Professional Development

SHI sponsors Our Cultural Landscape, an annual culturally responsive education conference. This event provides educators and administrators with a deep understanding of culturally responsive education and equips them to transform their classrooms, pedagogy, and curriculum to fully support all students’ success—especially those who have been historically underserved, disenfranchised, and marginalized by colonized systems. Educators, administrators, university faculty, and community members are all welcome and encouraged to attend. Attendees will find engaging and informative sessions to support their thinking around culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies for K–12 and university settings, critical theory, place-based education, and possibilities for indigenizing curriculum and building self-social environments for all learners. SHI also offers asynchronous online learning courses with the option to earn university credits.

SHI’s Communities of Practice (CoP) are places for Alaska Native educators to find support, resources, and community. They are spaces where participants lift each other up and collaboratively share and identify major challenges facing Indigenous educators and students and collectively strategize ways to address them. They are also safe spaces to ask questions, share resources, and support peers with challenges they are facing within their learning communities. Participants earn a $1,000 stipend upon completion of course requirements, professional service agreement, and submission of invoice.

Learn more on the CRE website!

SHI offers professional development opportunities for early childhood educators and care providers that include a cultural introduction course, instructional coaching, and Baby Raven Reads. The institute also supports our partners through the Southeast Childhood Collective’s Early Childhood Conference.

With a full Raven Writes curriculum for kindergarten through grade 5, professional development goes hand-in-hand. Elementary educators within partner districts, including Juneau, Hoonah, Yakutat, Sitka, Klawock, Hydaburg, Angoon, and Klukwan, can receive instructional coaching to support the implementation of the Raven Writes curriculum and a summer writing seminar for an in-person deep-dive into the writing materials. Other professional development opportunities can be offered with partner districts to meet the needs of the school, educators, and communities.

In this program, the focus is on the integration of Northwest Coast arts, culture, and literacy. Elementary educators for grades 2–3 within partner districts in Juneau, Craig, Klawock, Yakutat, and Ketchikan are offered coaching and pre-conference opportunities for an in-person deep-dive into arts, culture, and literacy integration strategies to support all elementary educators. Partner districts can also sign up for artist residencies for grades 4–5 in their classrooms. This option provides on-the-job professional development for educators where university credit can be earned.