Welcome to the Collaborative.
We’re thrilled to join you on this journey towards reimagining what school can look and feel like today. This is your home base for our work together: This is where you’ll find the exercises you’ll do on campus with your teams, the pre-work to prepare you for our in-person convenings, and lots of bonus resources you can customize to make your own.
Excellent schools new mexico
The Collaborative is made possible by Excellent Schools New Mexico, a nonprofit organization that provides traditionally overlooked New Mexico students with educational opportunities and access they may not otherwise have.
Excellent Schools New Mexico collaborates with local and national nonprofit partners to invest capital to incubate, expand, replicate and redesign academically rigorous public schools; partner with schools to make critical connections to funders, community leaders, talent partners and others to catalyze impact; and provide a vision of what’s possible to local civic leaders, legislators and parents through education and advocacy.
Mark Armijo Academy
digital arts & technology academy
New Mexico School for the Arts
Atalaya Elementary School
Mission Achievement and Success Charter School
Meet Your Coaches
Design teams will be matched with a coach from Transcend, a national nonprofit that accelerates innovation in school design. Your coaches – either Shari, Sujata or Christina – will serve as an ongoing thought partner, design and facilitation support, running buddy, and connector to additional experts and resources at Transcend and beyond.
THOUGHT PARTNER
We’ll act as a provocateur and guide to ensure your team is building the skills to transform schooling, and eventually, to take your organization to new heights.
DESIGN + FACILITATION PARTNEr
Sometimes we’ll roll up our sleeves to build together. Other times, we might “hold the pen,” putting your ideas to paper to help accelerate your thinking.
RUNNING BUDDY
Part of our role is to hold you accountable to your goals. Much like a trusted running buddy, we’ll be sure you follow-through on the commitments you make to yourself and to your community.
CONNECTOR
We will help to identify other resources, experiences, and people who will be helpful along your journey.
Shari Long
Sujata Bhatt
Christina jenkins
Shari is a School Design Partner at Transcend. She supports partners in the early stages of the innovation journey to create bold new visions of school. She began her career in education almost 10 years ago as a NYC Teaching Fellow and taught special education, science, and math for six years at various public high schools. During her tenure as a teacher, Shari coached new teachers, served as the math department coordinator, and piloted initiatives in partnership with the NYC Department of Education.
Most recently, Shari worked as the founding Academic Affairs Director for College Track Watts where she created and implemented after school programming to support students’ high academic achievement and college eligibility. Shari currently lives in Los Angeles, California where she enjoys yoga, hiking, and basking in the LA sun.
Sujata Bhatt is Senior Fellow at Transcend Education where she works with school partners and develops strategic avenues for Transcend’s future. She also serves on the board of the Mastery Transcript Consortium and is on the faculty of Penn GSE’s Education Entrepreneurship Program. Previously, Sujata served as Managing Partner, Innovation for Boston Public Schools, where she led learning redesign initiatives district-wide, including launching an innovation incubator, innovation economy-based PD opportunities, and learning-focused social networks. She also founded The Incubator School, one of the most diverse, high performing schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, where, as a National Board Certified educator, she taught grades 1-8 over 14 years. She lives in Oakland, CA and is the proud mom of a UC Berkeley junior.
Christina is a learning and product designer at Transcend: She supports educators who are designing or redesigning schools by leading adult learning experiences that jumpstart innovation. She came to Transcend from Project H Design, a non-profit that teaches young people how to use design and architecture to transform their communities.
At Project H, she helped to launch a dedicated space for after-school and summer programming – Girls Garage – and founded a teacher creativity project called Unprofessional Development that sparks creative pedagogy through joyful PD. Previously, she worked for nearly a decade in NYC public schools as an award-winning teacher (feminism, cartography, anthropology) and coach. She lives in Los Angeles, where she recently retired from rowing and currently practices printmaking.
Getting Started
Your Journey
Over the next six months, you’ll engage in a three-stage journey that will prepare you to reimagine school.
We’ll begin in the Discover phase, where we’ll explore the frontiers of learning science, proven approaches, provocative new models of education, and the demands of the 21st century. You’ll follow up that work with Build, which is your opportunity to craft new graduate profiles, reimagine student experiences, and propose a new vision. Finally, we’ll help you Test your vision in the form of a pop-up “pilot” on your campus. Together, we’ll help you question the ways we use time, space, people, technology, and resources.
We will come together three times to reflect, provoke new ideas, and collaborate.
By May, all teams will be prepared to apply for grant funding to extend their work.
FIrst convening: santa fe
January 24-25, 2019
Why reimagine school today? To find answers, begin by doing research grounded in your own community. Before the convening, you’ll conduct empathy interviews, shadow students, and collect data that will help you to craft your own unique case for change. We’ll help you synthesize that research and craft a case for change.
Second convening: denver
April 1-2, 2019
What kind of school will you build with your community? Translate your research into actionable insights by preparing a graduate profile, developing design anchors, and building a “signature experience” – a working vision of your new model.
Third convening: Albuquerque
May 23-24, 2019
How will you bring your vision to life? Pilot your signature experience in real life to test a small part of your larger vision. Then, work with us to iterate and grow.
Inspiration Visits
Throughout your journey, you’ll visit inspiring sites – both schools, and non-schools – in the cities where we meet. Inspiration visits are meant to generate new ideas about how to bring creativity, sovereignty, engagement, equity, immersive experiences (and more) back to your own campus.
Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver | Cyrus McCrimmon/Denver Post/Getty Images
Second Convening:
Denver | April 1-2, 2019
Interested in exploring Denver on Sunday afternoon? Here are some of the best spots to visit according to US News, the New York Times, and TripAdvisor.
Our own favorites include hiking at Red Rocks Park, shopping for books and music right next door to each other (at Tattered Cover and Twist and Shout, respectively), and checking out the Museum of Contemporary Art (which has, among other exhibitions, a show about the impact of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work on contemporary painters.)
FIrst convening:
Santa Fe | January 24-25
Meow Wolf is a Santa Fe-based artist collective that builds large-scale, immersive installations. We’re going to visit their permanent space to learn more about their work and consider how we might reimagine schools with a bit of Meow Wolf inspiration. We invite you to prepare for that visit by learning more about their work. They released a documentary called Origin Story that highlights their journey over the last ten years.
The Santa Fe Indian School is owned and operated by the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico. Its program is based on educational sovereignty – the right and responsibility to educate New Mexico Indian children in manner that supports their cultural and traditional belief systems.
We invite you to learn more about SFIS by visiting their website and taking a look at their graduate student profile.