The National Urban Alliance (NUA) and Newark Public Schools (NPS) currently collaborate on professional leadership and teacher development, and with amplifying student voice for the majority of NPS high schools. The NUA Pedagogy of Confidence© (POC) is rooted in equity consciousness, an end to systemic racism, quality education for all students and sustaining the actions of change. The current NUA/NPS collaboration builds on prior collaborations with consistent emphasis on student engagement for equity consciousness at both the high school and elementary school levels. The current collaboration focuses on both the professional development of educators and amplifying student voice. On the week of March 9th, just prior to shutting down the district for COVID-19 on March 13th, the collaboration was building forward with student voice including the lead work by Senior Scholars Robert Seth Price and Stefanie Rome with fourteen high schools. The week prior to the shutdown saw evidences of the power of student voice.
Amplifying Student Voice
Click to view video clips from our work with Newark schools
Click to view our critical thinking guide (PDF format)
Forward Presently
Concurrently with the shutdown from COVID-19, the tragic events of George Floyd have brought widespread attention to Black Lives Matter regionally, nationally and globally. This fight for justice needs a focus on equity consciousness more than ever. Racism is part of our past, is part of our present, and if we don’t do something different forward, it will be part of our future. The voices of the students speaks to the need to continue the professional development with students and educators immediately to focus on equity consciousness.
More than ever the National Urban Alliance’s focus on high operational practices with the Pedagogy of Confidence© is a grounding that speaks to bringing students, teachers, school leaders and community leaders together with a focus on education equity, the work of National Urban Alliance since its’ inception with Columbia University over twenty years ago that began the journey with large school districts nationwide. This focus on equity is deeply relevant to NPS, and even more so in the present to bring a pedagogical change for students and community.
With many unknowns currently in regards to COVID-19 and the focus on equity consciousness and goals of being anti-racist, the time is relevant as ever to be focused on teacher professional development and amplifying student voice that pushes the needle forward with equity consciousness with effective high operational practices.
Virtual and Hybrid Success with NUA
Since April, the National Urban Alliance has been continuing its’ collaborations virtually in the Minneapolis region with Osseo School District equity department and the San Francisco Bay Area with Redwood City Schools. The focus on our collaborations, as with Newark, is with equity consciousness especially for Black, Latinx, Indigenous and other students who have been unfairly marginalized. With critical thinking tools rooted in the Pedagogy of Confidence©, the time for collaboration — virtual, hybrid and on-site is more than ever relevant and needed. The collaborations since April virtually with Redwood City are a model of equity consciousness that expands upon the on-site collaboration. The majority of the school district received extensive NUA training from April to June virtually. The video collaboration with educators and students was recently presented to the school board in June 2020 with a focus on equity consciousness and with a view of virtually and hybrid. The presentation that included the video and insights from NUA founder Eric Cooper, NUA Pedagogy of Confidence© author Yvette Jackson, the project director and two senior scholars was received with positive input from ALL the board members with individual comments.
The project in Redwood City School District is a model of how the collaborations works with the whole system. In Redwood City, like Newark, the Amplifying Student Voice element has been both support of student successes and opening the potential in view to staff, teachers, school leaders, district leaders and board members. In Redwood City there have been regular virtual trainings for:
- the district coaches
- the district leaders
- whole school staffs grades 4-8
- amplifying student voice
- presentation to the school board which is now being followed up with a school board training as requested by the school board
In Redwood City the project director and senior scholars have been working collaboratively to bring highly engaging, effective models of learning for equity virtually and hybrid (walking the equity talk); critical thinking models and strategies a hallmark of NUA; thoughtful methods of collaboration and communication for virtual and hybrid with staff and students; and modeling the power of virtual co-existing with hybrid and on-site professional development.
Click to view staff and student video testimonials of our work with the Redwood City School District
Clickto view further information about the NUA & Redwood City School District Initiative
NPS Forward
The current data on inequities even further deepening the divide with COVID-19 and the social unrest speak to accelerating the NUA and NPS collaboration for students, staff, leadership and the greater Newark community.
Program
- Virtual educator professional development weekly to all participating schools. Virtually we will work with multiple schools collaborative in a variety of creative groupings to support NPS
- Virtual Amplifying Student Voice with collaborations between schools
- Leadership training for implementing POC equity consciousness and using the critical thinking tools for leadership