planning requirements.

This session addresses the symposium’s essential questions by examining why Indigenous Genius by Design strengthens instructional practice, student identity, and community-defined success; how Indigenous values guide the way we live, learn, and relate; why centering Indigenous joy is necessary for truth-telling and healing; and how storytelling creates meaning by connecting land, lineage, and leadership.

Speakers

Stacey Alana Coonsis (Diné)

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
TBA

Breakout Session E

1:45pm MDT

Teaching Through Zines: Land-Based Literacies for Creating, Healing, and Learning

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT

TBA

The goal of this workshop is to help our fellow teachers and relatives respond to the ancient, contemporary and future need of individuals, communities and nations to carry, nurture and create stories in relation to our experiences as land-based peoples. Students must have experiences on the land in order to honorably find, nurture and create stories that are relevant to continuing our land stewardship responsibilities. Stories provide powerful foundations from which to relate to the land, to learn upon/with the land, and empower youth to become land stewards, lifelong learners and storytellers. Students must work with surviving and relevant materials and resources in a creative way as colonization and other efforts have stifled, damaged and removed students and nations from relationships, opportunities and access to the land. Coupled with land-based experiences, stories and traditions, zines offer a collaborative and individual approach from which students are supported in their recognition, and development of their gifts, strengths, abilities, interests, languages, cultures, nations, experiences, traditions and joy. Zines as a creative format and methodology are introduced as a way to reinforce key literacy concepts such as the Reading and Writing Ropes, the drafting, writing and editing process of authorship, fluency, comprehension, critical thinking and analysis, as well as provide an uncensored medium for creative self-expression and storying. Participants will be invited to participate in an ImaginiNative Nature Walk, deep listening of a traditional story and perspectives from land-based educators and zinesters which reinforce the value that our stories support us to be land stewards, lifelong learners and storytellers. Participants will learn about the history and creation of zines, zine pedagogy and best practices, how to critically analyze a zine, create a mini-zine and contribute to a collectively produced zine.

Speakers

Joshua Frank Cardenas

University of New Mexico

Dr. Joshua Frank Cárdenas (Kanienʼkehá꞉ka-Rotinoshonni/White) is an Assistant Professor of Education at UNM Valencia. He has worked in education since 2003, teaching Pre-K to Ph.D. and began teaching at the college level in 2012. He has taught multiple PreK and K-12 settings... Read More →

Zoey “ZJ” Johnson

Zoey “ZJ” Johnson is an artist, student, and mentor working outside of the gender binary. Based in their work with zines and youth resistance, they focus their efforts around performance, community, and joy as disruption. Having just graduated with their Masters in Communication... Read More →

Thursday July 16, 2026 1:45pm - 3:15pm MDT
TBA

Breakout Session E