Nuestros Niños Program

The Nuestros Niños program is a federally funded project that provides professional development to teachers and assistant teachers in school districts in Massachusetts and Colorado. In Massachusetts, this professional development is being offered by Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. It aims at educators meeting high standards in the early education of the youngest English Learners.

Our Goals

The Nuestros Niños program’s goals are 

  • To improve language and literacy education for young bilinguals in PreKinder classes.
  • To enhance parents’ abilities to promote their children’s language and literacy by supporting teachers in strengthening home-school partnerships.

Professional Development

The Nuestros Niños Professional Development (NNPD) program consists of four courses leading to an academic certificate:​

  1. Working with Families, Professionals, and Communities
  2. Young Bilingual Children’s Development and Learning​
  3. Methods for Teaching Young Bilingual Children​
  4. Fieldwork in Education: ECE for Young Bilingual Learners

    Program Evaluation 

    Nuestros Niños has a program evaluation of the effectiveness of implementing the professional development program to prepare teachers to work with bilingual children. This evaluation involves volunteer teachers of Spanish-English young bilingual children, students, parents/caregivers, and coaches. Participating teachers will complete a teacher questionnaire and their classrooms will be observed by a project team member. Some teachers will be invited to participate in an interview about their experience in the program. Spanish-English young bilingual students randomly chosen to participate in the study will have their language and literacy knowledge assessed in both languages. Parents will answer a questionnaire and some will be interviewed. Then coaches will also be interviewed.