Strategic Cycles of Educational Transformation: Systems Development Native families and children that are served by early learning centers are not vulnerable populations. They come from communities that are rich in language and culture and history….What we want to do is to enact the systems that existed far before any formal nonNative systems were put in place. — Tarajean Yazzie-Mintz, Vice President, Program Initiatives, American Indian College Fund
Native communities require intentionally building strong and critical infrastructure, instructional innovation, purposeful outreach and creation of partnerships, and the development of intellectual innovation. Preservation of our approaches to Indigenous learning is an intentional act — a commitment someone in our lives took on to ensure we have a connection, relationship and lifelong grounding in who we are as Native/Indigenous peoples. We commit to these intentional acts on behalf of future generations of Native children. There are four critical steps to generating and continuing these intentional acts: 1) Possibility: We envision what is possible. Something — an event, a person — made us understand that this work is a possibility. We imagine that possibility and that guides us in this work.
2) Commit: We commit to making this happen. Not by ourselves, maybe not forever — we commit to work on this now to start the process of making this happen.
3) Enact: We enact our role in making this happen. Others have roles to play as well. Starting with the first step, we take the steps to do what we can in our roles to make this happen.
4) Persevere: We continue to persevere and sustain this work. Either we are continuing to do the work, or we are training others to join the work and continue on. This allows the work to persevere and sustain, with us now and beyond us later.
The early childhood education initiatives to strengthen systems of care and learning are built on intentional transformational acts, generated from within communities. Building strong foundations in early learning and transforming early childhood education in
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