Project REDO

The Rural Endorsement and Development Opportunities (REDO)/National Urban Alliance (NUA) Collaborative Partnership

The Rural Endorsement and Development Opportunities (REDO)/National Urban Alliance (NUA) Collaborative Partnership is a 5-year project through a federally funded grant. Two different cohorts of educators participate each year in Project REDO, The Bilingual Cohort and the English as a New Language Cohort.

 NUA collaborated in the research section of the grant, including Pedagogy of Confidence and NUA tenets. A subtext of this grant collaboration was envisioning NUA’s contribution through a course of study focused on providing High Operational Practices (HOP) in an Emergent Bilingual (EB) Settings to elicit High Intellectual Performances in participating teachers’ classrooms.

The focus of the grant is to provide a high-quality professional development program for teachers and para-professionals pursuing Bilingual Certification or English as a New Language Certification. The Rural Endorsement and Development Opportunities (REDO) project meet the purposes of the National Professional Development Program by providing access to 120 in service educators grades K-12 grade and 12 paraprofessionals to participate over the five-year grant period (2016-2020) in a 20 credit online program leading to the attainment of an English as a new language or a bilingual endorsement to ensure rigorous coursework that meets the professional preparation standards resulting in improved academic achievement for English language learners.

The NUA Course of Study for this work focused on the following outcomes:

  1. Participants will situate the Emergent Bilingual Student within the Pedagogy of Confidence®.
  2. Participants will link Bilingual Cognitive Capacities with High Intellectual Performance supported through HOPs in EB Settings.
  3. Participants will engage in self-reflective work around their own and their students’ cultural frames of reference to examine who we are a cultural beings, thereby informing an understanding of the importance of culturally responsive pedagogy.
  4. Participants will engage in culturally responsive pedagogy within the context of their own practice.
  5. Participants will re-frame their own best practices around serving language learners in the context of HOPs in EB Settings.
  6. Participants will begin the process of framing content curriculum around Integrated Instructional Units of Study that allow for cross-linguistic and cross-cultural transfer.
  7. This process will elicit the necessary integration of pre-requisites around conceptual understandings, identification of and scaffolding for academic language demand.
  8. Participants will identify language skills to be mediated (listening, speaking, reading and writing) compatible with and embedded in Integrated Instructional Units of Study.
  9. Participants will examine their own school cultures, identifying equitable practices that promote language and cultural status in their learning communities.

NUA provides two phases of professional development for Project REDO.

For Phase One: Project REDO and NUA provide a collaborative three day seminar for new inductees to the project. NUA provides foundational knowledge around culturally responsive pedagogy framed through High Operational Practices in Emergent Bilingual Settings (HOPS in EB Settings).

For Phase Two:

NUA provides virtual sessions within the coursework of the participants’ spring semester. There are two strands of the coursework sessions:

Instructional Conversations (Goldenberg, C. 1991)

Instructional Conversations develops educators’ pedagogy in bilingual literacy.

Participants read current articles around themes presented in NUA course of study and in required coursework in Project REDO. Participants meet virtually with the NUA mentor through Blackboard Collaborate.

Participants then engage in online discussion threads that lead to depth of understandings presented in the articles; supported by Google Drive.

There is evidence of shifts in perspectives in how teachers see their bilingual communities and their roles within those communities.

Lesson Study (Focused Inquiry Model)

Lesson Study develops educators ability to research best practices in lesson development and instruction for emergent bilingual students. (Montes, L. & Sudduth, M., 2009). Participants meet virtually with the NUA mentor through Blackboard Collaborate; design lessons that are then taught in respective school sites and videotaped that are focused on themes presented throughout the NUA course of study and in required coursework in Project REDO. Participants and the mentor then debrief the videos; identifying what was learned and possible next steps.

Teachers grow in their understanding around culturally responsive pedagogy and the interconnectedness of culture, language and cognition especially. They develop a working knowledge of NUA strategies in support of HOPS in EB Settings. There is evidence of thinking maps highlighted in lessons; situating learning in the lives of students; building relationships, and integrating prerequisites for learning in their lessons especially.