We’re Rebranding!

A Letter from Highlander Institute & Highlander Charter School Leadership:

After 18 years of our evolving partnership, Highlander Charter School and Highlander Institute have decided to move forward as two independent organizations.

This summer, Highlander Institute will be announcing our exciting new name and visual identity!

Highlander Institute and Highlander Charter School have shared a deep connection to centering students, creating engaging classrooms, and empowering individual learners. We have also shared social justice as a core value, symbolized in our names through a joint reference to the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, paying tribute to their ongoing legacy.

As the first independent public charter school in Rhode Island, the Highlander Charter School has been an incredible partner and lab school for the Institute team. The partnership built on the Charter School’s mission to serve as a catalyst for social change, and its vision to design and provide research-based quality education opportunities to all learners. Both organizations shared a deep commitment to providing all children the opportunity and support necessary to meet their full potential.

The Institute’s growth and evolution was made possible by the Highlander Charter School Board. Their decision to merge the organizations in 2006 solidified the Institute’s standing and paved the way for our future as an organization capable of making a significant impact both locally and nationally. Over the past 18 years, Highlander Institute programming has shifted from a focus on literacy to education technology to personalized learning to our current model supporting Culturally Responsive School Change. We have consistently prioritized student-centered learning outcomes, innovation, community engagement, and improving student and family experiences at school.

This throughline continues to provide the foundation for our frameworks around instructional equity, inclusive change management, and liberatory data. We are proud to share that our partnerships are currently generating our most compelling student and teacher outcomes ever — particularly for historically marginalized student populations.

While 2023 will be our last year as Highlander Institute, our talented team and our approach to strengthening education systems will remain intact. We will launch our independent organization with all of the empathy, creativity, and impact that our stakeholders have come to associate with our work. Stay tuned for our big name announcement! And if you’re not already a newsletter subscriber, sign up now to stay informed.

Highlander Charter School and the rebranded Highlander Institute will keep growing, learning, and improving to better serve our communities. As independent organizations, we welcome this next chapter as a chance to redefine how we will continue to collaborate and support each other in the future.

Warmly,

Rose Mary Grant & the Highlander Charter School Team
Shawn Rubin & the Highlander Institute Team


Learn more about how Highlander Institute’s Culturally Responsive School Change model can generate more equitable outcomes for your school.

A608 After Hours Podcast Episode featuring Malika Ali

A608 After Hours Podcast

Malika Ali joined hosts Uche Amaechi and Monica C. Higgins for the January 26, 2023 episode of A608 After Hours, a podcast from the Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Learning Course out of Harvard University.

The podcast aims to bring voices from the field into the classroom to inspire, inform and ignite leadership dedicated to wrestling with today’s stacked challenges. Each week they interview a guest that is doing this important work and discuss how course concepts come to life in the field. Guests span multiple roles across different sectors and institutions, and come from varied backgrounds.

Click here to listen to the full episode.

from the episode

Exciting Work We’re Supporting in Schools

“We know from the research that kids in identity-safe classrooms who feel a sense of trust and belonging do better, their outcomes improve…It’s not just about a toolbox of strategies anymore. It’s really connecting to our kids’ humanity, allowing them to feel seen, understood, and valued, and to understand that we’re all in this together.” 

– Malika Ali, 1-26-23 Episode, A608 After Hours Podcast

On Education & Purpose

“Education is not just a path to social mobility or a way out of poverty. It is about wonder, curiosity, seeing the beauty in the world, and making the world better by improving our own surroundings.

We are a team of learners, not just in service of the task at hand, but because there are so many beautiful things in the world to learn about. We nurture that at Highlander Institute, and that translates into our work with schools, districts, and kids.”

– Malika Ali

ABOUT MALIKA

Malika Ali is passionate about community-driven change management to scale and sustain culturally responsive education driven by a liberatory data approach. As Chief Innovation Officer at Highlander Institute, Malika leads program visioning articulated through a comprehensive model for school change. She was a Rhode Island District Teacher of the Year, served on Governor Raimondo’s STEAM & Equity in Educator Preparation and was named one of the nation’s top emerging and inspirational Black leaders in edtech by LearnLaunch. As a daughter of strong and brilliant Eritrean refugees, she has spent her life critiquing the systems that perpetuate educational inequity and is proud to be part of the struggle to ensure that all children have access to and can take advantage of an empowering education.

2022 Inclusive Innovation Convening

Inclusive Innovation Convening

Join our team members Karina Rodriguez (Director of Research & Analytics), Malika Ali (Chief of Innovation), and Shawn Rubin (Executive Director) in Los Angeles, CA for our sessions at the 2022 Inclusive Innovation Conference, hosted by the Center for Inclusive Innovation & Digital Promise!

We’re excited to present at the following events:

Monday, October 17 from 3:30-4:30PMBreakout Session: Learnings and Resources from the FieldKarina Rodriguez & AERDF
Tuesday, October 18 from 1:45-2:45PMThe Student Experience Survey: Actionable Data to Support Culturally Responsive TeachingKarina Rodriguez, & Malika Ali

2023 NCME Annual Meeting

Join Karina Rodriguez (Highlander Institute), Lauren Kendall Brooks (AERDF), and Teaira McMurtry (University of Alabama at Birmingham) online for a virtual session as part of the 2023 NCME Annual Meeting.

Session Title: Beyond Basketball & Bodegas: Pursuing True Cultural Validity in Formative Assessment

Date & Time: Thursday, March 30, 2023 from 1:00PM – 2:30PM CT / 2:00PM – 3:30PM ET

Description: Tropes related to basketball, clothing, hair, and superfluous community contextual details permeate the narratives that constitute “multicultural” test items from teacher-derived formative assessment to large-scale assessment tools. As instrument developers pursue inclusion and representation through test content, they walk a fine line between being complicit in using racist, ableist, and gendered language and creating a test environment that honors the linguistic and cultural heritage of its intended users. Through the eyes of a community of developers brought together for a new inclusive, equity-informed R&D initiative, this session will feature lessons learned from the implementation of a culture-forward approach to validity for K-12 formative assessment. This panel will highlight how cultural validity must expand to include the positive experiences of multi-generational American students who sit at the intersections of oppressed identities, and why our evaluative processes that govern some of the most critical gateways within their educational experiences must change. Through a dialogic process with attendees, this session will feature how we can collectively tackle the better psycholinguistic approaches in technology-enhanced and technology free assessment prototypes and why community must be a partner in this process in order to expand a new approach to asset-based, culturally representative assessment content.

2023 School Redesign in Action Conference

Join Malika Ali (Chief Innovation Officer) and Shawn Rubin (Executive Director) in Newport, RI for the 2023 School Redesign in Action Conference, hosted by Great Schools Partnership.

Session Title: Culturally Responsive School Change

Date & Time: Tuesday, March 28, 2023 from 10:30AM – 11:45AM ET

Description: Collaborating with students, parents, and teachers within a school improvement process increases dialogue, improves solutions, and strengthens accountability across a building. Highlander Institute’s partnership with Baychester Middle School has provided a strong foundation for sustainable instructional shifts. Participants will learn how this school reflects on student experience data, co-constructs a culturally responsive vision, and implements high-leverage strategies at scale – and how these moves have improved student experiences and academic outcomes.

2023 Next Education Workforce Summit

Join Malika Ali (Chief Innovation Officer) and Karla Arevalo (Program Coordinator, Central Falls School District) online for the 2023 Next Education Workforce Summit, hosted by Arizona State University.

Session Title: Partnering with Communities to Address Complex Student Needs

Session #1 Date & Time: Wednesday, February 8, 2023 from 3:15 – 4:00PM ET

Session #2 Date & Time: Wednesday, February 8, 2023 from 4:05 – 4:50PM ET

Description: Since 2020, Highlander Institute has piloted several new partnerships activating community educators, substitute teachers, and paraprofessionals. We’ve learned about the entrenched challenges districts face related to human capital and recommended ways for leaders to take a more active role in the design of new staffing models. In this session, learn how we’re centering the experiences of students and community members to support SEL and academic growth both inside and outside of school systems.