Theory of Action: A Native American Student Focus

Christian Alberto Ledesma

Roosevelt High School

In August of 2016, as the Instructional Leadership Team at

Roosevelt met to determine the School Improvement Plan goals for the
year, we took a close look at Graduation data. While Roosevelt High
School graduation rates have increased steadily from 49% in 2013 to
71.3% in 2016, the graduation rate for the subgroups has not been as
steady. In fact, Native American graduation rate has swung between
0% and 50% every year for the last four years.

Student Learning
An inquiry to the ILT about why the numbers are so low for Native
American students, many yielded the response that Native American
students often left Roosevelt for alternative learning centers or move
out of the district due to family issues. No conrete data exists about
why Native American students leave Roosevelt. With low graduation
rates a possible impact was surmised that students in lower grades did
not have models for what success looks like over the course of four
years at Roosevelt.

School Improvement Plan Goal

The Graduation goal for the SIP became to increase our Native
student graduation goal by 10% from 50% to 60% in 2017. This would
require Professional Staff Development in Native American education
history and culture as well as frequent credit checks with counselors to
ensure students were on track. With ten Native American seniors at
Roosevelt at the start of the year, we looked at their credit readiness
and only 3 were close to credit-ready, 2 more were close, and 2 more
could make up credits through credit recovery.
Initial Theory of Action
If the staff at Roosevelt High School engage Native American
students, in culturally relevant pedagogy and through culturally
appropriate engagement techniques, students will be more likely to
stay at Roosevelt and graduate on time.

Professional Staff Development

In the Fall of 2016, the Office of Indian Ed came to Roosevelt to
lead a staff development training on the history of Indian Education in
Minnesota. During the staff development, the speakers mentioned
scientific evidence of trauma being passed on generationally. How this
shows up can be different by person or group but some things do hold
common. For example, the general distrust of Native American families
towards institutions and schools can be historically and familially
ingrained.
Feedback from the session was positive among most staff
members with many suggesting that their take away was the fact that
Native American studens may be inherently introverted. This led to
discussions of how to best engage students who are less likely to speak
up in whole class activities. One teacher suggested that this may also
hold true for Latinx students since they have inherited culture and
genetics from Native American ancestors.

Senior Student Retention

In December of 2016, during a SIP Graduation Goal check-in, ILT
members noticed a sharp drop in Native American student enrollment.
While we started with ten students, we were down to three enrolled,
Native-identified students. In order to determine what happened and
how to best help students, I met with Jodi Burke, Indian Ed Counselor to
create a survey to administer to students and determine their needs.
We also met with Jody Schieffer, RISE coordinator, to possibly help
adminster the survey students who had gone to an Alternative
program.
Jodi Burke and the Counselors at Roosevelt surveyed Native
American students who remained at Roosevelt across all grades. The
survey data that we got back brought up several questions about
authenticity as the survey was being administered by an adult staff
and, usually, staff that did not have much relationship with students.
Survey results yielded some qualitative data around specific classes
and teachers students liked and the fact that students felt good at
Roosevelt. Again, the authenticity of the answers are questionable due
to the process of administration.

Native American Advisory Group

I called a meeting of staff who had been working with Native
American students to go over the data we had discovered about
student retention in the Senior class and determine possible next
steps. Present at the meeting were a counselor, the Indian Ed
counselor, the Arts coordinator, the PBIS lead and Special Ed teacher,
two teachers working on a project via the T2LP program, the Equity
lead, a Dean, and myself. During the meeting we reviewed the data
and determined that we should shift the SIP Goal from an increase in
Graduation goal to an increase in credit-readiness at all levels. That
way, if students came up more credit ready and had built a strong
relationship with counselors, perhaps they would be more likely to
graduate.
As a team, we looked at the Native American students in our
building and attached our names to the students if we had some sort
of relationship with them this was to determine if students had an
adult connection to the building. Seven out of the forty nine students
enrolled did not have an adult who could identify them. An additional
four only had a relationship with the counselor who they see once a
month for one-on-one meetings. Therefore, not accounting for the
strength of the other relationships, around 22% of our Native
population could be labeled lacking adult connections at Roosevelt.

Inviting Student Voices

We invited students in to the next Native American Student
Advisory Group meeting to identify what feedback, heard directly from
students, could be helpful in our work to better serve them. Five Native
American students joined us after school one day to have a
conversation. We discussed the feedback from the survey that Jodi
Burke gave and sought more feedback about how they feel in th space
at Roosevelt High School. The following ideas were generated by
students:
Staff attendance at cultural programs
Get to know students
Cultural competency - delivery of instruction, expectations,
understanding, culture in lessons
See the culture in the classroom
Teachers check in with students 1:1 more regularly
Increase communication with students - word of mouth is best,
via students
Hold a Community Forum to hear voices of families and
community experts

Hold session/event at the Indian Center

Determining Next Steps

As a staff interested in continuing to work on Native American
retention and credit-readiness we decided that building relationship
with Native American students and improving our ability to see them
as a people in and out of the school building was important. The
conversation developed into what could be done to honor their culture
in our school space. The idea to hold Community Forums or events
outside the Roosevelt High School building is something that we will
orgnize next year. The importance of gathering student and family
input is clear and to do it in their space would be tremendous.
Immediate next steps were detailed as continuing the one-on-
one credit-readiness checks with counselors, ensuring all students
have strong connections in the building, and continuing to think about
how to engage a student population that has been historically
marginalized and traumatized.

Current Data
A credit check of the three remaining Seniors this year shows
that 2 out of the 3 are on the path to graduating on time. If successful,
this would mark a 67% graduation rate amongst Native American
Seniors, meeting and exceeding our goal of 60%. However, the small
number of Native American seniors that have made it to this part of
the year is concerning. Next year we will also be including a focus on
Native American student retention.

Revised Theory of Action

REVISED THEORY OF ACTION:

If Admin will provide then teachers will find new so that student
opportunities for staff to ways to engage students in their learning will
learn about Native classrooms to ensure all voices, in improve through
American culture and particular our Native voices, are increased
learning styles and hold heard in some capacity in the engagement,
teachers and staff classroom and share successes stronger
accountable to changes in with colleagues relationships, and
practice via an improved retention
observation cycle rates.

Strategies for Revised Theory of Action

Measure of Impact