NUA Guide of Strategies

A compilation of National Urban Alliance Strategies from many of the NUA mentors and scholars.
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As educators, our role is not to make things easier for our students. Instead, we must learn to guide, monitor, culturally reinforce and adjust our interventions to align with the incessantly shifting winds experienced in learning. We must deepen our resilience while providing comfort and instilling the strength of will. When asked questions about learning, the late, great Susan Sontag borrowed from an Italian philosopher to say: “We should be driven less by the pessimism of the intellect, more by the optimism of the will.”

The scope of the material in this handbook is wide, ranging from highly specific to broad approaches to learning and teaching, from strategies that promote group interaction to those that are primarily content-centered. Overall, the effort calls attention to the vital role teachers play in student achievement.

As we know, teacher quality is the single most important in-school factor related to student achievement. In using the strategies and practices summarized here, students can transfer what they learn to a variety of learning circumstances. Doing so, they establish a “growth mindset” that enables them to push toward deliberative excellence. This volume reminds educators of how to achieve that while meeting the needs of diverse learners.

Eric J. Cooper
President, NUA

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Critical Thinking Tools Guide

The four pillars of critical thinking are models of practical methods that are the core of developing critical thinking skills.
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Collaborative Communities are three supporting methods of collaborative tools for individual and collaborative success. These include:  community building exercises and models, collaborative learning methods and peer-to-peer coaching.

Questioning Methods are used to engage students in curiosity, exploration, discovery and discussions. This includes effective methods for developing questioning skills leading to inquiry based shared inquiry.

Open Source Visual Mapping is for organizing and understanding thinking individually and collaboratively. The maps support recognizing patterns of thinking along with the frame of reference to understand different perspectives.

Thinking Environments is an awareness, understanding and a process focused on the design, interface and impact of the environment including a person’s use of space, materials, and objects.

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Who I Am – My Story

The Who Am I guide uses all eight Thinking Maps to explore My Story, My Community, My Ancestors and My Inspirations. The guide has a sequence Flow Map on each page to guide the classroom of doing the Thinking Map from the Cognitive Process of each map to using the Frame of Reference with each Thinking Map. Download the Guide.

 

The Pedagogy of Confidence Leadership Action Guide 2021

The Pedagogy of Confidence Leadership Action Guide  is based on many years of research and collaborations with Reuven Feuerstein, with National Urban Alliance (NUA), with many other organizations and colleagues focusing on equity consciousness in the spirit of belief and belonging for all students and educators. The Pedagogy of Confidence is focused on recognizing and amplifying the strengths underserved students. 

The goal of this action guide is to cultivate and sustain equity consciousness through the Pedagogy of Confidence.  The Pedagogy of Confidence engenders robust communities of belonging in which students are gifted with High Operational Practices to inspire students’ engagement and elicit their innate potential for high intellectual performances, self-determination, and personal contribution.
https://pedagogyofconfidence.net/

“Change the input and the brain changes accordingly.”
—Reuven Feuerstein

The Pedagogy of Confidence Leadership Action Guide focuses on walking the talk with equity consciousness for student engagement. This begins with the teachers and school leadership: believing in the innate potential of each and every student for high intellectual performances and contribution; recognizing and eliminating practices that are barriers to students’ potential thriving and flourishing; and committing to providing the pedagogy to elicit and cultivate that potential.

The High Operational Practices (HOPs) are about belief in students and providing the educators the tools, methods and understanding to create robust communities of belonging in which students thrive and flourish. This online guide and modules provide support to in person professional development. The guide will also available in print format with direct links to The Pedagogy of Confidence website.

Pedagogy and equity cannot be isolated from each other. When we are truly committed to equity, we design pedagogy that achieves it’s original purpose: ‘to lead a child’ for self-actualization and self- transcendence: self-actualization that enables students to thrive in society and self-transcendence that motivates them to contribute to that society (Chen, 2014; Freire, 2012; Gladwell, 2008; Jackson, 2011). Equity consciousness is a way of educating that is informed by and situated in the belief that all students are innately wired for engagement, high intellectual performances, self-actualization and personal contribution.

The Pedagogy of Confidence is about a movement for equity consciousness.