Institute for Early Childhood Well-Being

What is the Nuestros Niños Program?

It 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:

Working with Families, Professionals, and Communities
Bilingualism and Biliteracy in Early Childhood
Methods for Teaching Young Bilingual Children
Teacher Inquiry in Multilingual Early Childhood Classrooms

Program Evaluation

The Nuestros Niños Program evaluates the implementation of the certificate/credential of the professional development program to prepare educators to work with young bilingual children. This evaluation involves volunteer early educators, young bilingual children, parents/caregivers, and coaches. Participating early educators complete questionnaires and participate in classroom observations. Selected educators are invited to participate in an interview about their experience in the program. Randomly chosen young bilingual children participate in language and literacy knowledge assessments in both languages. Consenting parents/caregivers answer a questionnaire and participate in interviews. Then coaches are also interviewed about their experience in the program.

What are educators getting from this project?

Early educators enrolled in this certificate/credential learn about educating young bilingual children, obtain 12 college credits that can be applied to a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Early Childhood Education (ECE), and learn with Boston University or University of Colorado Denver professors online, with individual support from a coach. For the home-school partnerships and classroom support, educators receive multilingual children’s books for use in their classrooms and to send home to families.