Acequia & Land Grant Education (ALGE) Project

La Mesa Prieta Acequia (Photo Courtesy of UNM Land Grant Studies Program)

ALGE Program Overview

The Acequia & Land Grand Education Project brings together educators, community leaders, youth, and other key stakeholders to develop lessons and provide recommendations to the New Mexico Public Education and Higher Education Departments on how to reshape the educational system to include a culturally relevant curriculum.

We believe:

The ALGE Project serves our communities and future generations by honoring the truths of our past while nurturing a legacy of land and water justice, food sovereignty, and cultural integrity.
That our educational framework in New Mexico, including how we contextualize land grants and acequias, should be grounded in Indigenous perspectives on history, land and water tenure, and community as well as critical consciousness on colonialism.
That a transformation of our education system is needed to serve our communities.
That an ALGE curriculum will strengthen cultural identity, elevate public consciousness, and lead to public policy that is inclusive of the voices and knowledge of New Mexico’s traditional, land-based communities.

ALGE Project White Paper

Reclaiming Our Past, Sustaining Our Future: Envisioning a NM Land Grant & Acequia Curriculum

Building an ALGE Curriculum

Acequia and Land Grant Education (ALGE) Project Teachers’ Mini Institute

Lesson Planning

Welcome to your digital library of lesson plans developed in collaboration with New Mexico community members, leaders, youth, and educators.

The lesson plans are organized in a Google Drive and are accessible via the links below. They are organized by grade level, subject area and language (English/Spanish). Feel free to view, download, and adjust lessons for your classes in ways that value and incorporate the culture and language of your teaching/learning community. These lessons are meant only as templates that you can creatively and authentically build upon for learning that is meaningful.

Although lessons have been created with a secondary lens, many of the lessons can be differentiated and scaffolded to engage students at multiple grade levels. As the project continues to grow with your support, we foresee developing grade-level categories for elementary, middle, and high schools.

*Each content area folder below contains lessons that encourage cross-content collaboration and may appear in more than one content area folder.

If your community would like to host (at no cost) a lesson planning retreat to further contribute to this library, please contact us at 505-891-6904.

Sample Lesson Plans

Readings & Resources

New Mexico Land Grant Council

The New Mexico Land Grant Council’s purpose is to establish a land grant support program to provide advice and assistance to land grants and to serve as a liaison between land grants and the federal, state and local government.

The goals of the New Mexico Land Grant Council are the following:

Direct financial assistance to community land grants- mercedes through Land Grant Support Fund
Provide direct technical assistance and training to Boards of Trustees
Serve as liaison between land grants- mercedes and other government entities
Community and economic development support and advocacy