LAST UPDATED APRIL 2026
Supporting New Mexico's Educational Priorities
A Note About Yazzie Martinez
At a time when New Mexico educators are working to expand literacy, student engagement, and culturally relevant learning in response to priorities elevated through the Yazzie-Martinez decision, the need for high-quality instructional materials that connect academic content with identity, culture, and place has never been clearer. Increasingly, this work is being recognized not only as a state priority, but as part of a broader national effort to ensure that all students have access to rigorous, engaging learning experiences that reflect the diversity of American history and experience. The approaches emerging from New Mexico are often viewed as an important example of how states can strengthen both academic outcomes and student belonging by investing in materials that connect standards-based learning with lived experience.
As a Native-founded and Native-led education technology company, OurWorlds is grounded in this same commitment. Our work focuses on building the kinds of learning tools and experiences that help educators meet evolving expectations around engagement, literacy development, and culturally responsive teaching.
We work to bridge knowledge systems, elevate authentic community voices, and bring forward histories and perspectives too often absent from classrooms — not simply as an act of representation, but as part of ensuring students encounter the full richness and complexity of our shared history while strengthening the academic skills they need for success.
Developed by award-winning educators in collaboration with Native American historians, language experts, and knowledge keepers, our immersive reality curriculum is designed to support both instructional priorities and measurable learning outcomes. Through interactive primary-source storytelling, spatial learning experiences, and structured literacy activities, students practice close reading, analytical writing, historical reasoning, and evidence-based discussion. At the same time, they encounter diverse perspectives that help deepen engagement and strengthen motivation — factors increasingly recognized as essential to improving literacy outcomes and long-term academic success.
By combining immersive technology with carefully structured curriculum design, OurWorlds aims to provide educators with practical tools that support these goals while remaining flexible enough to integrate into existing classroom practice. Our focus is not simply on innovation for its own sake, but on creating resources that help teachers meet real instructional needs while expanding what is possible for student learning.
Still from Hear Choctaw, 2023, an immersive language experience by OurWorlds, developed with Judy Allen, Historic Projects Officer, Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Choctaw language narration by Thomas Olive. Choctaw translations provided by the Choctaw Nation School of Language.
Still from Behind the Scenes: G.H.O.S.T. Ride (Generative Habitation Operating System Technology), 2025, by Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), created for Desert X 2025 with production support from OurWorlds. Courtesy of the artist.