Osseo Area Schools is the fifth largest district in Minnesota serving over 21,000 students in 8 of the northwest suburbs of Minneapolis. The Osseo Area School’s mission is to inspire and prepare all students with the confidence, courage and competence to achieve their dreams; contribute to community; and engage in a lifetime of learning. With this in mind, Osseo Area Schools entered into a partnership with National Urban Alliance (NUA) in 2014 with the goal of deepening staff’s capacity to implement culturally responsive pedagogy. Osseo Area Schools has shown its level of commitment through a number of policies and practices to engage in systemic equity work that reaches each of its students, including many who have been historically marginalized and underserved. The collaboration with NUA has been one strategy that has been implemented with the goal of reaching the district’s mission.
NUA and Osseo began their work using The Pedagogy of Confidence® within the context of The C.L.E.A.R Model, which is one of the System Equity Tools that Osseo has adopted. Both the Pedagogy of Confidence and the C.L.E.A.R model are frameworks that guide instruction to be more culturally responsive. By consistently demonstrating how these two frameworks inform each other, administration and staff have been able to deepen their capacity to turn their core beliefs into action in a way that positively impacts each student.
NUA continues to build community and relationships within the district through multiple modalities, such as through providing system-wide professional development, Learning Leader and School Board development, multiple site-based cohorts, CLEAR/NUA Mediators sessions, one-on-one coaching, and a deep collaboration to offer an annual Summer Institute. Together Osseo Area Schools and National Urban Alliance have engaged in a variety of strategies that provide for multiple opportunities to mediate for High Operational Practices (HOP) within the context of the C.L.E.A.R. model. Continuing to respect, analyze and evaluate personal cultural frames of reference in the context of instructional practices, Osseo staff strives to empower students and teachers in all environments.
Believing that every child’s intelligence can be nurtured through school and every child’s spirit and dreams can be inspired by a teacher, Osseo and NUA provide site-specific support to staff, building efficacy around culturally responsive teaching, providing equitable access to content and focusing energy on positive relationships and teaching.
Osseo Area Schools provide students “exceptional opportunities, support and partnerships that help them graduate with the confidence, courage and competence to make their dreams a reality”. With this vision in mind, Osseo Area Schools partnered with NUA in 2014, with a goal to build efficacy among administration staff and to deepen understanding of culturally responsive pedagogy. Osseo’s commitment to reaching and engaging students on the margins has been a priority, and partnering with NUA has served to achieve these results.
These webpages provide insight into the collaboration through:
- video interviews
- video demonstrations with students
- information on NUA High Operational Practices and the CLEAR model
- links to further information and example
The purpose of the three short videos below, and others throughout these webpages is to appreciate and understand the professional educators, leaders, support staff and students of Osseo Area Schools with their implementation of equity for all students to achieve their potential.
“I think teaching Kindergarten the biggest thing it has done is remind me how important student voice is…”
“…culturally responsive classroom… NUA ties right into that… the CLEAR model… those things go hand in hand…”
“The HOPs, the High Operational Practices of NUA (National Urban Alliance) coincide with CLEAR…”
“…It gets us to walk the walk, instead of talk the talk.”
See a lesson led by Sheila Rod with her Kindergarten Students and other examples of Educators ‘walking the talk’.
Sheila Rod